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Ideas, Resources, & Research, MGOL September 2022 Newsletter
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A Note From Betsy
Upcoming MGOL Training Workshop

News & Ideas
International Dot Day is Coming!
Different Times, Different Atmosphere
History of Nursery Rhymes

Research
Free Access to Research
Parent coaching increases conversational turns and advances infant language development

Resources
New Free Storytelling Magazine
The Power of Learning Through Imitation
Welcome to the Virtual Playground
Erikson Institute: Early Math Collaborative
White Paper: How to Tackle Disrupted Learning in ESL and Bilingual Students

Newsletters
The Hanen Centre

Training Opportunities
A menu of MGOL Trainings


Rhyme of the Month
Developmental Tip of the Month 



I am delighted to announce that on Friday, September 30, 2022, from 9am - 4 pm, I will be offering an in-person Mother Goose on the Loose Workshop at Port Discovery Children's Museum in Baltimore, MD. It only costs $300 per person and attendees will receive a certificate from the Maryland State Department of Education. If you are interested in joining in, please contact me at 443-928-3915 or by email at betsydc (at) mgol.org. 

Let me know if you will be traveling from out of state, and I can give you decently priced hotel recommendations. Attendance is limited, so if you would like to join in, please call soon!




 
International Dot Day is Coming!
 
"The Scoop", a newsletter from the Idaho State Library announced this: 

International Dot Day, September 15 The Dot, by Peter Reynolds, is a tale of an inspiring teacher who encourages a shy student to believe in herself and “make her mark.” International Dot Day is celebrated by adults and children for boosting courage so that their creative potential is released. It is a great day to connect and collaborate and also to celebrate self-expression. It is celebrated on September 15 each year.  For more information on International Dot Day, click here!



To read earlier issues on "The Scoop" click here.
Different Times, Different Atmosphere


In last month's newsletter, I mentioned that I am designing a new workshop that teaches the basics of storytime for new children's librarians while also addressing the disillusionment and burn-out that children's librarians country-wide are experiencing after COVID.  I asked for readers of this newsletter to please contact me with suggestions "for more ways to re-engage tired librarians, so they can begin sharing their enthusiasm with library visitors again."

Joyce R. Laiosa, a retired librarian from Slingerlands, NY responded almost immediately, and she identified issues that I remembered from my time working as a full time children's librarian. Joyce agreed that I could publish her email, and her name, which I have done below. If you have a response, or suggestions to the question above, please contact me at info@mgol.org.

 
Subject: Exhausted Librarians

 Dear Betsy,

I'm a retired children's librarian who loved your workshops (took 2) and loved my training and used it!  I'm writing to tell you why children's librarians have simply had enough.  When I retired, I complained many times because I did not have enough time "to think."  I was expected to do my programs, storytimes, plan the summer programs and facilitate many of them, serve on the general reference desk, back-up circulation desk when they were busy, help children and parents any time they asked, deal with weeding, and of course, collection development.  In addition, I was absolutely convinced that we had to partner with our local school district, so I did many booktalks at the schools, and marketed our collection to teachers as well as our summer programs to the young people.  

Every Friday, a lot of the staff would take off and the workroom would quiet down.  This was my catch-up day.  But many times, I took off on Friday and did my work at home.  In fact, I did a lot of work at home.  It was the only way to get it done as I wanted it to be done.  Luckily, librarianship was a second career and most of my children were grown and gone.  Plus, my husband was thrilled to see my enthusiasm and knew it was useless if he fussed at me.  (Plus, I did love cooking, so he is always fed well! :)

What I am trying to write is that even though I resented my workload, I got it done.  Complaining to the director about my time would have meant that she would take away the programs, take away the important collaboration with the schools, and even have said that I didn't need to spend as much time in storytime preparation as I thought was necessary and important.  Reading new books and journals is not even in the mix!
 
My dear assistant has taken my place since my retirement.  During Covid she not only had to continue to deal with storytime, but film herself at home.  She watched webinars to learn how to go about it.  Even though it was fewer storytimes, it was all stressful.  Even now, she feels that her workload is so different than the librarians who serve the adults of the community.  She, too, loves her job, and loves the children.  But children's librarians seem to be "doing," and just not given time to "think."  If that time was offered.  I'm only talking of a 4-hour section, one day a week.  It would make all the difference in the world.  We need a national advocate!!  And we need that organization and person ASAP.

Thanks for asking for our input.  Congratulations on your 2022 ALSC Distinguished Service Award.  And thank you for sharing all your great ideas, and asking for our ideas.  I still read your Mother Goose on the Loose Newsletter and watch the videos.  I still do a little consulting work and love to make sure people know that they don't have to have perfect storytimes.  They just have to make it fun for the parents and kids and it will flow with joy!

Kindest personal regards,

Joyce Laiosa

History of Nursery Rhymes

I have recently discovered a website (https://americansongwriter.com/features/behind-the-song/) that posts videos and articles about the gruesome or politically incorrect background of some nursery rhymes. Although I believe we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater, and we can easily change the words to keep the rhythm and pattern of these timeless rhymes, I also think it is important to know where they come from.

Here are a few:

And here's a fascinating article called "The Real Meanings Behind Your Favorite Nursery Rhymes" from medium.com

https://medium.com/illumination/the-real-meanings-behind-your-favorite-childhood-nursery-rhymes-6edeb6f4cace
FREE ACCESS TO RESEARCH!

The August 26 issue of Science Magazine (Vol 377, Issue 6610) contained an article with wonderful news: by the end of 2025, all papers produced by federal agencies from publicly-financed research must be made available the public as soon as the final peer-reviewed manuscript is published rather than being kept behind a subscription paywall for the first year. Currently, US taxpayers have to “pay twice”—once to fund the research and again to see the results."

With this new In addition, "hundreds of thousands of new scholarly papers will become freely available to all with no delay." While publishers are worrying about the loss of revenue, this is a great boon for everyone who likes to see what the newest research findings are!

Check out the article here: https://www.science.org/content/article/white-house-requires-immediate-public-access-all-u-s--funded-research-papers-2025

To follow up on the last newsletter's information about conversational duets, I'm putting a link to this February 3, 2020 article by Naja Ferjan Ramirez, Sara Roseberry Lyttle, and Patricia K. Kuhl, entitled "Parent coaching increases conversations turns and advances infant language development" published by the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). They compared the language development of babies whose parents who had been coached to use "parentese" with them with children of parents who had not received the coaching.

Their research indicated that the vast majority of parents were unaware of its positive effects their conversations had on their children’s language growth. The authors of this article raised parents' awareness by highlighting the research behind parentese and other social aspects of parent–child interactions, and by demonstrating to parents that they can interact with their infant in ways that promote language growth. They gave parents concrete language tips and, through discussion of their own daily routines, encouraged them to think of additional scenarios in which they can use language and interact with their infant. Parents "were generally grateful to leave the appointments with new ideas to implement at home."

A few developmental tips from the article are:
  • "How parents talk to infants is strongly associated with children’s language development, but many parents are not aware of this."
  • "Parental language input is one of the best predictors of children’s language achievement."
  • "Using parentese, a socially and linguistically enhanced speaking style, improves children’s social language turn-taking and language skills." 
  • "The [research] literature demonstrates that a child’s early language environment is a key predictor of the child’s later language skills.  (31–33)."
  • "Children’s language ability at Kindergarten entry, which is rooted in language development in infancy, is the single best predictor of school achievement through elementary grades (34–37)."  
  • "Children’s language ability at Kindergarten entry, which is rooted in language development in infancy, is the single best predictor of school achievement through elementary grades (34–37)." 
  • "Previous research indicates that differences in language skills in infancy are predictive of subsequent stages in language development (36, 51, 54, 55), and suggests that enhancement in parental social behaviors achieved through intervention could have cascading effects on infant speech development over time." 
  • "With its dramatic changes in the pitch of the voice (10), as well as exaggerated facial movements (58), parentese conveys a positive emotion that makes the speaker sound “happy” (29, 59). This combination attracts and holds infants’ attention (9), which could increase the quality or quantity of language uptake (60)." 
  • "Live social interaction resulted in rapid and robust learning of the sounds that was equivalent to that of 9-mo-olds living in the foreign country, but that exposure via video produced no learning whatsoever (61)." 
  • "Analysis of the social (eye gaze) behaviors during these interactions [showed that]... infants’ attention in the live, interactive social settings was higher than when watching the same material via video (61), suggesting that social skills play a critical role in language learning (62)."
  • "Early language learning depends on infants’ social interest in the people around them, their appreciation of others’ communicative intentions, and their desire to engage with adults through imitation (42, 71)."
  • "Research on children aged 4 to 6 y demonstrates that the number of conversational turns during parent–child language interactions correlates positively with stronger more coherent white-matter track connectivity in the language areas of the brain, an effect independent of SES (74)."
Resources
  NEW  FREE  STORYTELLING  MAGAZINE!

New Storytelling Magazine Established to create a safe space for story artists, story lovers, and creatives of all artforms to exchange ideas, learn new resources, and be inspired, the first issue of The Story Beast was released in July. Feel free to share this free e-publication with your colleagues, patrons, teachers, and anyone who has a love of stories!  For more info, click here: https://storybeast.org/

(Thank you to "The Scoop" for giving us the scoop on this!)

Professional Development


The Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) at the University of Washington has developed a free module that explores early imitation, an important aspect of children's social-emotional development. The module (available in English or Spanish) takes about 20 minutes to complete and consists of a sequence of narrated slides with embedded video examples, a discussion guide, and an activity sheet.

MGOL uses the Listen, Like,  Learn approach developed by music educator Barbara Cass-Beggs; repetition and imitation are built into the program.  Two of the contributors to this module are researches mentioned already in this newsletters: Sarah Roseberry Lyttle and Patricia K. Kuhl are authors of the article about conversational turns mentioned above. 

To get started, click here.
 

Welcome to the virtual Playground


Michelle Cummings is a trainer of trainers. Through her business, Training Wheels, she supplies in-person and on-line trainings as well as many training resources. I attended one of Michelle's online trainings, and was impressed with the free online resources she shared with us. 
To subscribe to her newsletter, click here.
To view her free resources and hand-outs, click here. If you're looking for good ice-breakers to start out virtual meetings, check out her virtual playground, by clicking here. 


Are you interested in the Math part of STEM skills? If so,  you may want to check out the Erikson Early Math Collaborative where you'll find professional development opportunities, research publications, children’s book recommendations, and a searchable database with videos/articles/books/games etc.

Or, you may be interested in participating in the newest MGOL webinar: 
Tips and Tricks for Enhancing Storytime to Build Children’s Math Skills  (co-facilitated) 
 
To find out  How Educators Are Tackling Disrupted Learning in ESL and Bilingual Students, read this article by The 74 (the74million.org).
 

Here is their new white paper outlining six ways to tackle disrupted learning in English learners including, focusing on the right tools, prioritizing newcomers, and enhancing teacher capacity to meet the needs of these students by hiring new teachers and helping existing educators work more efficiently with these students and their families.

How to Tackle Disrupted Learning in ELLs - Off2Class
 
Newsletters
 

  The Hannen Centre is an online resource with many user-friendly resources and hands-on trainings for helping parents, educators and speech-language pathologists maximize young children's learning.
The Hanen Centre has developed a number of language and literacy offerings to help parents and educators promote their childrens' language and early literacy development by encouraging them to be active, confident communicators whether they are developing typically or have language delays.

Guided by the most current research in early childhood language and literacy development, and focusing on the power of everyday routines, conversations and play, The Hanen approach makes language and literacy learning a fun and natural part of every child's day.

 To subscribe to the Hannen Centre's newsletter, click here.

For Developmental Tips from the Hannen Centre, click here!

To see a cool example of turning book reading into a conversation, using Don't Push the Button by Bill Cotter, click here
Training Opportunities
Since the pandemic, MGOL has advanced in many directions and there are now broader training options than ever. Returning to programming inside of the library whilst COVID has not been eradicated leaves some librarians uneasy. As a result, many library systems have lost seasoned librarians and hired new ones, and some more experienced librarians feel burnt out.  

To address this, MGOL now offers different ready-to-go webinars utilizing the MGOL philosophy, presented live, with interactive components and accompanying resource pages. In addition to these popular webinars, a new one called “Storytime 101” includes the basics of presenting programs to children, giving developmental tips to parents, and re-energizing children’s librarians to WANT to present programs to the public again. Webinars are available in one hour, 90- minute or two-hour sessions. 

The five most popular webinars are: 

  1. Programming for Parents with Infants and Babies: Why, When, and How? 
  2. Scarves: Songs and Activities 
  3. Flannel Board Fun  
  4. Play Your Way to Literacy and STEM
  5. Storytime 101  

New webinars also offered as in-person workshops are: 

  1. Tips and Tricks for Enhancing Storytime to Build Children’s Math Skills  (co-facilitated) 
  2. Early Literacy in the NICU with MGOL Goslings   (co-facilitated)

Full-day in-person workshops are still being offered, with the caveat of being able to reschedule if needed. The five most popular ones are: 

1. Using Mother Goose on the Loose to Create High-Quality Early Literacy Programs  
2. Play Your Way to STREAM 
3. Transforming Storytime 
4. Enhancing Storytime to Build Children’s Math Skills (co-facilitated) 
5. Bringing Literacy to NICU’s: MGOL Goslings (co-facilitated) 

 

Additionally, an in-depth virtual MGOL training can be provided as an extended online course!  

I am now providing customized in-person and/or online consultations, including: 

  1. Individualized coaching 
  2. Observing programs and providing feedback  
  3. Curriculum development (i.e. creating a Ready to Read Toolkit and trainings) 
  4. Developing programs or trainings  
  5. Presenting model programs for babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and families. 

Most webinars and workshops can be customized to fit your library system’s needs. Visit the MGOL website at www.mgol.net/trainings/ for more details. Please contact me at info@mgol.org or 443-928-3915 for more information and prices. You can also contact Stuart at 410-207-4105. 

I hope to hear from you soon; let’s continue changing the world for the better – one rhyme at a time! 



For information about these and other custom-made webinars, please contact Betsy at betsydc@mgol.org or 443-928-3915.
If You're Happy and You Know It

This is a wonderfully rhythmic and energetic version to the old favorite!
 
Subscribe to More MGOL Rhymes on YouTube HERE!
Developmental Tip of the Month:
 
Children learn words best via conversations with others. Recognition of these words is reinforced when they are used in joyful games and activities. Feel free to adapt songs and rhymes in ways to make them even more fun to do with your children!
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