Josh's First Anotated Bibliography Entry

Hammer, Carol Scheffner, George Farkas, and Steve Maczuga . The language and literacy development of Head Start children. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, Jan. 2010. Article.

Carol Hammer lays out the problems and facts about the outcomes of children in the Head Start program. She concludes that a Head Start child's reading outcome is directly effected by the home literacy environment and the speech-language impairment during preschool. Hammer states that, “Research has consistently shown that maternal education impacts preschool and school-age children’s cognitive, language, reading, and academic outcomes (4).” She goes on to argue that Maternal education, whether only a high-school degree, college degree or non degree, directly affects their children's ability to learn. Hammer furthers her statement by laying out evidence that the home literacy environment has a significant affect on children's language development. Hammer shows later in her article studies that were done that directly show this point. She talks about the children's literacy development before the study compared to her findings after. Hammer then talks about how gender for the child has an affect as well. She states that men are three times as likely to have a speech impairment than women, based on parent report. Throughout this article, Hammer credits many organizations such as the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Education, and so on. This, to me, is a very creditable source. I have found a plethora of information from this article that was consistent with the data that I have already found from past resources.