This study seeks to influence choices made by Kindergarten students in a Title I school who receive free breakfast and lunch through a health literacy intervention with the intent of decreasing daily added sugar consumption. Fruit and milk choices, either with naturally occurring sugar (NOS) or added sugar (AS), were recorded for 70 Kindergarten students among six classes in a Title I school for ten days before a four-week health literacy intervention. Three of the classes were randomly selected to learn about 'sometimes' and 'anytime' choices through the Healthy Habits for Life curriculum delivered by representatives from Nemours Children's Hospital. Following the intervention, milk and fruit choices were recorded for ten more school days to determine differences among the control and intervention groups. Pearson Chi Square test results concluded that the health literacy intervention lead to statistically significant improvements in milk choices for the intervention group, but fruit choices were inconclusive due to inconsistencies in significance. Hierarchical loglinear analyses were run to determine if there was a difference in response to intervention between male and female students, and the results indicated that the effectiveness of the intervention was not moderated by gender. The success of this intervention for milk choices will help students who receive free school breakfast and lunch to decrease their daily consumption of added sugars, and additional research needs to be done to help students make choices that will further decrease their daily added sugar consumption.

Kinder Tools was developed as a Response to Intervention approach (RTI) to help students in kindergarten improve and develop their fine motor and visual motor perceptual skills within the first three months of entering kindergarten. Some students enter kindergarten ready to learn, while other students struggle with skill development and learning the curriculum. There are a variety factors that could impact a student’s ability to learn such as lack of exposure, disabilities, and culture/socioeconomic status. This program will provide specific strategies and activities that will help to improve the necessary skill development that is required to access the kindergarten curriculum. The occupational therapist will provide consultation services to assist teachers to implement modifications and strategies to help students who are struggling with tasks. Two out of four kindergarten classrooms will participate in the initial program, while the other two classes will serve as the control group. All students fine motor and visual motor perceptual skills will be assessed pre and post program completion. The hope is that students participating with use of the Tools will demonstrate significant improvement in fine motor and visual motor perceptual skills, resulting in decreased need (or no need) for direct occupational therapy (OT) services and increased ability to access the curriculum within the general education setting.

This study investigates possible reasons why parent's perceive that their kindergarten child complains about school. Using data in the parent questionnaires from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study ' Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999, this research looks at a nationally representative sample of boys and girls and specifically targets those children whose parents indicated that they complained more than one time per week during the first two months of school. Looking at factors both from home, including socioeconomic status, maternal education levels and family structure, and from school, including length of the kindergarten day, transition practices received by the child and prior pre-school experience, Chi square tests were employed to examine the relationship between these factors and the amount of complaining. Basic findings support the premise that when good transition practices are employed by schools, parents perceive that their children complain less about going to kindergarten. The small effect sizes suggest, however, that the statistically significant relationships may be an artifact of sample size. Good transition practices, however, are key to effective transitions and if implementing these practices will help make this important transition smoother, educators should utilize this relatively easy strategy to help new students.. When there were good transitioning practices done by the kindergarten program, the child experienced greater success and complained significantly less about school regardless of all other factors.

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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.