Learning Enrichment Activities Program

Teachers are being trained to use the Language Enrichment Activities Program, or LEAP, which was developed by Nell Carvell of Southern Methodist University and the Texas Instruments Foundation. The reading intervention curriculum, designed for 4-year-olds with socioeconomic and language limitations, will be fully implemented by fall 2006-07.

It is already used in Dallas and Irving as well as districts in seven other states.

"We really owe it to these children to give them what a middle-class child would have - books, word games in the car, things that build language," said Mrs. Carvell, who is SMU's director of preschool initiatives.

The TI Foundation asked her to create the program just over a decade ago. The foundation had been financially supporting Head Start in Dallas but discovered after a few years that its social, nutritional and medical help wasn't producing the desired results.

"When they got to elementary school, they still weren't performing with their peers. So we had to step back and ask 'What's wrong?'" TI spokeswoman Kim Quirk said. "They were socially ready but not academically ready."

In fact, Mrs. Carvell said, the students' average scores weren't even one point higher than those of their classmates who had not been through Head Start.

Once LEAP came into play, though, Head Start students who were typically scoring around the 20th or 30th percentile on standardized tests were scoring between the 60th and 80th percentile, she said.

What's more, those scores have remained constant with subsequent classes over the past eight or nine years.

"It takes more than health to help these children," she said. "We found that many had been in an environment where they only watched TV, had no books or conversations with their parents, weren't read to or taught nursery rhymes."

Then, when they started school, the focus was on amusement instead of learning. Classrooms were set up like indoor playgrounds rather than instructional spaces.

"At that point, very few pre-kindergartens were doing anything with phonological awareness, the alphabet, just language in general," Mrs. Carvell said. "The thinking was, 'If we give children enough materials, they'll discover what they need to know.' What we found out was if they don't have a foundation for discovery, they won't discover."

LEAP integrates seven components of language to give students a foundation for ways to verbalize what they know and understand:

*The ability to notice and manipulate the sounds that words make using rhyming, alliteration and other techniques, which is called phonological awareness

*Alphabet knowledge, including environmental print such as the "Golden Arches" M in McDonald's

*Listening skills

*Expressive language, including vocabulary development, speaking in sentences and using expanded vocabulary in sentences

*Concept development, involving everything from basic concepts such as size, shape and sequence to linguistic concepts such as "either-or" and "first this, then that"

*Math and science concepts

*Fine motor development, getting the hand ready for pinching a pencil for writing.

The program also provides teacher training and encourages volunteer involvement.

Half of Richardson's pre-kindergarten teachers are receiving training now, and the other half will be trained over the summer and next school year. The first group will begin teaching the program in the fall.

Rita Latimer, RISD's pre-kindergarten director, said LEAP will refocus the district's program by taking a more holistic approach.

"There are a lot of things out there for pre-kindergarten, but this one integrates motor skills and doesn't separate the vocabulary," she said. Mrs. Carvell "has sort of thought about how we put it all together through the lens of acquiring and enriching language."

The TI Foundation had been trying to get LEAP into RISD for several years, but the district didn't have the space or resources until now, Ms. Quirk said.

New elementary schools and the expansion to full-day kindergarten this year made it possible to enhance RISD's program.

"When the district was doing the shuffling, we thought this might be a perfect fit," she said, adding that RISD will pay the initial $30,000 costs, but TI will provide financial help in the future.

"TI is glad to be a willing partner with the district as they implement the program," she said.