Nationwide Children's Hospital is screening literacy skills in children, some as young as three years old. The program began in 2022, as concerns grew about lagging childhood literacy rates during the COVID pandemic when schools held classes online.
WOSU’s Debbie Holmes spoke to Dr. Sara Bode, medical director of school-based health at Nationwide Children's Hospital.
Debbie Holmes: How does this program work and where are you doing the screenings?
Dr. Sara Bode: This program is in seven of our primary care clinics across the city of Columbus. And how it works is as parents are naturally bringing in their children for well childcare at age three and age four, we are adding this as a service to that regular checkup.
Debbie Holmes: How many children have you screened and why did you select them?
Dr. Sara Bode: We've screened over 3,000 children so far and it's universal screening. So as families are coming in to get their childcare, their physical care, every single time they come in at age three and at age four for that well child checkup, we are adding the screening on to that at the time of the visit.
Debbie Holmes: Tell me how that works.
Dr. Sara Bode: You check in as you normally do, you're coming back into the clinic office and before the pediatrician comes in to do the visit, we have a kindergarten readiness coordinator. That's a specialist in early childhood that's coming in and they're administering a book-based screening tool to assess their literacy skills and then going over with families all of the opportunities, resources and results of the screening.
Debbie Holmes: Are you asking the children questions?
Dr. Sara Bode: We actually are directly testing the children on their literacy skills. So, we're actually using a book to work directly with the child, asking them things such as letters, shapes, sounds, rhyming skills for different words in the book, having them open up and tell us stories based on the book pages. And this is a validated screening tool that was developed and researched for use in a pediatric clinic setting. So it really helps us determine if they're on track or off track with those early reading skills.
Debbie Holmes: What are you finding then?
Dr. Sara Bode: We're finding so many amazing things. A couple situations, sometimes we have kids that just knock those screenings out of the park and their parents might actually be surprised. So, they may never have talked to their children about those skills and they're as surprised as we are about how well the child's doing, that's amazing. And there's other situations where we can really tell that that child has not developed any of those early literacy skills. And their parents may be thinking, 'Wow, I didn't know they were supposed to know that. I thought that's what they learned in kindergarten.' And so that allows us the opportunity to help guide and teach the parents about what they're supposed to know before they ever step foot in a kindergarten classroom.
Debbie Holmes: Are you finding that more than half of the kids are doing well?
Dr. Sara Bode: Actually, our screening results across the board are varied. We have some kids that are doing well. I would say for the most part, we're seeing about half of the kids that we're screening that are needing some additional support. So, what that looks like is teaching the parents about activities they can do at home with their child to advance those early literacy skills. And then talking to them about local resources, whether that's quality preschool programs, library programs, or like, home, you know, kindergarten readiness programs. And then we work to connect the families directly to those services in their neighborhood.
Debbie Holmes: Why is this program necessary?
Dr. Sara Bode: Well, everyone knows that across the state of Ohio, we've still really struggled with kids being ready for kindergarten when they're starting. And actually, in Columbus, about 60% of kids are starting kindergarten behind without those skills. So, we felt as pediatricians, they're coming to our practices, we're a trusted place, we're measuring their development as they come, and it's a real opportunity for us to be a part of the solution. We're not education experts, we are health experts. But we can help to do this short assessment and then connect them to those experts to advance that teaching. So, I really think whether a child's ready when they start school is so predictive of how they're going to turn out. If you start behind, you often stay behind. And so, if we can do this work on the front end to help these kids be ready for school, it really will be transformative for their educational experience once they get there.
Debbie Holmes: Has a children's hospital elsewhere in the state or country conducted similar tests?
Dr. Sara Bode: Not in this way, not with the literacy assessment. So, this tool, it's called the Reading House, was researched at Cincinnati Children's and developed there, but it was done in a research setting. So, we're the first practice to put it into place in a busy pediatric setting.
