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The aim of the ToggleTalk project is to study the efficacy of Toggle Talk, a language arts curriculum supplement by partnering with Baltimore City Public Schools. Toggle Talk provides young children with vocabulary and language structure awareness to become comfortable in switching between their home/informal language and classroom/formal language. Toggle Talk has been shown to improve standardized reading scores in pilot studies. 

Toggle Talk is a fully-developed language arts curriculum supplement that uses scripted lessons to teach students how to recognize and produce language in both their home/informal language and the classroom/formal language. Lessons use picture sorting, writing, and read-alouds with custom-written storybooks to introduce the concept of home/informal/non-academic language vs. classroom/formal/academic language. Toggle Talk lessons are about 15-20 minutes long and are delivered by the classroom teacher about 2-3 times a week for about 16 weeks.

All Toggle Talk lessons are scripted to ensure fidelity of implementation across teachers with different levels of knowledge about dialect differences, grammar, and contrastive analysis. A training program to teach educators how to implement Toggle Talk includes a hands-on full-day workshop prior to beginning Toggle Talk and on-site observations with feedback sessions throughout the first year of implementation.

Visit the project website to learn more.