The university of maryland, college park; the maryland state library agency; and multiple community partners dedicated to supporting children and families will adapt and evaluate the original…

This federal Project Grant award from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the National Leadership Grants for Museums (CFDA 45.312) program provides $249,999 to the University of Maryland, College Park and its partners to adapt and evaluate the Hatchling program. The Hatchling program aims to empower under-resourced new parents to engage their babies in early language and literacy-building activities, with a focus on creating a culturally responsive curriculum for racially and ethnically marginalized families, immigrants, and English language learners. The project team, which includes librarians, researchers, educators, and other experts, will establish an open-access, scalable national model to support the foundations of language and literacy development in young children. The award period runs from August 1, 2024 to July 31, 2027.

The university of maryland, college park; the maryland state library agency; and multiple community partners dedicated to supporting children and families will adapt and evaluate the original hatchling program to empower under-resourced new parents to engage their babies in early language- and literacy-building activities both in and out of the library. The project team will create a culturally responsive adaptation of the original hatchling curriculum that better meets the needs of racially and ethnically marginalized identities, immigrants, and english language learners. The team will then evaluate the new program's effects on parents' self-efficacy for building their child's foundation of language and literacy skills, the naturalistic home language environment, and family library use. This project will leverage the collective, cross-disciplinary expertise of librarians, researchers, educators, neuroscientists, speech language pathologists, child development experts, and other partners to establish an open-access, flexible, scalable national model supporting the foundations of language and literacy development in young children.