Transition from Preschool to Kindergarten

For children, the transition from preschool to kindergarten means adapting to new people and different surroundings and learning a whole new set of rules and expectations. Families are also involved in the transition, and schools and communities are recognizing the need to have schools ready for children and families, as well as children ready for school. The following is a sample of national organizations with transition initiatives, State initiatives, and publications that provide information for children, families, and educators on smoothing the transition from preschool to kindergarten.

National Organizations

• Research and Training Center on Family Support and Children’s Mental Health
  P.O. Box 751
  Portland, OR 97207-0751
  503-725-4040
  World Wide Web: http://www.rtc.pdx.edu
  
  The Research and Training Center on Family Support and Children’s Mental Health at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, was established in 1984. The Center is dedicated to promoting effective community-based, culturally competent, family centered services for families and their children who are, or may be affected by mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders. This goal is accomplished through collaborative research partnerships with family members, service providers, policy-makers, and other concerned persons.
  
  The Center’s Transforming Transitions to Kindergarten project focuses on the families’ experiences of the shift from preschool to kindergarten when children have emotional and behavioral challenges. The project is developing and testing a training intervention to increase the capacity of early childhood and kindergarten settings to meet the needs of these children, and a family driven team-based transition intervention to promote the success of children and their families as they move from preschool to kindergarten. The project will also include a review of evidence-based practice in the field of mental health consultation.
• Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids (SPARK)
  W.K. Kellogg Foundation
  One Michigan Avenue East
  Battle Creek, MI 49017-4058
  269-969-2182
  World Wide Web: http://www.wkkf.org 
  
  SPARK is a national initiative to help communities unite resources to better prepare children for school. Seeking both “ready children” and “ready schools,” SPARK supports five-year implementation plans of grantees in seven States (Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Ohio) and Washington, DC, to smooth the transition to school and align preschool and elementary school settings. The SPARK initiative seeks to align early learning and elementary school systems—as well as health and critical services—for children who are likely to be unprepared for kindergarten. Grantees will implement a variety of transition practices, such as aligning expectations and standards, coordinating training for prekindergarten and elementary teachers, and increasing parent involvement. Each SPARK grantee will serve a minimum of 1,000 children. SPARK seeks to “spark” or catalyze existing services, not to create new services.

• Terrific Transitions: Supporting Children's Transition to Kindergarten
  P.O. Box 5367
  Greensboro, NC 27435
  World Wide Web: http://www.serve.org/TT/

  The Terrific Transitions Web site is a collaborative effort of the SERVE Regional Educational Laboratory and the National Head Start Association. Its goal is to provide a wide variety of transition information and resources for families, professionals, and community partnerships to use as they address children's transitions into kindergarten. It provides tips, activities, and concrete ideas for families, teachers, and administrators on how to help build continuity between children's early care settings to promote practices that help children have the best transition possible. It also provides links to research and brochures and sample materials. Planning for Terrific Transitions: A Guide for Transition-to-School Teams, by SERVE, is a trainer's guide to facilitate an eight-hour training on the transition to kindergarten. The training is designed to help learners improve their transition processes through more effective planning, implementation, and evaluation. This guide is available on the Web at http://www.serve.org/TT/res_ttg.html. For additional information e-mail Terrific Transitions at terrific@serve.org.

State Initiatives

Delaware

• Delaware Transition Initiative: Transition Resources and Practices in Early Childhood (March 2000), by Beth Rous, published by the Center for Collaborative Planning, Interdisciplinary Human Development Institute, University of Kentucky, synthesizes the literature on transition in order to provide transition practice information for service providers, administrators, families, and children. The resources cover a wide variety of topics in early childhood transition and examine issues from both a research and practice perspective. Examples of specific sites implementing the best practices for early childhood transition are also provided. It provides a synthesis of information on transition and an annotated bibliography, including both research-oriented resources and practice-oriented resources, with subsections for service providers, administrators, families, and children. This resource is available on the Web at http://www.doe.state.de.us/early_childhood/Transition/Transition%20synthesis.pdf.

West Virginia

• The Early Childhood Transition Committee of the West Virginia Early Childhood Training Connections and Resources is a partnership of State and local agencies and family representatives representing the Birth to Three System, Head Start, Department of Education/Schools, Child Care and other related entities. It supports effective transition policies and practices. Additional information on how this partnership works and other resources are available on the Web at http://www.wvearlychildhood.org/steer.asp.

Publications

• "Websites Related to Promising Programs, Transition, and School Readiness" (March 2006), a New Transition Alert, by the National Early Childhood Transition Center, provides a list of Web site links to promising programs, transition, and school readiness information. This resource is available on the Web at http://www.ihdi.uky.edu/NECTC/DOCUMENTS/TRANSITIONALERTS/LinksToOrgsSchReadinessTransitionMarch2006.pdf.
• "Appendix A: State Survey Data-Program Standards: Support services required for all programs" (2005) in The State of Preschool: 2005 State Preschool Yearbook, by W. Steven Barnett, Jason T. Hustedt, Kenneth B. Robin, and Karen Schulman, published by the National Institute for Early Education Research, notes that 28 States require transition activities in State-funded prekindergarten programs (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. This resource is available on the Web at http://nieer.org/yearbook/pdf/yearbook.pdf.
• "A Parent's Guide to a Successful Kindergarten Transition" (2005) in Student Achievement, May 2005, by The National Education Association (NEA) was prepared to equip parents with information in successfully moving their child from preschool to kindergarten and includes information for parents of children with special needs. It answers common questions parents have about today's kindergarten classrooms, steps to prepare, and offers additional resources. This guide can be found on the Web at http://www.nea.org/parents/images/transkinder.pdf.
• Readiness: School, Family, and Community Connections: Annual Synthesis 2004 (2004), by Martha Boethel, National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools, Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, looks at 48 research studies on contextual factors associated with children’s school readiness. It looks at what is known about children’s abilities when they first enter school, factors associated with those abilities, and the implications of those abilities for children’s later school success. It then explores available evidence regarding the effectiveness of various interventions that include a family or community focus. These interventions range from large-scale, comprehensive programs to highly targeted strategies addressing specific skills. Some interventions begin in the earliest months of a child’s life; others target the preschool years or early elementary years or both. Finally, it addresses the emerging literature addressing children’s transition to kindergarten. This resource is available on the Web at http://www.sedl.org/connections/resources/readiness-synthesis.pdf.
• Planning for Terrific Transitions: A Guide for Transition-to-School Teams (2004), developed by Southeastern Regional Vision for Educators (SERVE), provides information of an eight hour training program designed to help learners improve their transition processes through more effective planning, implementation, and evaluation. The training package includes the trainer’s guide, a participant’s guide, a CD-Rom with all the transparencies needed, and a copy of all the handouts necessary for the training. For information about obtaining a complimentary copy of the training materials, contact SERVE at 850-671-6052 or e-mail terrific@serve.org. Additional information is available on the Web at http://www.fpg.unc.edu/%7Encedl/pages/pr_detail.cfm?NewsItemID=461.
• “Transitioning to School: Policy, Practice, & Reality” (Summer 2004), in The Evaluation Exchange Vol. X, No. 2, by Robert Pianta, published by the Harvard Family Research Project, discusses helping young children make a better transition from preschool to kindergarten and into the early years of grade school. It challenges assumptions about assessing school readiness, and looks at the variation in the nature and quality of early education classrooms and at transition practices and policies. This resource is available on the Web at http://www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/eval/issue26/pp.html.
• “Chapter 7: Transitions to Kindergarten” (Spring 2004), in The Business of Early Care and Education in Illinois: Providers’ Tools for Improving Quality, by the Chicago Metropolis 2020, provides information about activities child care providers can undertake in order to strengthen bonds between child care and elementary schools before children enter school. This resource is available on the Web at http://www.chicagometropolis2020.org/documents/ResourceGuide.pdf.
• Successful Kindergarten Transition: Your Guide to Connecting Children, Families, and Schools(2003), byRobert C. Pianta and Marcia Kraft-Sayre, National Center for Early Development and Learning (NCEDL), published by Brookes Publishing, describes an approach to enhance children’s transition into kindergarten by forming a variety of social and information linkages that support children and families. The approach has been implemented and tested by researchers at the NCEDL in a variety of school districts and States. Additional information about this resource is available in NCEDL Spotlights (July 2003) No. 38, on the Web at http://www.fpg.unc.edu/~NCEDL/pdfs/spot38.pdf.
• “Preschool to Kindergarten: A New Model for the Transition Process” (Summer 2002), in Of Primary Interest Vol. 9, No. 3, published by the National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education, proposes a new model for the process of transition from preschool to kindergarten. It emphasizes the child-related skills that promote school success as well as the importance of family, school, and community-level factors that support the development of children’s competences. The report stresses that school readiness is not a property of a child, but is the product of interactions among key settings in which the child participates. This resource is available on the Web at http://naecs.crc.uiuc.edu/opi-nl/volume9/opi-v9n3.pdf.  
• “Transition to Kindergarten” (Winter 2002), Early Childhood Research and Policy Briefs Vol. 2, No. 2, by the National Center for Early Development and Learning (NCEDL), identifies the key issues involved in transitioning to kindergarten and how U.S. schools support the process. It notes that transition has to be understood in terms of the settings that contribute to child development (e.g., family, classroom, community) and the connections among these settings (e.g., family-school relationships) at any given time and across time. It also discusses what policy changes are needed, and what needs further study. This resource is available on the Web at http://www.fpg.unc.edu/~ncedl/PDFs/TranBrief.pdf. An accompanying fact sheet from NCEDL is also available on the Web at http://www.fpg.unc.edu/~ncedl/PDFs/TransFac.pdf.
• Continuity in Early Childhood: A Framework for Home, School, and Community Linkages (2002), 3^rd ed., developed by the Regional Educational Laboratories’ Early Childhood Collaboration Network, presents a framework that identifies what a home, school, and community partnership can do to help families thrive as they experience change and their young children grow. It explains how connections among the home, school, and community enable families to move from setting to setting with ease and build on their previous experiences. This resource is available on the Web at http://www.sedl.org/prep/hsclinkages.pdf.
• Getting Parents Ready for Kindergarten: The Role of Early Childhood Education (2002), by Holly Kreider, published by Harvard Family Research Project, presents preliminary evidence that family involvement in young children’s education may contribute not only to a smooth transition to elementary school for children, but also for parents, by helping to prepare them for later involvement in their children’s learning. This brief draws from the literature on transition, recent findings from the School Transition Study at the Harvard Family Research Project, and recommended practices from early childhood professionals. This resource is available on the Web at http://www.gse.harvard.edu/~hfrp/content/projects/fine/resources/research/kreider.pdf.
• The Transition to Kindergarten: A Review of Current Research and Promising Practices to Involve Families (2002), by Marielle Bohan-Baker and Priscilla M. D. Little, published by Harvard Family Research Project, offers a synthesis of a review of current research on the transition to kindergarten, focusing on promising transition practices and the role that schools might play in their implementation of findings. It also focuses on the important role that families play in transition to kindergarten. The brief provides an overview of the concept of transition and its importance to school success. It then examines transition practices that focus on families, and it includes examples of promising transition practices that involve families. It concludes with the presentation of a framework for the development of school and program transition teams that value family involvement. This resource is available on the Web at http://www.gse.harvard.edu/~hfrp/content/projects/fine/resources/research/bohan.pdf.
• “Starting School: Effective Transitions” (Fall 2001), in Early Childhood Research and Practice Vol. 3, No. 2, by Sue Dockett and Bob Perry, focuses on effective transition-to-school programs. Research was conducted by the Starting School Research Project, based at the University of Western Sydney, Australia, and involved a group of researchers and an Advisory Committee representing major early childhood organizations, early childhood employer groups, parent associations, school organizations, and community and union perspectives. Using a framework of 10 guidelines developed through the research, the project provides examples of effective strategies and transition programs. In this context, the nature of some current transition programs is questioned, and the curriculum of transition is reconceptualized. This resource is available on the Web at http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v3n2/dockett.html.  
• Easing the Transition from Preschool to Kindergarten: A Guide for Early Childhood Teachers and Administrators (2001), published by the Head Start Information and Publication Center, provides a variety of ideas for preschool and kindergarten teachers and administrators as they work cooperatively to establish linkages and ease the transition between educational settings for young children and their families. This resource is available on the Web at http://www.headstartinfo.org/recruitment/trans_hs.htm.
• The Transition from Preschool to Kindergarten is a Web site of the Early Childhood Educators’ and Family Web Corner maintained by PaTTAN (Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network). The site has ideas about transition that were shared by preschool programs and school districts. This information is available on the Web at http://users.sgi.net/~cokids/transition.html.  

Additional Resource

• The Florida Center for Parent Involvement (FCPI), has a "Transition to Kindergarten" page with links to ideas about transitions to kindergarten for providers, parents and children, including how to prepare a year ahead, what to expect during the transition, first day steps and tips, and skills to help ease the transition. In addition, several of the links are in Spanish. This resource can be found on the Web at http://www.fmhi.usf.edu/institute/pubs/pdf/cfs/fcpi/transition.htm.