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LENA in Georgia


Making every interaction count in early childhood education.

LENA (Language ENvironment Analysis) is a national nonprofit on a mission to transform early childhood education.

LENA Grow offers evidence-based professional development for early childhood educators.
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.

In Georgia, LENA has reached 7k children and 1.5k early childhood educators since 2017, and LENA technology has recorded more than 8.2 million conversational turns.



7k
children


1.5k
teachers


8.2 million
CTs




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Did you know?

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





Georgia DECAL adopted LENA Grow in 2017, providing grants to child care centers and family child care homes across the state. LENA's team works with the Infant-Toddler Specialist network across the state as they support coaches within center-based programs and family child care homes.





 Staff Member
“LENA’s program of helping early childhood educators improve talk with their children aligns with our agency’s mission to make the most of the formative early years for every child. Early language is a central element in preparing children for school success, and early childhood educators play a key role in that development. We expect to see measurable gains in responsiveness through the combination of objective data and professional coaching.”
Susan Adams
Deputy Commissioner for Pre-K and Instructional Supports, Georgia DECAL

 Staff Member
"I believed that I was being vocal with the children daily, but the data gave a spotlight on how to scaffold conversations and be more child initiated. I was excited to see how setting and meeting weekly goals can have an immediate impact on my learning environment. It was an eye-opening experience."
Brigitte Willis
Director of A Better Day Christian Learning Center in Grovetown, Georgia

Let's talk about bringing LENA to your community.

Whether you're with a school district, CCR&R, state agency, library, university-community partnership, public health initiative, or any other organization dedicated to improving early childhood outcomes, we want to help you put your organization on the LENA map.


 Staff Member

Connect with Gina Gates,
Regional Partnerships Director
GinaGates@LENA.org


Blog Posts and On-Demand Webinars

Partner success stories and research findings in Georgia and beyond.



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Tips for organizing early education classrooms to increase conversational turns

Your room’s arrangement, materials, and how you present them all affect learning, for both the children and you. How can you create a space that lets you focus on strong relationships with the children you care for?


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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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LENA Grow may help keep early educators in the profession, new evidence suggests

There’s strong evidence to suggest that LENA Grow, the evidence-based professional development program that helps early childhood educators create equitable language environments, has a beneficial impact on teacher retention.



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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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