Cartwright tapped to advise on new PBS show aimed at literacy education

Spangler Distinguished Professor of Early Child Literacy Dr. Kelly Cartwright serves as Lead Curriculum Advisor on PBS KIDS’ Phoebe & Jay, a new animated series for children ages 3-5 designed to support early literacy skills for preschoolers. “To work on a PBS KIDS series is a dream come true. It’s full circle, really – I learned how to connect letters and sounds from my friends on PBS when I was a kid, so getting to help other children do that is amazing.”

The show will feature the adventures of 6-year-old fraternal twins Phoebe and Jay Yarber, being raised by their ever-optimistic dad Pete with the support of their no-nonsense Grandma Annie; but it’s rooted in a foundational literacy curriculum highlighting the importance of developing preschoolers’ functional literacy skills, showcasing things they might read in their everyday lives – like signs, labels, lists, or recipes.

Cartwright shared that while PBS KIDS already had a strong literacy framework in place prior to the show’s development, she and other curriculum advisors helped develop specific goals that Phoebe and Jay wanted to accomplish. “Every episode centers on a functional text – that’s not a term everyone’s familiar with, but it’s print in the real world that grown-ups and kids use on a daily basis. The show helps young literacy learners to understand what a text is, what it’s used for, how to read it, and often how to create it on their own to accomplish goals, because we’re using text for real-world purposes all the time.” The intent isn’t just to get kids to read the world around them, but to be able to understand it and recreate it on their own within appropriate use cases.

She also discussed some critical thinking skills that come into play with literacy that maybe adults don’t often think about when simply sitting down and reading a book with a child as part of literacy interactions at home. “Things like working memory, mental flexibility, inhibition or self-control – the ability to stop and think… the texts can help us do that, and we may need to use those skills to read the texts. For instance, knowing that there are different ways we read letter sounds or denote sounds in speech means that we might have to flex between different spellings of those. Or in learning how to use functional texts, like with a weekly planner, we create our own, and that helps us to wait for some cool thing that’s happening on Saturday – we get to manage our own stress and anticipation about it. Those are just some of the important things that Phoebe & Jay learn that will help little readers around the globe learn, too.”