Reports on study of 80 elementary students in grades 3-6 to determine whether tempo perception and performance abilities increased with grade level and musical training. Finds that student performance and perceptions did increase with grade level and training. Concludes that modern technology has made research into tempo perception more precise…

Evaluated, over a 2-year period, a new full-day kindergarten, including documentation of program processes and outcomes from multiple perspectives. Found that compared to half-day students, full-day students spent relatively more time in child-initiated activities and teacher-directed individual work. Parents and teachers cited benefits of…

Notes that developmental theories are a resource for developing early-childhood curricula; reviews a variety of current theories and research, including maturationist, behaviorist and psychoanalytic theories, and constructivist theories of cognitive development. Presents suggestions for translating theory into curriculum, as well as conceptions of…

Many parents question whether their children are ready for kindergarten and whether they can succeed. Teachers must determine where students stand as they guide them through their kindergarten skills. Parents can hone their children's kindergarten-readiness skills at home by providing creative, challenging activities that prepare them for the…

In response to the difficulties of many masters degree students, this on-going project aimed, first, to identify cognitive and metacognitive skills needed for masters level study; second, to develop an instrument to determine students' readiness for masters level work; and, third, to design bridge courses to prepare prospective students. An…

As one step in the process of developing consensus on the definition of school readiness, the National Education Goals Panel requested a survey about the current beliefs and professional judgments of public school kindergarten teachers regarding school readiness. Conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics in the spring of 1993, the…

"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…

Genuine intellectual and other pre-academic skills and abilities are as important as social skills for children's smooth transition into kindergarten and continued school success. Head Start was originally conceived to prepare preschoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds to succeed in elementary school. Now that the program has earned renewed…

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…

The authors investigated whether the constructs measured by the Kindergarten Screening Inventory (KSI) were the same for males and females and for Anglo American, Negro American and Mexican American ethnic groups. Results indicate they are very similar. (Author)

This study attempted to refine the assessment of the effectance of four-year-old children through observation of their play. Two scales were developed; the first scale defined organization, involvement, and interpersonal responsiveness in play while the second operationally defined psychosexual content of play. The results confirmed the validity…

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…

This study investigated the use of the developmental level of kindergarten children's art work as a predictor of readiness for first grade. The sample consisted of 55 children (33 girls and 22 boys) in three kindergarten classes. All were over 5 years of age and had not attended kindergarten before. The kindergarten screening measure used a…

A study examined the relationship between sex differences and the development of reading proficiency, specifically investigating if sex differences related to achievement on measures of silent reading comprehension, sight vocabulary, recognition of vocabulary in context, and use of structural analysis in word recognition taken separately or in…

Unproven beliefs about the process of reading and its instruction and about the effects of maturation and social structure on learning have obscured the question of what children know about how to read. An alternate conceptualization proposes that to learn to read children must obtain experience in three reading contexts: the use of print and its…