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'Super WHY' boosts literacy skills

posted Wednesday, May 20, 2009 2:12pm

See more on: Children, PBS

Two new studies on the award-winning PBS KIDS series "Super WHY!" prove that children, especially those from low-income families, are learning core early literacy skills from the TV series and its educational support materials. Read the press release.

The studies were funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) through a cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Education's Ready To Learn Grant. The first study, conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, assessed the TV series' abilities to help boost preschoolers' early literacy skills ranging from knowledge of the alphabet to letter sounds and reading comprehension. The second study evaluated how children learn from the series content via "Super WHY!" five day reading camps where children were invited to take a hands-on approach to applying the Super Readers reading lessons into their daily lives.

Research findings include:

Improved overall performance - The most prominent finding in this project was that preschool children who watched "Super WHY!" across an 8 week period performed significantly better on nearly all program specific measures and most of the standardized measures of early reading achievement when compared with those preschool children who watched an alternate program.

High levels of engagement – Nearly all of the children (97 percent) who rated the show and its characters gave Super WHY! high marks, so not only are young viewers learning, but they also find the content entertaining and engaging. The series has ranked in the top five television programs among children ages 2-to-5 and has been number one among moms with young children.

Growth on targeted literacy skills - Over time, kids who watched "Super WHY!" showed significant gains on alphabet knowledge, phonological and phonemic awareness, symbolic and linguistic awareness and comprehension. For example, "Super WHY!" viewers' pre-test to post-test gain on tasks that measured phonological and phonemic awareness averaged 29 percent compared with an average gain of 13 percent for children in the control group.

Improved pre-reading skills – Watching "Super WHY!" dramatically improved preschoolers' letter and sound naming speeds, skills that are directly linked to conventional reading achievement. Children participating in the "Super WHY!" group were 24 percent faster at naming letters and 44 percent faster at naming sounds when compared to children in the control group.

"Super Why!" airs weekdays at 7:30 a.m. and Saturdays at 6:30 a.m. on Rocky Mountain PBS.

Are you a parent of a preschooler? If so, what do you think of the series? Has your child benefited from it?

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