Kindergarten readiness
When assessing children's readiness for kindergarten, much of the discussion is focused on the emergence of basic academic skills, including reading, writing, and arithmetic, which are commonly referred to as the “three Rs” (United States Department of Education, 2001).
Children's developing ability to write letters is related to later literacy outcomes such as reading compression and spelling (Pianta).
[5] Social skills function as tools to help children learn more quickly and promote peer acceptance, contributing to a more positive outlook on school.
Additionally, if the child is able to engage and participate with their peers, it is more likely that they will be included and form more meaningful relationships, thereby associating school with positive experiences.
In fact, children have better academic skills when their relationship with family is characterized as warm, accepting, involved and when parents value education (Hill, 2001).
Scaffolding can be implemented in any type of learning, but is especially helpful in the preschool age-range to teach about conflict resolution in social settings, emotion regulation, and problem solving.
This support can come in the form of social, emotional, or academic assistance which ultimately contributes to promoting the child's opportunities for success in the Kindergarten classroom.
For example, by age five, children usually possess the fine motor skills to allow them to print some letters, draw a person with a head, a body, legs, and arms, as well as other shapes, such as triangles, squares, and circles.
Similarly, they can also manipulate scissors to cut a straight line, use a fork and knife effectively, and tie their shoelaces.
[10] Developmental milestones for gross motor development include learning to skip, catching a ball, jumping over small objects, and walking down stairs using alternate feet and a handrail.
[10] As such, children entering kindergarten can walk, run, jump, and climb and are developing control of their bodies.
For example, by age five, children should know their colors, count using their fingers, manipulate a book and read it from left to right, and draw pictures that represent animals, objects, or people.
For example, students are expected to have a vocabulary of approximately 2000 words by age five;[9] Canadian Language & Literacy Research Network, 2009).
In general, however, children entering kindergarten are expected to understand instructions and communications from adults and peers (Pivik, 2012).
Oral language is of particular importance for children entering kindergarten as it is a predictor and necessary requirement of literacy development (Hill, 2011).
For example, play is strongly related to language development in the form of procedural knowledge, such as how to apply proper grammar, which occurs through observation and exposure, as opposed to direct instruction (p. 20).
Distractions can present themselves in the form of auditory sounds, such as other children talking in the classroom, noise from a television, cars driving by outside, etc.
In everyday conversation, we are continuously picking out the important parts of what is being said in order to commit the relevant information to memory.
The preschool age marks a time of rapid development of inhibitory control, and not surprisingly, plays an important role in children's adjustment to kindergarten.
Inhibitory control is important in many aspects of kindergarten readiness but is particularly relevant to children's academic outcomes.
Namely, researchers typically use behavioral methods, in which children are asked to complete short tasks that require the use of IC.
Typically, behavioral methods and teacher reports have the closest relationship to children's academic outcomes.
An important consideration is that difficulties that children may have in regards to focusing their attention becomes amplified when they are experiencing strong emotions.
[1] However, longitudinal studies in Quebec suggest that social-emotional and social skills training can help some students improve their academic paths and eventually graduate from high school.
In fact, the home and family environments have the greatest impact on whether or not a child is ready to begin school (Pivik, 2012).
For example, parents have many roles in preparing children for kindergarten, including providing the child with proper nutrition, health care, and opportunity for growth.
Recent discussions have moved from the traditional focus of developing the “three R’s” to considering skills that are inherent to the digital age.
However, the manipulation of the iPad itself lends to a different type of motor development than traditional paper instruction, such as swiping, touching, and tapping (Burnett & Daniels, 2016).
However, the online games that are targeted for social-emotional development among pre-school students are mostly focused on recognition of one's own emotional skills, relationships with adults, cooperative play with peers, or formation of self-identity (Nikolayev, Clark, & Reich, 2016).
Studies have shown that the KBACS is associated with other measures of school readiness, and has excellent test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient = .82; Granziano et al. 2015).
