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Overview1
Program Description2
Curiosity Corner is an early childhood curriculum emphasizing children’s language and literacy skills. It comprises two sets of 38 weekly thematic units—one for three-year-olds and one for four-year-olds. Program staff conduct daily lessons using sequential daily activities.
Research
One study of Curiosity Corner meets the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards, and one study meets WWC evidence standards with reservations.3 The two studies included more than 500 preschool children from 34 preschools in Florida, Kansas, and New Jersey.4
Based on these two studies, the WWC considers the extent of evidence for Curiosity Corner to be medium to large for oral language and small for print knowledge, phonological processing, cognition, and math. No studies that meet WWC standards with or without reservations examined the effectiveness of Curiosity Corner in the early reading and writing domain.
Effectiveness
Curiosity Corner was found to have no discernible effects on oral language, print knowledge, phonological processing, cognition, and math.
| Oral language | Print knowledge | Phonological processing | Early reading and writing |
Cognition | Math | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating of effectiveness | No discernible effects |
No discernible effects |
No discernible effects |
na | No discernible effects |
No discernible effects |
| Improvement index5 | Average: +2 percentile points Range: –3 to +14 percentile points |
Average: +3 percentile points Range: +2 to +4 percentile points |
Average: +7 percentile points | na na |
Average: –3 percentile points Range: –4 to –1 percentile points |
Average: +4 percentile points Range: 0 to +6 percentile points |
1 This report has been updated to include a review of two studies that have been released since 2006. A complete list and disposition of all studies reviewed is provided in the references.
2 The descriptive information for this program was obtained from a publicly-available source: the program’s website (www.successforall.org/early/early_curiosity.htm, downloaded November 2008). The WWC requests developers to review the program description sections for accuracy from their perspective. Further verification of the accuracy of the descriptive information for this program is beyond the scope of this review.
3 To be eligible for the WWC’s review, the Early Childhood Education intervention had to be implemented in English, in center-based settings, with children
aged three to five years, or in preschool.
4 The evidence presented in this report is based on available research. Findings and conclusions may change as new research becomes available.
5 These numbers show the average and range of student-level improvement indices for all findings across the studies.
