Focusing on the brain's natural functions, this article discusses specific teacher characteristics, teaching methods, and peripheral stimuli helping to activate appropriate learning behavior. Also identifies particular events and teacher behaviors that block learning and frustrate the brain's efforts to harmonize conflicts and admit new…

This booklet provides resource materials for the National Observance of Children's Sabbaths, a weekend of worship, education, outreach, and advocacy that proclaims and responds to a faith-based call to meet the needs of children. The theme of 1999's Children's Sabbath focuses on getting all children ready to learn and succeed. The booklet's…

The Open Foundation Course offered at Newcastle University allows adults to explore their readiness for higher education. Evaluation of its effectiveness was complicated by the expectations of both adult education and continuing vocational education. (SK)

"Learning Readiness" is a public school initiative for all 3-4 year old children and their families in Minnesota. The purpose of the Learning Readiness programs is to provide all eligible children with adequate opportunities to participate in child development programs that enable them to enter school with the necessary skills and…

Suggestions for helping communities achieve the first National Education Goal--by the year 2000, all children will start school ready to learn--are presented in this document. The ways in which readiness is developed and what communities can do to support families are described. Examples are provided of 13 community projects that are preparing…

This paper examines research studies that have concluded that elementary school children can learn more difficult and abstract social studies concepts than are taught in the traditional social studies curriculum. Research studies that focus on constraints on cognition, the use of embedded concepts, and understanding knowledge restructuring and…

Descriptions of ten reading, mathematics and readiness programs chosen for statewide dissemination in South Carolina are presented in this document. The programs were selected following a study funded by Title I and conducted to serve 127,702 children in local South Carolina school districts. Each was found to provide solutions to critical…

This report examines the procedures employed in the Home Start Program, which offered prekindergarten readiness enrichment for economically disadvantaged children, ages two through five. The program focused on regular visits to the home by paraprofessional home workers, and took into account parental needs as well as the multifaceted development…

Young children become vulnerable to stress and depression when they are forced to be over-achievers. Suggestions are offered for helping children enjoy life and develop at their own pace. (DF)

This paper declares war against the miseducation of young children, who learn best through direct encounters rather than through formalized inculcation of symbolic rules. A variety of socioeconomic forces (including the civil rights and women's movements) are forcing preschoolers into learning environments originally designed for school-age…

In order to better establish baseline information on the social, physical, linguistic, and cognitive skills of children entering Maryland kindergartens, the state selected the Work Sampling System (WSS), a component of the Maryland Model for School Readiness, as the early childhood assessment system for evaluating entering kindergartners' skills…

This article sets out to offer the reader an opportunity to engage with our emerging ideas about a reflective, person centred model for students and facilitators using problem-based learning (PBL). The model developed initially through several strands of qualitative inquiry including research with students, immersion in the existing literature and…

The turnaround recommendations and framework in "The Turnaround Challenge" grew out of both new research and synthesis of extensive existing research, as carried out by Mass Insight Education & Research Institute and its partners since September 2005. If the main report is the tip of the proverbial iceberg, this supplement represents…

Describes a successful home-based parent-training program implemented in the Tyrone, Pennsylvania school district in l979 which supports the concept of training parents to work with their preschoolers at home as an effective approach toward improving learning readiness and achieving parental involvement in the early education of children. (NH)

Examines the varying opinions on school readiness within a broad context and, more specifically, in relation to mathematics learning. Focuses on the kinds of mathematical experiences children should have before entering formal schooling and suggestions for parents of young children. Specific areas examined include: (1) national standards as a road…