Immediate Effects of a Program to Promote School Readiness in Low-Income Children: Results of a Pilot Study.
A short, community-run school-readiness program lifted letter naming, sound fluency, and self-regulation for low-income preschoolers.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers tested a short, community-run program called Kids in Transition to School (KITS).
Low-income preschoolers got direct instruction in early reading and simple self-regulation games.
A small group joined KITS; a similar group stayed on the usual wait-list for comparison.
What they found
KITS kids named more letters and sounds than the wait-list kids.
They also showed calmer play and less hitting.
Gains were medium for literacy and small for behavior.
How this fits with other research
Lemons et al. (2015) looked at many reading programs and saw weak or even negative behavior side-effects. KITS bucks that trend by adding short, planned lessons on sharing and waiting.
Veenman et al. (2018) pooled classroom behavior programs and found small, steady drops in disruption. KITS lines up with that pattern, even though it is shorter and run by community staff, not teachers.
Allen et al. (1989) ran a preschool reading center and got big literacy jumps. KITS shows the same path still works 25 years later when you fold in light behavior coaching.
Why it matters
You can copy the KITS recipe in Head Start or community centers. Add 15-minute self-regulation games right after letter practice. Track letter-sound fluency and playground aggression weekly. If a child stalls on either, tighten the game rules or add peer modeling. A brief, low-cost package can lift both reading readiness and classroom calm before kindergarten starts.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children from low-income backgrounds demonstrate poorer school readiness skills than their higher-income peers. The Kids in Transition to School (KITS) Program was developed to increase early literacy, social skills, and self-regulatory skills among children with inadequate school readiness. In the present study, 39 families participated in a pilot efficacy trial conducted through a community collaboration to examine the feasibility and impact of the KITS program with families from disadvantaged neighborhoods. Participating families were demographically representative of the larger populations in the participating school districts. Children who received the intervention demonstrated significantly greater improvements in letter naming, initial sound fluency, and understanding of concepts about print than their peers who did not participate in the intervention, as well as decreases in aggressive responses to peer provocation and increases in self-regulation skills. Results suggest that a brief, focused school readiness intervention is feasible to conduct with low-income families and may improve critical skills.
Education & treatment of children, 2014 · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2012.08.009