Texts help prepare kindy kids for school

Parents have been encouraged to keep checking their mobile phones by school teachers in a bid to help them better support children’s learning in readiness for school.

It’s part of a new collaborative project by Edith Cowan University (ECU) and the State Library of Western Australia Better Beginnings kindergarten program.

Known as Kindytxt, text messages have been sent to parents three times a week providing them with home activities to encourage children’s language and literacy learning and love of books.

According to ECU Early Childhood Research Group’s Professor Lennie Barblett, the texts have been well received.

“What parents and teachers are telling us is that receiving those text alerts have assisted and complimented what schools do to lay the foundations for children’s language and literacy learning,” Professor Barblett said.

“Parents and carers said the program increased their capacity and confidence for learning in the home and found the activities easy to use and very helpful for the entire family.”

Kindytxt was implemented following evidence from numerous American research studies that showed text messages successfully increased school-readiness and family-school engagement in early childhood settings.

“This is the first Australian early childhood literacy-based texting program that is scalable, cost effective, accessible for vulnerable families and incorporates outcome measures,” Professor Barblett said.

“As digital technologies are increasingly ever-present, the texting program provides an important new resource for early childhood educators, including parents/carers/librarians and other service providers, to support early literacy and school readiness.”

A total of 90 text messages were delivered over 30 weeks.

Families were invited to participate through a flyer, which came in the book gifting bag delivered by local librarians to all families with a child attending kindergarten.

“The text messages encouraged activities, such as shared reading, storytelling, singing songs and nursery rhymes, paying attention to print, and attending library activities.

“These activities support children to learn about concepts about words, letters, phonological and phonemic awareness,” Professor Barblett explained.

ECU’s Early Childhood Research Group along with SLWA Better Beginnings are seeking funding to continue the program into 2023 and beyond.