University of Arizona Cooperative Extension developed a bilingual text message database designed for practitioners, educators, and facilitators to support parent skill-building and child development classes at the Family Resource Centers in Santa Cruz County. These text messages are designed as reinforcement tools for key concepts taught in the classes and to help improve attendance and retention.
If you are leading classes for parents with children from birth to age five in either English or Spanish, these text messages can be added to your program to improve attendance and learning beyond the classroom.
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Database content
The database is available as an Excel spreadsheet with three tabs; instructions, text messages and class descriptions.
Instructions tab
Outlines how to navigate the spreadsheet and use text messages with participants.
Text messages tab
Structured messages in English and Spanish for eight different classes. Welcome and wrap-up messages are optional.
- Welcome Message - sent before the first session to introduce parents and caregivers to the class.
- Reinforcement Messages - sent after each session to bridge communication between participants and their instructor, reinforce key concepts from the session, and encourage families to use what they learned during the session.
- Wrap-up Message - sent after the final session to summarize key takeaways and provide a sense of closure.
Class descriptions tab
Names and descriptions of classes text messages were written for. Instructors can use the messages when teaching the classes they were written for or they can use the messages for different classes that teach similar content.
Parent skill-building classes
- Abriendo Puertas - builds caregiver leadership skills and family well-being.
- Positive Discipline - helps caregivers decode child behavior and turn problems into solutions for the long term.
- Power of Parenting - increases knowledge of brain development and the role parents play in promoting it.
Early childhood development classes
- Partners in Parenting Education (PIPE) 1 and 2 - improves the relationship between caregivers and their children through shared positive emotions.
- Play & Learn - uses play to help toddlers learn.
- Fine Arts for Threes - promotes child development through art-based activities.
- Keys for Threes - instills children with Ellen Galinsky’s seven essential life skills.
- Kindergarten Readiness - helps children acquire kindergarten skills in five domains.
Benefits
Incorporating text messages into programs for parents of young children has been linked to:
- program attendance (Hill et al., 2021) and completion (Murray et al., 2015) and
- meeting program goals, e.g., increased engagement in learning activities with young children (Hurwitz et al, 2015) and use of responsive parenting strategies (Carta et al., 2013).