Housed in the University of Iowa’s College of Education and operating in collaboration with the Iowa Department of Education, the Iowa Reading Research Center is launching a free online resource to help parents of young children stay engaged in learning over the summer.
Special Education Clinical Assistant Professor Leah Zimmermann, the center’s assistant director, says the Spark Early Literacy Hub is designed to help families grow a child’s reading skills as part of their everyday routines.
Zimmermann was recently featured in an article produced by RadioIowa. The following excerpt is from that article:
“The University of Iowa’s Reading Research Center is launching a free online resource to help parents of young children stay engaged in learning over the summer.
UI Professor Leah Zimmermann, the center’s assistant director, says the Spark Early Literacy Hub is designed to help families grow a child’s reading skills as part of their everyday routines.
Zimmermann says, ‘It includes a downloadable booklet called 10 Activities to Spark Early Literacy that provide instructions and materials for fun, interactive activities that parents can do with their kids to support two critical word recognition skills.’
Those skills are the ability to recognize the sounds in spoken language and the ability to see a letter and connect it to a specific sound.”