Course details

8.3401

‘What is Waza thinking?’ Part II

 SP
WS 2019 Prof. Dr. Simone Pika OFFLINE
2h/wk
12 ECTS 		M.Sc modules:
CC-MP-SP - Study Project
CS-MP-SP - Study Project
 Tue: 14-16

Early cognitive and communicative experiences of young children differ dramatically in relation to their socioeconomic background. For example, an average child on welfare has half as much experience per hour (616 words/hour) as an average working-class child (1,251 words/hour) and less than one-third that of an average child living in a professional family (2,153 words/hour) (Hart & Risley 2003). These differences in early language experience result in a “vocabulary gap” of around 30 million words between children from the wealthiest and poorest families as well as differences in tackling the cognitive challenges of their daily environment. Reading picture- and storybooks is a great way to promote children’s early language and cognitive skills. Parent-preschooler reading is related to language growth, emergent literacy, and reading achievement (Bus, IJzendoorn, & Pellegrini 1995). However, more recent studies found that how one reads a book to children can influence their learning achievements (Brownell et al. 2013; Read 2014). The study group ‘what is Waza thinking’ will act by developing a new book format to provide parents with a fun tool to motivate and enhance the cognitive development of their children. The project is divided in four working packages, four creative phases and will be finalized by a report: W1: Which cognitive skills and milestones are crucial in children’s first years of life (0-4 years)? W2: What is known about the impact of different reading strategies on cognitive skills? W3: Survey of existing child literature (which kind of stories, heroes, tools) W4: Which technologies have been successfully used in children’s books? C1: Choosing themes and topics for different age ranges C2: Creation of story and hero/heroes C4: Design of new tools using newest technologies C4: Planning and implementation of a presentation of the new book idea to selected publishers.