Toggle Talk Recruitment Brochure

UNIVERSITY OF

MARYLAND TOGGLE TALK PROJECT

PROJECT OVERVIEW Researchers at the University of Maryland are looking for Baltimore City school partners to study the efficacy of Toggle Talk, an ELA curriculum supplement.

Toggle Talk has been shown to improve standardized reading scores in pilot studies. Toggle Talk provides young children with vocabulary and language structure awareness to become proficient in switching between their home/informal language and classroom/formal language.

Twenty schools will participate over 4 years. All schools will receive Toggle Talk over the course of the project, but some will be “control” schools (businessas-usual) in their first year. All schools participating in the project will receive generous teacher and school stipends, professional development, and course materials at no cost.

“Toggle Talk differentiated between when to use language formally and informally.This program dispels and rewrites this whole idea of talking ‘proper.’ It’s all about knowing when and where and how to talk in certain places. The program is not going to ‘correct’ anything or take anything away from students.

- First Grade Teacher,Furman L. Templeton Preparatory Academy, Baltimore City Public Schools

WHAT IS TOGGLE TALK? ToggleTalkŽ is an evidence-based language arts curriculum supplement created specifically for kindergarten and first grade teachers. ToggleTalk helps children become bi-dialectally fluent by using Contrastive Analysis to teach children how to make situationally appropriate language choices. Toggle Talk helps teachers address hardto-meet Common Core College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards and the Common Core State Standards’ guidelines for English Language Arts, particularly in Reading, Speaking & Listening, and Language Development.

PARTICIPATION Teachers will receive stipends commensurate with their PD hourly rate.

Teachers in Toggle Talk schools will receive Toggle Talk course packs, hands-on training, and three fidelity observations with feedback per year. They will deliver short, scripted Toggle Talk lessons about three times per week for about 15 weeks.

Teachers in control schools will continue their regular ELA instruction and will be observed 2 times per year to identify how Toggle Talk.

All students in Toggle Talk schools will receive the curriculum. Students in both Toggle Talk and control schools whose parents agree to let them participate in the evaluation of Toggle Talk will be assessed toward the beginning and end of the school so that we can compare the growth of students in the Toggle Talk.

“I think you did a phenomenal job of supporting the teachers. They communicated with teachers. Sometimes we have situations where in the beginning we have all of this support and then you don’t see or hear from anybody until the very end. But that wasn’t the case, because you were in constant contact with the teachers.”

- Principal, Baltimore City Public Schools

WHAT DO BALTIMORE CITY SCHOOLS THINK OF TOGGLE TALK? “My students used Toggle Talk throughout the day. They would do it on their own and they would say whether they were talking formally or informally. My students never said ‘oh, this is the correct way to speak’ or ‘this isn’t a correct way.’ They never criticized another child for it, they just said ‘you just spoke in a informal way’ or ‘that verb was formal.’”

- Kindergarten Teacher, Furman L. Templeton Preparatory Academy, Baltimore City Public Schools “My students loved the books because the characters looked like them. Also, it’s the first time I ever came across books with characters who talked like my students.”

- First Grade Teacher, Hilton Elementary, Baltimore City Public Schools “Toggle Talk gave us some new shared language. It made me more aware of what my students were doing in their speech.

My students are very young and part of what I’m trying to do is build a classroom community that is affirming and makes connections between home and school.”

- First Grade Teacher, New Song Academy, Baltimore City Public Schools

THE TOGGLE TALK TEAM The UMD Toggle Talk Project is led by Professors Jan Edwards, Ana Taboada Barber, and Rebecca Silverman at the University of Maryland (UMD)— three experts in language and literacy intervention. They have worked in Maryland and Virginia schools to develop and evaluate interventions aimed at supporting student learning in schools.

Additionally, trained and vetted student research assistants from UMD will assess students and observe and support teachers. The UMD Toggle Talk project is funded by a Goal 3 grant from the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences.

The University of Maryland Toggle Talk Project is recruiting Baltimore City Public Schools for SY 2018-2019!

Sign up online for an informational meeting at learningtotalk.umd.edu/toggletalk For more information, contact Project Manager, Tatiana Thonesavanh, at toggletalk@umd.edu