Based on recent research and in collaboration with expert panelists, the What Works Clearinghouse™ (WWC) has provided practical recommendations for preschool educators to use to help prepare young children benefit from learning opportunities they will encounter in school. The "Preparing Young Children for School Practice Guide" details…

This Study Snapshot highlights key findings from a study that examines up-to-date information about evidence-based practices that are essential for early childhood educators and policymakers as they support preschool children's language and literacy development. The study used a process modeled after the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) methodology…

Purpose: As part of this clinical forum on curriculum-based intervention, the goal of this tutorial is to share research about the importance of language and literacy foundations in natural environments during emergent literacy skill development, from infancy through preschool. Following an overview of intervention models in schools by Powell…

The increasing presence of linguistically diverse young children in U.S. public schools has prompted science educators to recognize the need for approaches that are inclusive and sensitive to students' academic needs. The challenge is to design lessons that provide language support while actively engaging children in authentic scientific inquiry.…

Providing preschoolers with rich writing experiences can help to lay a foundation for their later reading and writing success. Early writing experiences can be greatly enhanced by how preschool teachers answer young children's questions about writing and engage them in productive writing instruction. With appropriate scaffolding, early writing…

Combining home-school literacy bags with preschool family literature circles provided a strong foundation for family involvement at home and school during this year-long Reading Partners project, and helped parents become essential partners in their children's literacy development. Using home-school literacy bags, children and parents learned…

The current study investigates associations among marital satisfaction, family emotional expressiveness, the home learning environment, and preschool-aged children's emergent literacy skills among 385 Midwestern mothers and their children. Path analyses examined how marital satisfaction related to emotional expressiveness in the home and whether…

In October, 2011, Age of Learning, Inc., creator of ABCmouse.com "Early Learning Academy" conducted a nationwide survey of 500 kindergarten teachers on the subject of children's preparedness for kindergarten. The survey revealed that two-thirds of America's kindergarten teachers believe most young children are academically unprepared for school…

Teaching students the most frequent sounds of the alphabet letters is the first crucial step in good phonics instruction. But beginning letter and sound lessons, especially if poorly taught or too rapidly paced, can be overwhelming and confusing for some young children and struggling readers. How can we simplify the cognitive task for such…

The present paper reports some observations on pre-school children's spontaneous as well as adult-supported spelling behaviour and makes comparisons between aspects of these early literacy activities and some features of spellings from mostly twelfth- to fourteenth-century Norwegian runic inscriptions. The runic inscriptions originate from a…

Preschool is a complex place, and some preschool educators come to their classrooms without formal training in language and literacy pedagogy. As a result, they need practical guidance and support to ensure that they are facilitating literacy success. An area ripe for targeted language and literacy instruction is shared storybook reading. We have…

Argues that an important type of child knowledge about letters is knowledge of the phonological structure of the letters' names in English. Concludes that learning the alphabet forms the basis for generalizations about the structure of letter names. (22 references) (Author/CK)

One component of the Reading Plan for Michigan is to develop and implement methods of assessing children's progress in acquiring early literacy skills and of communicating their status and progress to other teachers and parents. This document presents an assessment and instructional system, the Michigan Literacy Progress Profile 2001 (MLPP 2001),…