In a 2015 study conducted by the US Department of Education, 60% of incoming Kindergarteners are not ready for school. Furthermore, 74% of incoming college freshmen are not prepared for STEM courses according to 2016 ACT scores. These statistics demonstrate a disconnect, or “skill gap”, between what students are expected of and what they achieve. However, these gaps can be prevented by exposing babies to new vocabulary by reading books aloud as “the quantity and quality of words in the first 3 years of life predict skills more strongly than socioeconomic status, parent level of education, and race/ethnicity”(Head-Zauche, 2017). Although billions of dollars are invested annually encouraging these read aloud practices, less than 50% of families read aloud to their children. Furthemore, physicians and pediatricians have yet to digitize the paper book logs given to parents over the past 30 years. Parents need a tool to help focus caregiving teams on one thing science shows babies’ brains need most: words. This is where Big Words comes in.

Conceptualized by Speech Language Pathologist and PhD student Jennifer Stone, Big Words is a web-based communication platform aimed to help parents track and encourage reading aloud within their household. BigWords is a wordometer – a pedometer for words that could do for story time what FitBit did for walking. As parents read, Big Words will provide feedback on the quantity and quality of words their baby hears, tracking the number of words their child has heard per book, week, and even lifetime. Additionally, Big Words will provide personalized word-based book recommendations to keep babies’ word collections growing. Because, after all, BigWords grow big brains.