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Nemours Children's Health recognizes that child health and reading skills are closely linked, and that reading failure is a major child health issue. This concern led Nemours to create a unique program called Nemours® BrightStart!, now known as Nemours® Reading BrightStart! (NRBS!), which specializes in developing products, resources and services to promote a strong reading foundation for all children, as a child health imperative.
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The NRBS! Complete Program for Literacy Success: Level One supplemental curriculum is a unique, interactive, and fun program specifically designed to boost early literacy skills in three- to five-year-old children. The 20-lesson program puts teachers on the cutting edge of early literacy best practices with a hands-on approach designed to be especially powerful for those who struggle with early literacy concepts.
The Complete Level One program includes proven strategies for small-group instruction, to develop:
Lesson 9 - Pig Party
The NRBS! Complete Program for Literacy Success: Level Two supplemental curriculum is an intensive and engaging program specifically designed to teach foundational reading skills to beginning readers, especially those who are struggling with early literacy concepts. The complete Level Two program guides children, kindergarten through first grade, towards mastery of foundational reading skills without fear of failure.
The 36-lesson program includes proven strategies for small-group instruction, to develop:
Lesson 7 - Letters Mm and Jj
The Dual Language Learners Read Aloud Planning Guide provides tips and suggestions to engage and expand dual language learning during the shared book experience, in the classroom and at home. The guide provides research-based, practical strategies to support language and literacy development in children learning English as a second language. It features family connection ideas, tips for toddlers and twos, technology tips, and much more.
While having this curriculum in the classroom is vital to achieve great literacy outcomes for all children, knowing how to use it is just as essential. Nemours Reading BrightStart! offers professional development and customized training opportunities for early childhood providers using both face-to-face and online trainings.
In addition to these trainings, NRBS! Certified Trainer courses are available, with the goal of increasing capacity among educators to provide high-quality literacy instruction for young children. We offer these certified trainer courses for both NRBS! Complete Program for Literacy Success: Level One and Level Two. Graduates of these courses leave with the skills needed to educate teaching staff, ensure program fidelity, and evaluate student outcomes within their organization.
For more information regarding professional development, please contact us at: [email protected].
Five years ago when this project was given to me by our CEO, I looked through the materials and thought how great it would be to see providers using these activities in their classrooms with children…after all, it’s the same type of practices I try to instill in every classroom teacher on my monthly visits to their programs. After being trained in NBS! and really understanding the theory behind the program, I knew it would be an amazing tool. But it wasn’t until the end of the first implementation year that I honestly realized what a gem we had stumbled upon!
NRBS! has undergone rigorous research for many years, and results show that it significantly boosts early literacy skills in at-risk young children. For example, in successive studies involving about 3,300 preschoolers who were behind in their early literacy skills, we found that nearly 2/3 moved to the age-appropriate range, with an average gain of 114%, after participating in the NRBS! program. This research has been published in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals:
Many Head Start, child care, and public school programs have used NRBS! for several years and achieve results similar to these research outcomes. Here is what a few of them have to say:
Not only is the growth and development in the children exposed to Nemours BrightStart! phenomenal, but the fact that this one program doubles as probably the best professional development tool I have ever seen is truly phenomenal. And now, we are in our 5th year of consistently utilizing the NBS! program and really enjoying it, I look back and ask why we didn’t start sooner! Our program data consistently reflects the program’s effectiveness with increasing the language and literacy skills of children. Teachers are learning through NBS! and implementation is trickling into other classroom practices.
One of my students started the program not speaking very much at all. During the small group sessions with him, it would be very difficult to get him to make the sounds and participate at all. But after about midway through the program he started participating and even at times leading! He even started acting as if he was quite bored with the pace. I must say he has improved thanks to Nemours BrightStart!.
The teachers love the Nemours BrightStart! Level Two kits. The lessons are systematic, engaging, and fast-flowing. The kids are eager to learn and the program encourages students to participate and respond without fear of being wrong. There are a myriad of concepts being explored in one lesson so it provides teachers with immediate information for remediation and enrichment.
Nemours Reading BrightStart! provides additional downloadable resources, including observation checklists, Spanish-translated family letters, lesson updates, and predictable student books to keep teachers up to date with the products they are using. Find them here.
Lessons 1-20 Skill Development Checklists
Family Letters, Lessons 1-20
Lesson 15 Update - How to Use the Fishbowl Teacher-Directed Child Practice
Lesson 18 Update - Hungry Thing Book Replacement
Lessons 1-36 Skill Development Checklists, Name Writing, Print Awareness, & Developmental Writing Checklists
Family Letters, Lessons 1-36
Lessons 3 & 4 – I Like My Kk
Lessons 5 & 6 – I Like My Ff
Lessons 7 & 8 – I See My Things
Lessons 9 & 10 – Fox on a Box
Lessons 11 & 12 – Dog on a Log
Lesson 20 – What Can We See?
Lesson 25 – Can You See That?
Lesson 27 – What is This?
Lesson 30 – Look!
Lesson 33 – What is That?
