Early Learning Content Standards

Are the foundations of early learning content standards beneficial and do they support the kindergarten transition and prepare these students for the school-aged world? The preschool program in the Ashtabula Area City Schools is a 5 star rated program that is very successful and I believe prepares students for kindergarten and allows them the opportunity to be successful in school. Ohio has adopted the Early Learning Content Standards focusing on five strands: approaches toward learning, cognitive development and general knowledge, physical well-being and motor development, language and literacy development and social-emotional development. On October 9, 2012, the State Board of Education adopted Ohio’s Entry Early Learning and Development
These standards are the focus in several articles referring to literacy instruction. These studies focused on pre-academic activities and encouraged the state to focus on early reading, math, writing and social skills. Research looked at identifying and naming letters, phonological awareness skills, such as rhyming and segmenting, and the use of increasingly more complex sentence structures, which has proven to benefit students for two to three years within the school-aged standards. The social-emotional standard has proven to be a topic with numerous research results that are common. Research shows that promoting social skills, and teaching them in preschool, will lead to better literacy and math skills prior to kindergarten. Focusing on positive social behavior can lead to better focus and maintaining a better attention span allowing these students to gain the knowledge to front-load prior to kindergarten. With these standards, research focuses on the fact that students are coming from their home, which is often structured, but in some cases lacks structure as well. The rules, discipline, settings and family structure is completely different from
For these students, research shows that one year might not be enough intervention to prepare them for kindergarten but two years could benefit them in the long run. Most research reveals that the majority of states offer voluntary preschools that are state and community-funded programs and also provide for low socioeconomic status families. Why don’t these the families take advantage of the programs to benefit their children when they become school aged? When looking at a high poverty area school district where the preschool is considered an ECE funded program (referring to high poverty) the different backgrounds of each student comes into play for ability and level upon entering preschool. Along with the importance of literacy and math skills comes the responsibility for teaching these preschool students self-help skills, how to self-regulate and the basic skills need to follow a structured routine in a structured setting, such as a classroom. Imagine the number of students who enter kindergarten without any preschool experience and who have insufficient social skills to participate in the activities necessary for academic achievement. Not only do the kindergarten teachers need to teach the standards but they also have to teach these skills before attempting to