Project Words of Oral Reading and Language Development (WORLD)

The purpose of the WORLD Efficacy Project is to evaluate the efficacy of the Words of Oral Reading and Language Development (WORLD) intervention—a shared book reading intervention (English book reading component) previously developed and piloted through an IES development grant. Project WORLD is led by Dr. Jorge Gonzalez, with Drs. Sharolyn Pollard-Durodola, Laura Saenz, and Aaron Taylor, as co-principal investigators. Texas A&M University and the University of Texas-Pan American, in partnership with four school districts and a Head Start Consortium in South Texas, will test Project WORLD and its net positive impact on children when implemented in schools with high concentrations of low-income and ethnically and linguistically diverse students. This grant has been funded for 2011-2015. The intervention will begin in two school districts in South Texas.

The Project WORLD Spanish preschool intervention is now being implemented in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as part of research conducted by Drs. Teresa Satterfield and Jose Benki of the University of Michigan. They will study the effects of this intervention on children acquiring Spanish as a first language in a Spanish heritage program, En Nuestra Lengua. You can read more about En Nuestra Lengua here. The Texas researchers hope to collaborate on future research grants with the Michigan team, who also focus on first language acquisition and cross-linguistic transfer.