Study: Between the Lions helps kids read better

An award-winning children’s PBS KIDS program, Between the Lions, when combined with teachers who are equipped with curriculum materials and who have received training, has consistently demonstrated its effectiveness in developing better reading skills for preschool children.

That is one result of an ongoing analysis of the federally-funded “Ready to Learn” program, by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. The School’s Children and Media Lab has measured reading and literacy skills of public school students who participated in a program based classroom intervention using Between the Lions, related curriculum materials, and teachers who were trained to use the coursework.            

“Consistently, very young students in classrooms where the program was used by teachers who had an array of teacher support outperformed their peers across almost all early literacy skills,” says Deborah Linebarger, assistant professor of Communication and Director of the Children and Media Lab at Annenberg. The student’s letter sound scores, one of the more sophisticated and challenging early literacy skills, improved by nearly 300%. To read a copy of the report or see an abstract, visit the website of the Annenberg School for Communication.