Australian children from disadvantaged families are at increased risk of delays in acquiring fundamental movement skills, with physical inactivity and increased risk of the potential consequences of obesity. The aims of this pilot study were to: 1) assess the fundamental movement skills of disadvantaged children; 2) evaluate the feasibility and…

Purpose: This study examined the extent to which teacher responsivity education affected preschoolers' language and literacy development over an academic year. Additional aims were to determine whether children's initial language abilities and teachers' use of responsivity strategies were associated with language outcomes, in particular. Method:…

This article highlights the study which illustrates how an age-old board games that incorporate numbers and counting have led to better understanding of numbers by young students. Few family rituals have as fixed a place in the American household, and in the popular imagination, as board games, those impromptu or regularly scheduled contests…

Purpose: This study aimed to show (a) whether the minimal competence core (MCC) of consonants used by African American preschoolers in I. Stockman (2006) can be observed in a larger group of children using shorter and more controlled speech samples and (b) whether the MCC pass/fail outcomes are differentially related to performance on selected…

The friendships of 59 ethnically diverse (African American, European American, Latino, Middle Eastern, and West African) children enrolled in Head Start classes were assessed in the spring of the school year via a peer nomination technique and a roster rating method. Two types of behavior that earlier researchers found to be predictive of how well…

There has been increased attention to the development of measures for assessing mathematical skill and knowledge in young children. Most of the evidence supporting these measures is consistent with Stage 1 research in the development of progress monitoring measures (Fuchs, 2004) and consists of investigation of technical features of performance at…

Poor children in the United States start school at a disadvantage in terms of their early skills, behaviors, and health. Fewer than half (48 percent) of poor children are ready for school at age five, compared to 75 percent of children from families with moderate and high income, a 27 percentage point gap. This paper examines the reasons why poor…

The Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), a randomized, classroom-based mental health intervention, aimed to improve teachers' behavior management of preschoolers' dysregulated behavior. The current follow-up study examines potential impacts on academic skills of first graders by enhancing their ATL. This investigation seeks to answer three…

The effects of a multicomponent intervention strategy to increase peer-directed social communication in eight Head Start children at risk for poor language and social skill development were examined. The intervention consisted of three components: (a) a planning period, including reading a storybook that illustrated the play theme and use of the…

This study examined whether the Head Start Research-based Developmentally Informed (REDI) program is more effective than the standard Head Start program at improving the language, emergent literacy, and social-emotional skills of preschoolers. Head Start centers in three Pennsylvania counties were randomly assigned either to use the REDI program…

The campaign for universal preschool education in the United States has gained great momentum. Precisely as strategists intended, many Americans have come to believe that pre-kindergarten is a good and necessary thing for government to provide, even that not providing it will cruelly deprive the youngest residents of their birthrights, blight…

Enhancing children's literacy achievement has been identified as a top priority in education policy and research. Recent federal policies and legislation, such as the No Child Left Behind Act and the Reading First Act, have placed special emphasis on academic readiness for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The present project evaluated the…

This observational study of 106 pre-K classrooms in Tulsa, Oklahoma provides descriptive data on children's classroom experiences--classroom climate and exposure to academic instruction--and comparisons of Tulsa classrooms with a multi-state sample of pre-K and Head Start classrooms led by comparably educated teachers. We also examined teacher and…

Past research on school-level factors that predict children's development has focused largely on associations between a limited number of characteristics, such as school size and school resources, and children's academic achievement. Few studies take a more comprehensive look at the measurement of school climate or examine its relationship to…

As the demand for services from therapists in the educational environment continues to grow, both physical and occupational therapists seek innovative and effective ways to meet the identified needs of the child and school environment. Train-the-trainer model of service delivery can be used to meet the needs of both the therapist and the preschool…