Effects of Using Spanish-Speaking Staff to Adapt Home Visits on the Language and Literacy Development of Spanish-Speaking Children

This research study is examining the short term effects of Spanish-language home based early literacy skills in pre-school aged Hispanic children enrolled in Head Start Home Visiting programs in rural south central Minnesota during the 2006-2007 school year. Head Start is a nation wide, government funded program for pre-school aged children from low income families, operating to better prepare and facilitate children\u27s readiness for school. In this study a group of approximately 40 children was given exams to measure oral language and early literacy skills in both English and Spanish. These children received weekly home visits from Spanish-speaking paraprofessionals who conducted early literacy activities in Spanish. The paraprofessionals are employed through Head Start and are supervised in the homes by an English-speaking Head Start home licensed visitor. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of using a Spanishspeaking paraprofessional in pre-school aged children\u27s educational development and school preparedness, and to determine whether or not children\u27s literacy skills are higher with Spanish visitors versus those children that just have English-speaking home licensed visitors. This project is important because the Latino population continues to increase and our schools are becoming more diverse, bringing with them the many challenges of language barriers. We need to continue to find solutions to help Latino students better adapt in the classroom, obtain academic achievement levels similar to those of native English-speaking students, obtain high school graduation rates similar to national rates, and to help Latinos become independent, self reliant, and productive members of our society