Pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) improves the school readiness of all children, but less is known about whether associations between enrollment in Pre-K and different indicators of social-emotional and executive functioning (EF) skills are sustained as children move into and across elementary school. The current study examines associations between…

Preschool is an important educational setting for child development, and problem behavior is a prevalent barrier within this setting. Preschool teachers have expressed the need for evidence-based classroom management interventions to address problem behavior. Class-Wide Function-Related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT) is an intervention that…

Interactive book reading (IBR) has proven effective for increasing children's lexicons with most of the results based on students' learning of nouns. Little is known about the application of IBR to instructional verbs (i.e., words used during the instruction of academic content). To address this gap, 122 prekindergarten children were recruited…

A randomized controlled trial was used to examine the impact of an attachment-based, teacher-child, dyadic intervention (Banking Time) to improve children's externalizing behavior. Participants included 183 teachers and 470 preschool children (3-4 years of age). Classrooms were randomly assigned to Banking Time, child time, or business as usual…

Read It Again (RIA) is a curriculum for pre-kindergarten (pre-K) classrooms that targets children's development of language and literacy skills. A cluster randomized trial was conducted in which 104 pre-K classrooms in the Appalachian region of the United States were randomly assigned to one of three study conditions: Control (n = 30), RIA only…

Executive functions (EFs) develop rapidly in preschoolers and lay an important foundation for school readiness. One potential method of supporting EF development is through mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). Whereas studies with older children and adults have supported this approach, research with young children has been more limited. In the…

This study assesses the long-term linguistic and academic outcomes associated with different bilingual language education models for low-income dual language learners (DLLs) residing in a bilingual, bicultural context. As part of the Miami School Readiness Project (MSRP), we analyzed the impact of program model on gains in English language…

Background: Improving children's oral language skills is an important focus of educational research and practice; however, relatively few interventions have demonstrated impacts on these skills. This work makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the effects of language-focused interventions in pre-kindergarten settings by examining…

This study examined the efficacy of a shared book-reading approach to integrating literacy and science instruction. The purpose was to determine whether teaching science vocabulary using information text could improve low-income preschoolers' word knowledge, conceptual development, and content knowledge in the life sciences. Teachers in 17…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a curriculum supplement designed to enhance awareness of Mainstream American English (MAE) in African American English- (AAE-) speaking prekindergarten children. Method: Children in 2 Head Start classrooms participated in the study. The experimental classroom received the Talking…

The current study examines the effects of Head Start on the development of school readiness outcomes for children living in non-parental care. Data were obtained from the Head Start Impact Study, a randomized controlled trial of Head Start conducted with a nationally representative sample of Head Start programs and families. The sample included…

Background: The effects of increases in physical activity (PA) on early literacy skills in preschool children are not known. Methods: Fifty-four African-American preschool children from a low socioeconomic urban Head Start participated over 8 months. A 2-group, quasi-experimental design was used with one preschool site participating in the PA…

Child care is increasingly viewed as an opportunity to enhance children's development and school readiness, with prekindergarten programs and early intervention programs targeting children at different moments of development. Results of existing research are mixed, and although many children experience different child care arrangements at…

Publicly funded prekindergarten programs have achieved small-to-large impacts on children's cognitive outcomes. The current study examined the impact of a prekindergarten program that implemented a coaching system and consistent literacy, language, and mathematics curricula on these and other nontargeted, essential components of school readiness,…

Research Findings: Big Math for Little Kids (BMLK) is a mathematics curriculum developed for use with 4- and 5-year-old children. To investigate the BMLK curriculum's effect on children's mathematics knowledge, this cluster-randomized controlled trial randomly assigned child care centers to provide mathematics instruction to children, using either…