"Hartford Talks" is a program that counts.
Educators say that preschool-aged children need to hear about 21,000 words per day to develop Kindergarten-ready language skills. Research also shows that children from lower-income familes hear fewer words than their more affluent peers.
So, the City of Hartford, with a boost from Bloomberg Philanthropies and the LENA Research Foundation, is starting a program to count how many words those kids are hearing.
Families with young children will be offered LENA's "word pedometer," a small, wearable device which will do the counting. The resulting data will be used by the city schools to develop their curriculum. Through home visits, participating families will receive coaching on how to bolster their household dialogue.
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin made the announcement Thursday afternoon at the Hartford Public Library. He says the device "allows us to be informed about what we need to do... to expand the exposure to words and the word count."
Several years ago, the city of Providence adopted "Providence Talks," and the results have been encouraging enough for Hartford and four other cities to replicate the program.