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Kindergarten school readiness and the phenomenon of students entering kindergarten without the necessary personal and social skills they need to be successful in kindergarten was explored in this qualitative study. How this phenomenon impacts the school setting, including administrative support systems and classroom instructional practices implemented by kindergarten teachers, was explored. Elementary principals and kindergarten teachers who experienced this phenomenon were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. Official documents relating to the phenomenon being studied were collected and analyzed to provide for triangulation of the data. Findings of this study provide insights into current classroom practices that are currently being implemented to solve the problem of students' personal and social skill deficits. Findings will assist division level leaders, elementary principals and kindergarten teachers to guide and shape classroom practices designed for enhancing and improving students' personal and social skills. Findings report what current resources are being used by kindergarten teachers to provide personal and social skill instruction and how teachers' instructional practices in this domain are being guided and directed by administrators. Division level leaders and school level leaders are provided with information about instructional practices for improving kindergarten students' personal and social skills. Findings of the study show how elementary principals' and kindergarten teachers' beliefs about kindergarten students' personal and social skill development are aligned to the Virginia Department of Education's Foundation Blocks for Early Learning for certain skills and how they are not aligned for other skills. / Ph. D.

After assembling the information gained from the kindergarten survey, the study then returned to the criteria set up at the beginning of the investigation, in order to appraise the extent to which the schools surveyed were meeting those standards. At that point the criteria were reviewed one by one and a judgment was rendered respecting each, based on the data presented earlier in this writing, as follows. / M.S.

Parent involvement in school has proven its effectiveness (Jeynes, 2012). Students whose parents are involved tend to present better behavior at school and achieve higher quality of homework and schoolwork (Cancio, West and Young, 2004; Epstein 2001). In the case of children transitioning to kindergarten, parent involvement can help them overcome adjustment difficulties and receive the support they need to succeed (Patel and Corter, 2013). In order to increase parent involvement among parents of children transitioning to kindergarten, school counselors, teachers and other school personnel can benefit from understanding how parents perceive parent involvement and what experiences they are having as their children transition to kindergarten. The purpose of this study was to describe, using a qualitative approach, how parents of children transitioning to kindergarten perceive parent involvement and how they have been experiencing parent involvement during this transition. This study included the participation of ten parents whose children were enrolled in kindergarten in a public school in Southern California. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed through the process of coding. Findings showed that there are different ways of parent involvement and that such involvement is the result of a teamwork that happens through interactions between the parent, the child, and the school. Moreover, discussions of the findings also revealed that schools that offer services and support to parents during the kindergarten transition help them become more involved parents. Lastly, it was brought to knowledge that parents of children transitioning to kindergarten do not always know about the existence or the role of the school counselor, who could be serving as an important support to these parents and their children. Important implications are offered for school counselors, counselor educators, and kindergarten teachers, as well as recommendations for future research. / Ph. D.

This thesis deals with the relationship between form and strength in architecture. The proposed building is a Kindergarten which unites issues of shape, physics, and habitat. The roof is vaulted and the walls are curved for lateral resistance and in order to make folds scaled to a child. These physical moves work towards the theme of the Kindergarten: a place for the transition between home and school. / Master of Architecture

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

The perceptions of administrators and teachers of a computer-assisted instructional program in literacy skills were collected by a survey. The survey participants were kindergarten teachers and administrators from four elementary schools in the same, fast-growing, suburban school district in Texas. Literacy assessments were given to all kindergarten students in the district in the fall, winter, and spring of the 2005-2006 school year. This study included a quasi-experimental research design to determine if students using the computer-assisted instructional program improved more on the district literacy assessments than students who did not use the program. The treatment group members were the 449 kindergarten students of the survey participants. The treatment group worked in The Imagination Station program for a nine-week trial period. The control group members were 1385 kindergarten students from thirteen other schools in the same school district. The study found that teachers and administrators perceived that their students' improvement in literacy skills after using the program was good. The quasi-experimental portion of the study found that there was a statistical difference between the treatment and control groups on the composite literacy assessment score. The group membership variable could explain 1.4% of the variance in the students' literacy assessment scores. Based on the small effect size, there was no practical difference between the groups.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of determining the procedures and methods elementary school principals in Texas utilized to implement the state-supported kindergarten program. A questionnaire was developed and content validity established by five authorities in the field of early childhood education. The questionnaire was forwarded to 100 randomly selected elementary school principals in Texas, and 94 percent returned the completed form. This study has a twofold purpose. The first is to describe the most frequently used procedures to implement the state-supported kindergarten program. The second is to identify those procedures used that are not educationally beneficial to young children to assist in statewide planning.

The purpose of this study was to describe the behaviors of kindergarten students during Sustained Silent Reading sessions modified to be developmentally appropriate.