Preparing Young Children for School. Educator's Practice Guide. WWC 2022009

By learning social-emotional, executive function, mathematics, and literacy skills in preschool, children are likely to be better prepared for the higher expectations and more formal curriculum in elementary school. Ensuring that all children are well prepared for elementary school is a priority for parents, caregivers, guardians, and policy makers. To address this priority, the What Works Clearinghouse™ (WWC), in conjunction with an expert panel, distilled recent contemporary research into seven easily comprehensible and practical recommendations for preschool educators to use to help prepare children for school. Recommendations 1 and 2 focus on practices to improve children's social-emotional and executive function skills. Recommendations 3 and 4 focus on practices for helping children understand foundational topics in mathematics. Recommendations 5, 6, and 7 focus on ways to improve children's vocabulary, letter knowledge, print recognition, and comprehension. Across these seven recommendations, the expert panel addressed five overarching themes that are central to providing instruction in preschool. The themes are: (1) The importance of intentional instruction; (2) The importance of interaction and conversation; (3) The importance of lessons building sequentially; (4) The importance of scheduling time for intentional learning; and (5) The importance of recognizing everyone's backgrounds and experiences. This guide is designed for educators working in preschool classrooms or for those personnel supervising teachers and overseeing educational practices for preschool programs. It is also for center and program directors and educational coordinators, as well as district or state personnel involved in adopting curricula for preschool programs. Parents, caregivers, and guardians can also use this guide to understand which features of preschool education might be helpful for preparing children for school. [For the Practice Guide Introduction, see ED621925.]