ERIC Identifier: ED291514
Publication Date: 1987-00-00
Author: Nurss, Joanne R.
Source: ERIC Clearinghouse on
Elementary and Early Childhood Education Urbana IL.
Readiness for Kindergarten. ERIC Digest.
Readiness is a term used to decribe preparation for what comes next:
readiness for kindergarten involves both the child and the instructional
situation. Any consideration of the preparation a child needs to be successful
in kindergarten must take into account the kindergarten program and the
teacher's expectations of the child.
SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL EXPECTATIONS
Kindergarten teachers expect that the children will be able to function
within a cooperative learning environment in which the child works both
independently and as a member of small and large groups. Children are expected
to be able to attend to and finish a task, listen to a story in a group, follow
two or three oral directions, take turns and share, and care for their
belongings. They are also expected to follow rules, respect the property of
others, and work within the time and space constraints of the school program. It
is important that children learn to distinguish between work and play, knowing
when and where each is appropriate within the definition of each (Bradley, 1984;
Teachers expect children to develop certain physical skills before they enter
kindergarten. Children are expected to have mastered many large muscle skills
such as walking, running, and climbing, and fine motor skills requiring eye-hand
coordination, such as use of a pencil, crayons, or scissors. Fine motor skills
are used when the child begins to write its name and to make attempts at written
expression. It is assumed that children have acquired both visual and auditory
discrimination of objects and sounds. Such discrimination skills will be used to
learn the names and sounds of letters and the names and quantities of numerals.
Children are expected to have developed the concepts of same and different, so
that they can sort objects into groups whose members are alike in some way.
Usually the kindergarten teacher expects the children to recognize and name
colors, shapes, sizes, and their own names (even though these concepts are often
part of the curriculum early in the school year).
COGNITIVE AND LANGUAGE EXPECTATIONS
Most five-year-olds can express themselves fluently with a variety of words
and can understand an even larger variety of words used in conversations and
stories. If children have been exposed to books and heard stories read and told,
they have begun to develop an interest in what print says and how it is used to
express ideas; a concept of story and story structure; and an understanding of
the relationship between oral and written language.
Many school systems and states have raised the entrance age for kindergarten
in hopes that the older age of the class will increase the likelihood of the
children's success. However, research does not support this action. Most studies
show that chronological age alone is not a factor in success in kindergarten
(Meisels, 1987; Wood, 1984).
Many children now have a prior group experience in nursery school,
prekindergarten, or day care. In the past, when kindergarten was the child's
initial school experience, its focus was on the child's social adjustment to
school. Kindergarten was usually a half-day program whose curriculum and
activities were separate from the rest of the school, and whose purpose was to
prepare the child for first grade. Now kindergarten is an integral part of the
elementary school's curriculum and the focus has shifted from social to
cognitive or academic (Nurss and Hodges, 1982). Many states fund full-day
kindergarten programs on the assumption that five-year-olds can benefit from a
longer school experience. Kindergartens vary in the degree to which their
cognitive skills are strengthened through a developmentally oriented program
with language-based, concrete activities. In many kindergartens, language,
cognitive, sensory-motor, and social-emotional skills are addressed through
play. Small group instruction, learning centers, and whole group language
activities are used as systematic, planned opportunities for the children to
develop in all areas.
In some cases, however, the kindergarten uses structured, whole group,
paper-and-pencil activities oriented to academic subjects, such as reading and
mathematics. The curriculum in these kindergartens often constitutes a downward
extension of the primary grade curriculum and may call for the use of workbooks
which are part of a primary level textbook series. Many early childhood
professionals have spoken out on the inappropriateness of such a curriculum and
have urged widespread adoption of a developmentally appropriate kindergarten
curriculum (Bredekamp, 1986).
The question of readiness for kindergarten depends in part on which type of
program the child enters. Different approaches to reading and writing, for
example, make different demands on a young child. A child may be ready for one
type of instructional program, but not another.
A further issue is that of the expectations of the teachers and school system
for what the child will accomplish by the end of kindergarten. As expectations
become more academic and assessments more formal (for example, standardized
tests that compare children to a national sample of kindergarten children)
pressure increases to retain children who do not meet expectations or to place
them in a transition class between kindergarten and first grade. The assumption
is that children who have not achieved a minimum level of cognitive and academic
skills prior to first grade will benefit from another year of kindergarten.
While that may be true for some, it is not true for many others (Shepard, 1987).
Developmentally appropriate programs assume that children vary upon entrance;
that all children progress during the program at their own rates and in their
own manner; and that children will continue to vary at the end of the program.
Readiness for kindergarten depends on a child's development of social,
perceptual, motor, and language skills expected by the teacher. It also depends
on the curriculum's degree of structure, the behavior required by the
instructional program, and expectations of what is to be achieved by the end of
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Bradley, Gwen. "Ways to Help Your Child Succeed in Kindergarten." PTA TODAY 9
Bredekamp, Sue, Ed. DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE PRACTICE. Washington, DC:
National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1986.
LeCompte, Margaret D. "The Civilizing of Children: How Young Children Learn
to Become Students." JOURNAL OF THOUGHT 15 (1980): 105-127.
Meisels, Samuel. "Uses and Abuses of Developmental Screening and School
Readiness Testing." YOUNG CHILDREN 42 (1987): 4-6, 68-73.
Nurss, Joanne R., and Walter L. Hodges. "Early Childhood Education." In
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, ed. Harold E. Mitzel, 5th edition, Vol. 2.
New York: The Free Press, 1982.
Schickedanz, Judith A. "The Acquisition of Written Language in Young
Children." In HANDBOOK OF RESEARCH IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION, ed. Bernard
Spodek. New York: The Free Press, 1982.
Shepard, Laurie. "What Doesn't Work: Explaining Policies of Retention in the
Early Grades." PHI DELTA KAPPAN (1987): 129-134.
Wood, Chip. "Predicting School Readiness: The Validity of Developmental Age."
JOURNAL OF LEARNING DISABILITIES 17 (1984): 8-11.