Educators across Acadiana are working to help improve literacy rates among children.
One Lafayette couple, Patricia and James Bernard used their home daycare to help kick-start an online preschool, Acts of Wisdom.
According to the Bernards, the curriculum is designed to help children ages three to five prepare for kindergarten from the comfort of their own home.
"We actually opened Acts of Wisdom Daycare in 2020," Patricia said. "We wanted to reach more kids so we decided maybe two weeks ago to go online and get some of the kids that we couldn’t reach just locally."
Patricia said the virtual learning allows students who need extra help to gain access to one-on-one support.
"We offer a fundamental curriculum. It includes cognitive development," Patricia said. "They might think that the three-year-old may not sit at the computer for that long, but we have interactive ways of interacting with them to where it’s better for them instead of watching YouTube and not interacting. We do social interaction as well."
Patricia's husband James says he assists by teaching science and English courses and encourages hands-on learning in his own backyard.
"Plants, soil, getting them to look at the different clouds," James said. "It's different than reading a book all of the time so you actually bring them outside and let them see for themselves what's really out there in the world."
The Bernards say they hope to expand their business by accepting more students and hiring more teachers to be a part of their vision.
University of Louisiana at Lafayette is home to a Reading Clinic, where parents can also sign their children up for personalized tutoring sessions in the education department.
Doctor Aeve Abington-Pitre is the Director of the Reading Clinic and says many students are not proficient in reading by third grade, which makes them fall behind state mandates.
"We’ve even had children who are three years behind in reading come here and we do pre-assessments, and we tutor them based on what those assessments say they need," Pitre said.
The Reading Clinic is home to a variety of books for children to read and are organized, based on Lexile.
"Lexile basically means words which translates to vocabulary," Pitre said. "Depending on the age and the grade level, Lexile numbers start out very small and they get bigger."
