Young children's development takes place across multiple strands to support readiness for literacy and other academic learning. These strands include: (1) physical development; (2) social engagement; and (3) language development. This article describes some common things that can be looked for within each of these strands when children are three…

Children from backgrounds of poverty often lag behind more advantaged peers in early language skills, including breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge. We report the results of a pilot study of an explicit and elaborated vocabulary intervention in preschool classrooms serving children from lower-income backgrounds. The intervention used…

The Letter-Sound Short Forms (LSSFs) were designed to meet criteria for effective progress monitoring tools by exhibiting strong psychometrics, offering multiple equivalent forms, and being brief and easy to administer and score. The present study expands available psychometric information for the LSSFs by providing an initial examination of their…

This response to intervention study examined agreement between classification methods of preschool children's responsiveness to Tier 2 intervention using level of performance (25th percentile), growth (equivalent to small and medium effect sizes), and both level of performance and growth in a dual-discrepancy approach. Overall, 181 children…

The current study investigated the stability of children's risk status across the preschool year. A total of 1,102 preschool children attending Title 1 schools (n = 631) and non-Title 1 schools (n = 471) participated in this study. Using averaged standard scores for two measures of language, print knowledge, and phonological awareness administered…

This study examined variability of the home literacy environment (HLE) using multiple measures among families of low SES. The relations of the measures to each other and to children's early oral language skills and print knowledge were reported. Considerable variability of the self-reported HLE items and the Children's Title Checklist (CTC) but…

Children entering kindergarten vary greatly in their language and literacy skills. Therefore, up-to-date information about evidence-based practices is essential for early childhood educators and policymakers as they support preschool children's language and literacy development. This study used a process modeled after the What Works Clearinghouse…

Early childhood teachers are increasingly encouraged to support children's development of letter-sound abilities. Assessment of letter-sound knowledge is key in planning for effective instruction, yet the letter-sound knowledge assessments currently available and suitable for preschool-age children demonstrate significant limitations. The purpose…

Research Findings: This study reports initial descriptive and validity results of a new early childhood classroom observation measure, the Classroom Language Environment Observation Scales (CLEOS), designed to capture teachers' use of both implicit language supports (e.g., incidental scaffolding and shared reading) and more explicit language…

Children's self-regulation, including components of executive function such as inhibitory control, is related concurrently and longitudinally with elementary school children's reading and math abilities. Although several recent studies have examined links between preschool children's self-regulation or executive function and their academic skill…

There is strong evidence that self-regulatory processes are linked to early academic skills, both concurrently and longitudinally. The majority of extant longitudinal studies, however, have been conducted using autoregressive techniques that may not accurately model change across time. The purpose of this study was to examine the unique…

Purpose: The present article reports on the implementation and results of a randomized intervention trial targeting the literate language skills of prekindergarten children without identified language disorders but with low oral language skills. Method: Children (N = 82; 45 boys and 37 girls) were screened-in and randomized to a business-as-usual…

Although response-to-instruction (RTI) approaches have received increased attention, few studies have evaluated the potential impacts of RTI approaches with preschool populations. This article presents results of 2 studies examining impacts of Tier II instruction with preschool children. Participating children were identified as substantially…

The present study explored the types and frequency of literate language features in children's narratives, and the relation of literate language and proper character introduction to children's oral language skills in a sample of 184 prekindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade students from high-poverty schools. Using hierarchical regression,…

This article reports findings from a cluster-randomized study of an integrated literacy- and math-focused preschool curriculum, comparing versions with and without an explicit socioemotional lesson component to a business-as-usual condition. Participants included 110 classroom teachers from randomized classrooms and approximately eight students…