School Readiness

School readiness refers to the extent to which a child exhibits the behaviors, skills, and knowledge necessary to be successful in elementary school. These can be grouped into four categories: social and emotional development, oral language development and prereading skills, oral mathematics development and pre-mathematics skills, and general knowledge. Because individual schools vary in the timing with which they introduce academically demanding reading and mathematics instruction in kindergarten and first grade, the skills and habits recommended below are only approximate goals, to be attained to the greatest extent possible during the preschool and kindergarten years.
Social and Emotional Development
To be ready for school, the child must develop the social and emotional maturity to participate appropriately and learn from classroom activities. This requires adequate nutrition and health. It also requires that any hearing or speech deficits have been reduced to the greatest extent possible. Physical maturity may also be important and may be interrelated with social and emotional development. For example, the child must be able to care for her own toileting needs without supervision. Other self-help behaviors that must be developed include the ability to locate and care for personal belongings, to feed oneself independently, to get on and off the school bus with minimal supervision, to avoid obvious dangers, to put on and remove outer clothing within a reasonable length of time, to recognize problems and try strategies for solving them, and to communicate one’s own needs and wants.
Beyond self-help, the child must also show appropriate group-oriented social behavior and classroom conduct. He must separate from parents and accept school personnel. The student must learn appropriate means for expressing emotions and feelings and properly play the role of an individual within the group. This includes showing respect for others and their property, playing cooperatively, and sharing and taking turns. The student must initiate and maintain peer interactions, and do so without aggression, while defending himself as needed. The student should be able to play both independently and with the group. When required, he should imitate peer actions, such as lining up and waiting appropriately. The student should be willing to try something new. The student should follow classroom rules, including voice control. He must respond to warning words (e.g., “No,” “Stop”) and modify his behavior when given verbal feedback.
Finally, the child must have sufficient maturity to successfully engage in task-related behaviors. This includes finding the materials needed for a task, holding and manipulating the materials, and doing so without disrupting other students. The student must be able to stay in her “own space” during the activity, work on the activity for an appropriate amount of time (e.g., fifteen minutes) with minimal cues and supervision by teachers, and complete the task on time and at a satisfactory performance level. If help is needed, the student should ask peers or the teacher for assistance in an appropriate manner (e.g., raising her hand). She should also replace materials, “clean up” the workspace, and follow classroom routines in the transition to the next activity.
In sum, to be socially and emotionally ready for classroom participation and learning, the child must be able to learn classroom routines and comply appropriately with teacher instructions. The child must maintain appropriate focus on the group’s activity, learn from the activity, make choices, and generalize the knowledge gained to future activities.
Oral Language and Pre-Reading Skills
The child’s understanding and production of oral language is the principal mechanism by which she communicates with others. To be ready for school, the child must be sufficiently skilled in both receptive and expressive language, and in verbal reasoning. In this regard, it is helpful if the child speaks Standard English, including the use of Standard English grammar. Vocabulary knowledge is also important. The child’s transition to schooling is facilitated by already being familiar with the words and concepts employed by the teacher. In addition, such vocabulary knowledge can be critically important in learning to read. The size of a child’s vocabulary on entering school has been shown to be one of the key predictors of the ease with which the child learns to read.
A rich oral language environment in the home and/or preschool provides the best preparation for schooling. This includes extensive conversation with adults, in which the child uses language to answer questions and discuss issues. The parent should interact with the child in a way that assists the child to develop reasoning skills and to understand and express more complex ideas.
By being read to and engaging in other print activities, such as playing with magnetic letters, puzzles, games, and so on, the child should have developed a variety of “concepts about print.” These include the purpose of reading, the structure of written text, how stories work, what a word is, how words are composed of letters, and what spaces signify. The child should be able to show the front cover of a storybook and open it to start reading. He should know that one goes from left to right and top to bottom when reading English text. He should be able to identify a few words by sight. He should already have had some practice identifying and writing the letters of the alphabet. This practice, along with related activities in drawing and coloring, should be developing the child’s fine motor skills to prepare for more systematic and demanding writing exercises.

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