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Within the purview of a Chapter One Basic Program, this practicum initiated a 3-month intervention in oral language development for minority group first grade students with language differences and delayed speech who attended Gove Elementary School, Belle Glade, Florida, Goals for students included extension of mean length of utterance (MLU), and growth in general cognitive ability. Goals for the school and the program were: an increase in awareness of the relationship between oral language development and reading and an awareness of the need for a developmental program in oral language. Intervention involved various activities, including rhythms and movement, dramatization, language experience, and sentence patterning. Evaluation data showed an extension of MLU of nearly 34 percent, a growth in function words of 42 percent, and an overall growth in Piagetian seriation, numeration, and discrimination tasks of 19 percent. As a result of the intervention, plans were made to modify the Chapter One Basic Compensatory Program to include language experience and oral language components. Related materials are appended, including diagnostic material such as the Sentence Repetition Technique; Piagetian tasks of discrimination, seriation, and numeration; and descriptions of activities, including Magic Circle, Getting Ready, dictating the shared conversation, sentence patterns, ball rhythms, categories, reading lips, and spontaneous group talk. (Author/RH)

In Belle Glade, Florida, a slum populated by Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, migrant farmworkers, and Haitians, where the incidence of most major health risks was far greater than anywhere else in the state, a program was planned and partially implemented which aimed to provide health services to at-risk, disadvantaged teenage mothers and their infants. To attain program goals, an executive board was formed which consisted of 12 professional leaders in the fields of early childhood education and pre- and post-natal health and social services. Board members planned a program of prenatal intervention and follow-up, conceived a strategy for securing building lots, planned building spaces, implemented a fund-raising program, planned a program for infant development/stimulation, and built community support networks. Within a period of 12 months, a Director was employed full-time, funds were committed for a full-time pediatric nurse, a volunteer program was implemented, architectural drawings for a facility were approved, building lots were secured, the Ford Foundation had made a site visit to consider a Haitian Intervention Research Project, start-up funds were obtained, a funding plan was projected, and the program was adopted as a model for community action. Related materials are provided in 15 appendices. (Author/RH)