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

Abstract Gardner's ( I983) Theory of Multiple Intelligences supports developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) espoused by NAEYC for early chiJdhood classrooms. This research examines teachers' use of multiple intelligences-based (MI-based) strategies while teaching for mastery of the required Florida's Sunshine State Standards (SSS). Second grade teachers in a rural community in Central Florida were surveyed with follow-up interviews regarding their teaching practices and philosophies. Data collected show that teachers believe children can master SSS using MI-based strategies but report barriers of large class sizes. Teachers who received training on Ml reported greater success with MI strategies. Teachers reported more use of MI-based strategies for teaching than in their assessment practices. Discussion includes the impact of the state standardized assessments.

Family literacy encompasses the way family members use literacy at home and in their community. This study reports early literacy activities these families do that are connected to the activities they carry out in their every day events. Reading aloud, print awareness, and how reading environmental print relates to young children between the ages of birth to preschool are some of the activities discussed in this study. Other topics such as the time of day parents read to their children and what kind of educational toys or materials their children prefer to use in relation to literacy are also incorporated. A survey instrument was given to parents and is included in Appendix A. The findings reported include the percentages of factors the surveyed parents chose as important to them in regards to early literacy activities and future success in school. Promoting literacy activities at home and in the community is an important role for parents who have children in day care. The purpose of this study was to determine what parents with children in day care do with their preschool children to support literacy development. The research question was How do parents of preschool children attending day care promote literacy activities at home? Seventy-five families that have their children in four different day care centers, participated in this study. The survey instrument used in this study revealed which activities that support literacy are most important to parents that have their children in local day care centers. Of the seventy-five families surveyed, twenty nine families have children that attend day care centers run by the United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) organization. These child development centers serve all children, especially children that have a variety of disabilities. Another forty-six families have children that attend different day care centers in the Apopka area.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / PROBLEM: The purpose of the research was to examine the relationships of auditory discrimination to articulatory proficiency as observed in kindergarten children; and secondarily, to examine the relationships of these variables to those of intelligence, selected personality factors, and speech muscular coordination. SCOPE: The sample population of 132 kindergarten children was selected from eight elementary schools in one city, with a ninth school for pilot testing. A four-point socioeconomic level instrument devised for the study and the Short Form. of the Templin-Darley Tests of Articulation were used to select the sample. PROCEDURE: From the articulation score and socioeconomic designation determined for every kindergarten child in the elementary schools available for study, 132 children were randomly selected and randomly assigned to either a pretest or experimental group. The pretest group was first administered the Auditory Discrimination Test. Results were then analyzed, and the test was revised and administered to the experimental group. Data on the other variables of intelligence, speech muscular coordination, and selected personality factors were obtained through a single administration to each child of the Pintner-Cunningham Primary Test, the Averell Speech Muscular Coordination Test, the Children's Apperception Test, and the Long Form of the Templin-Darley Tests of Articulation. As a final step, correlations of the variables were computed, studied, and interpreted. MAJOR FINDINGS: Auditory discrimination and articulatory proficiency are not significantly related. Also, the auditory discrimination scores are not related to the change in the articulation performance of the kindergarten children after they entered the first grade of school. Auditory discrimination did not correlate significantly with selected personality factors. The correlations of auditory discrimination and speech muscular coordination are positive and significant at the .01 level of confidence. Auditory discrimination and intelligence correlated significantly. This is an indication that the two variables are closely related for this age group. Articulatory proficiency did not correlate significantly with intelligence, selected personality factors, or speech muscular coordination. CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that the variables studied are not significantly related, even though clinical impressions of individual children and some past studies suggest positive relationships. In general, the findings indicate that kindergarten children as a group who have numerous misarticulations in their speech, as compared with kindergarten children with few or no misarticulations, will not display (1) more difficulty with auditory discrimination tasks, or (2) more incoordination in the performance of movements considered to be basic for successful production of speech sounds; nor will the kindergarten children as a group (3) display abnormal degrees of feelings, or (4) have lower intelligence quotients. It is felt that the data do not preclude the possibility that these variables are significantly related for individual children, since there seems to be a disparity between clinical impressions and the research instruments used for this study. It is possible that the research instruments are invalid or that the clinical impressions are misleading. The means of assessing these variables must be studied further, both experimentally and clinically. In particular, experimentation with the auditory discrimination measure has suggested modifications that can be made in the test. Since it is known that this type of test has been effective with kindergarten children, future research should be devoted to studying pre-kindergarten children with the same or similar model. For example, individual children should be studied longitudinally over an extended period of time, sampling their performance for auditory discrimination tasks, as well as sampling changes in verbalizations of feelings, and their speech muscular coordination growth. Both experimental and clinical approaches will be desirable. / 2999-01-01

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2999-01-01

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.