Toggle Talk Parent Brochure

UNIVERSITY OF

MARYLAND TOGGLE TALK PROJECT

STUDENT PARTICIPATION Your child is in a Toggle Talk school this year. This means that your child’s teacher will use the ToggleTalk® curriculum. In order to know whether ToggleTalk works, we would like to compare test scores of children in Toggle Talk schools to test scores of children in schools that don’t use ToggleTalk. We will test students toward the beginning and toward the end of the school year. The testing will take place at your child’s school at a time that minimizes the loss of instructional time. University of Maryland students and staff will be working with your child to conduct the testing.

JOIN THE UMD TOGGLE TALK PROJECT! Do you have a child in kindergarten or first grade?

Do you want to help us improve reading instruction for your child and other children?

OVERVIEW Your child’s school is participating in a project with researchers at UMD to study whether ToggleTalk® helps children learn to read. ToggleTalk teaches young children how to shift back and forth between their home/informal language and classroom/ formal language. ToggleTalk has been shown to improve standardized reading scores in small studies. Our Project is a larger study that will involve 20 Baltimore City Schools over the next 3 years.

“This program dispels and rewrites this whole idea of talking ‘proper.’

It’s all about knowing when and where to talk and how to talk in certain places.”

- First Grade Teacher, Furman L. Templeton Preparatory Academy, Baltimore, MD

STUDENT BENEFITS A University of Maryland t-shirt for returning the consent form.

A small toy or a book for participating in the testing.

A classroom pizza party for returning the consent forms.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE We can only test students if their guardians give written permission. If you want your child to participate in our project, please sign a consent form and return it to your child’s teacher.

WHAT DO TEACHERS SAY ABOUT TOGGLE TALK? “The students feel validated and are learning about language instead of being corrected all day, which hasn’t proven successful.”

“The students love the material… To me, that is exactly what learning is… you’ll hear them talk back and forth about why it should be formal or informal… and they give reasons why it should be what it is.

It’s outstanding.”

“My students love Toggle Talk! From the very beginning of the program they have been engaged and have enjoyed the stories.”

WHAT DO PARENTS SAY ABOUT TOGGLE TALK? “The only recommendation I would make is to extend the length of the program.”

“I think all schools should do programs like this. It really helps the kids learn.”

“I just wanted to thank you for showing a desire to make a difference in the lives of our kindergarteners.”

ABOUT THE UMD 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 with teachers and students in other Maryland and Virginia schools to develop programs to support student learning. The Project is supported from a grant by the Institute of Education Sciences at the US Department of Education.

For more information, please visit learningtotalk.umd.edu/ToggleTalk or contact Tatiana Thonesavanh, Project Manager at ToggleTalk@umd.edu or (301) 405 - 7716