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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 school readiness for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

Since 2015, LENA has served 2,800 children and 180 early childhood educators in California, and LENA technology has recorded over 5 million conversational turns. Put your community on the map!



2,800
children


180
teachers


5 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?

Whether you're with a library, school district, CCR&R, state agency, university-community partnership, public health initiative, or any other organization dedicated to 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, California
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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Learning to read (and write) starts earlier than you think!

Dr. Lucy Hart Paulson, co-author of LETRS for Early Childhood Educators, on how learning to talk and learning to read and write happen in parallel. Learning to read starts earlier than you think, and conversational turns are an important piece of the puzzle!

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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.

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“Everyone has their niche, and my niche is little kids”: One teacher’s journey in cultivating her students’ voices

One veteran teacher’s LENA Grow journey: “It kind of goes back to my childhood. I struggled with learning. I never really had anyone who taught me that as long as I kept trying, I could.”



On-Demand Webinars


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Setbacks and Solutions: Helping early educators navigate language and social-emotional delays 

It’s more important than ever to equip early childhood educators to address children’s unique needs and help get their language and social-emotional development on track. There’s strong new evidence to suggest that LENA Grow, a language-focused professional development program for early educators, is effective at doing just that.

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What role may a child’s earliest interactions play in laying the foundation for learning to read? In this webinar, we take an expert deep dive into how conversational turns from ages birth to five fit into the ongoing discussions around the “science of reading.”

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Sustainable, scalable initiatives in early childhood: What’s next for funding and quality improvement?

It’s no easy task for early childhood leaders to strategically disburse funds from PDG B-5, CCDBG, CLSD, and ARPA grants into the hands of LEAs and CCR&Rs. In fact, the alphabet soup of early childhood education funding streams can be a bit hard to digest, so to speak. In this webinar, state leaders will tell the stories of how and why they invested in initiatives for statewide implementation, as well as their visions for further expansion and impact.

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