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Models: Skills Promoted through Arts, Reading, and Knowledge (SPARK)

Skills Promoted through Arts, Reading, and Knowledge (SPARK) is a creative arts, literacy-based curriculum for preschool children that addresses the cultural incongruence that exists between ethnic minority students and the traditional curriculum. SPARK is based on stories and resources from diverse cultural and ethnic traditions. SPARK is easily adaptable to students' learning needs and therefore can be useful for inclusive settings. The SPARK curriculum requires one hour each day and consists of 25 units with many activities organized around a pre-literacy program of repeated, collaborative story reading. Each unit takes about one week to complete. Much of the success of SPARK is due to the story repetition and the cultural familiars that give children opportunities to relate stories to personal experiences. SPARK has been field-tested with more than 6,000 children and their families from diverse backgrounds (i.e., African American, Hispanic, Asian American, Native American, and Euro-American) in several states. Results indicate that the curriculum helps students who speak English as a second language learn English faster than students who were not exposed to the curriculum.

SPARK Website
http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/sped/spark/

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