Group items tagged

A new study, being released today, takes that conclusion two steps further. It found that preschoolers in low-income areas around Kansas City who had watched educational television programming, including "Sesame Street," not only were better prepared for school but actually performed better on verbal and math tests as late as age 7 than would have been expected otherwise.

A new study, being released today, takes that conclusion two steps further. It found that preschoolers in low-income areas around Kansas City who had watched educational television programming, including "Sesame Street," not only were better prepared for school but actually performed better on verbal and math tests as late as age 7 than would have been expected otherwise.

"This study shows that terrific television causes kids to be more receptive to learning, more receptive to reading, more receptive in school,"

First, children watch a lot of TV – on average four hours a day, which turns out to be more time than they spend in school each year.

Second, having print and reading materials at home helps kids learn to read. And, the more they read, the better they read. Unfortunately, more than 30% of city children live in poor households which tend to have few books or reading materials.  One study found that poor families had, on average, less than one book per household.

The third reason is that TVs must all have the technology to show captions and most programs and movies must have written transcripts. So, if you turn on your TV’s captioning feature, the words that are spoken – and many of the sounds as well – will appear in writing at the bottom of your screen

Sesame Street Sesame Street was conceived in 1966 during discussions between television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and Carnegie Foundation vice president Lloyd Morrisett. Their goal was to create a children’s television show that would “master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them”, such as helping young children prepare for school. After two years of research, the newly formed Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) received a combined grant of $8 million from Carnegie, the Ford Foundation, and the US federal government to create and produce a new children’s television show. Harold (Doc) Howe II, the US Commissioner of Education, and a friend of Morrisett, provided the first $4 million after brain-storming with his staff how to best reach inner city children via the TV antennas on their roofs with excellent pre-school TV programming which would have behind it, careful formative and summative research on best practices. Since no funds were earmarked for this, Howe decided to use research funds for the initial CTW start-up grant and that began the practice of each segment of Sesame Street being the result of carefully conducted R&D. One of his assistants, Harold C. Lyon, wrote his doctoral dissertation on integrating the affective with the cognitive. Howe appointed Lyon the U.S. Office of Education’s project officer for Sesame Street and the Electric Company where he met with the CTW Advisory Board using his influence to integrate the affective with the cognitive content of Sesame Streets program content for more indelible learning