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LENA in California


Making every interaction count and transforming children's futures

LENA (Language ENvironment Analysis) is a national nonprofit on a mission to transform children's futures through early talk technology and data-driven programs. LENA works with a wide range of partner organizations to boost early brain development and improve kindergarten readiness for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

Since 2015, LENA has served 2,600 children and 170 early childhood educators in California, and LENA technology has recorded over 4.3 million conversational turns. Put your community on the map!



2,600
children


170
teachers


4.3 million
CTs

LENA Grow offers evidence-based professional development for infant, toddler, and preschool teachers.
LENA Start builds school readiness and strengthens families with parent-group classes.
LENA SP offers reliable, detailed language environment data in research and clinical applications.




Did you know?

LENA has crosswalks with Head Start, CLASS, The Pyramid Model, ZERO TO THREE, and more!

Explore our national crosswalks and partnerships!

 

Plus, click here to download "LENA Grow Supports California QIS." LENA Grow supports Quality Counts California’s Core Components of Child Development & School Readiness, Teachers and Teaching, and Program and Environment. 

California-QIS

And click here to download "LENA Grow Crosswalk with Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP)." LENA Grow’s detailed child-level data helps teachers individualize instruction and increase conversational turns with each unique child in pursuit of DRDP measures. 





 Staff Member
“By expanding LENA Start through our Talk Read Sing program to local community organizations that provide services to high need communities, we are able to strengthen our reach for providing families with early literacy engagement for their babies.”
Anne-Marie Despain
Library Director, San Mateo County Libraries

Interested in bringing LENA to your community?

LENA is scaling quickly and has a goal to impact over 100,000 children annually worldwide by 2025. Whether you're with a library, school district, CCR&R, state agency, university-community partnership, public health initiative, or any other organization interested in improving early childhood outcomes, we invite you to learn more about bringing LENA to your community.

 Staff Member

Connect with Pamela Salgado,
Regional Partnerships Director
PamelaSalgado@LENA.org


Blog Posts

Read these and other stories about partner success stories and research findings in California and beyond.


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QRIS and interaction: Do quality rating systems reflect individual experience?

Approximately one in four children experiences very little adult-child interaction, even within classrooms at centers that have achieved the highest QRIS rating possible.

Read more ...


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CLASS scores increase after using LENA Grow at The Primary School

Early childhood teachers at The Primary School in East Palo Alto, Calif., used LENA Grow professional development to better understand and improve interactions in their classrooms.

Read more ...


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A teacher, a coach, and an administrator on LENA Grow's impact: Webinar highlights

Highlights from a webinar where we hear directly from a teacher, coach, and administrator using LENA Grow.

Read more ...



On-Demand Webinars


CoP_Webinar_Jan-1

Evaluating LENA Grow's impact on early childhood education classrooms

While we’ve long known about the importance of early adult-child interactions, a research focus on children’s language experiences in child care classrooms has been long overdue.

Stream now ...


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The link between language and socioemotional development

Many previous studies have drawn connections between the quantity of back-and-forth interactions in early childhood and later linguistic and cognitive skills. Importantly, newly published research conducted in Chile has taken a novel direction, determining that infants’ language environments predict their socioemotional skills one year later.

Stream now ...


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Supporting early educators now: Strategies for building a voice and a community

Being an early childhood educator has always been challenging, but it seems to be getting harder. Crashing into yet another COVID wave in 2022, retaining staff and making them feel valued is top of mind. Yet, more often than not, we forget to ask the most important stakeholders of all: the teachers themselves.

Stream now ...