“Educational TV,” as we used to call it, really can be educational, concludes a new study. The PBS Kids series, Molly of Denali was designed to teach children how to find and use information, write researchers Joy Lorenzo Kennedy and Claire Christensen on Brookings’ Chalkboard.
Molly, the Alaska Native lead character, and her friends use “a wide range of sources, such as field guides, instruction manuals, maps, weather reports, and even a recipe for homemade mosquito repellent” to solve problems, they write.
Their nine-week study found that access to Molly of Denali improved low-income first-graders ability to use informational text.
