A longitudinal study published in Reading Research Quarterly examined the effects of a pilot project in the 1970’s, the SWRL Beginning Reading Program, which was implemented in Kindergartens in several dozen districts in the western U.S. for several years. At the time, Kindergarten had no academic emphasis, and the Beginning Reading Program was very interactive, with puppets and other activities, but the little books written for the program (by now quite prominent children’s writers and illustrators such as Lin Oliver and Steven Mooser) are public domain.  The animal characters are engaging and young children love the simple plots with a lot of humour.  You can see and download them from these sites:
http://www.marriottmd.com/sam/index.html
http://www.teacherweb.com/CA/PomeloDriveElementary/Mrssakamoto/printap2.stm

I can’t find Hansen and Farrell’s article online at any free site, but if you can access the journal through EBSCO online here is the cite:
Hansen, R. A., Farrell, D. (1995). The Long-term Effects on High School Seniors of Learning to Read in Kindergarten. Reading Research Quarterly, 30(4). 908-933.

Here’s the RRQ abstract:

This follow-up study assessed the educational history and current reading proficiencies of a large number of high school seniors (N = 3,959) from 24 schools districts in 10 U.S. states in 1986. The purpose was to examine the effects, if any, of receiving formal reading instruction in kindergarten. Over one third of these students attended elementary schools that implemented a carefully developed beginning reading program in their kindergarten classes in 1973. Although the study included kindergarten students from all backgrounds, those from at-risk backgrounds were overrepresented. Three types of information were combined for each student to create the database for this study: (a) the amount of kindergarten reading instruction received; (b) family background and educational history variables assessed as a high school senior; and (c) reading interests and competencies assessed as a high school senior. A series of comparative analyses is presented that examined the relationship between kindergarten reading instruction and various effects variables describing the students’ subsequent schooling experiences and reading competencies as high school seniors. Results show that clear, consistent, and positive differences were associated with receiving kindergarten reading instruction. (p.909)

An early boost is a very powerful thing.  Also, for those who think Grade 3 reading doesn’t matter, but 15-year-olds’ reading does, there is almost a 1:1 correspondence (.9 correlation) between proficient reading at the end of Grade 1 and proficient reading in Grade 10.  Those who are not proficient readers at the end of Grade 1 have only a 1:3 chance of becoming so; those who are poor readers in Grade 3 have only one chance in 15 (statistically speaking) of becoming a proficient reader *in their lifetime.* Pretty good reason to get onto it right away, and for parents to be very aware of how well their child can read.

Nobody said early reading does not matter but when a nation is #2 in the world in 15 year old reading and the gap behind #1 is very tiny, almost statistically insignificant, then that country may not be perfect, it is just better than everybody else save one.

All of the Fraser Mustard/Marg McCain material + such research as the Perry study point to a very positive future for ELP in Ontario. Some people just don’t want to spend money on the kids. I can’t think of a better place to spend it than on children’s and Canada’s future.

Doug their is a difference between a proficient reader and non-proficient reader. The general meaning is: “Proficiency is defined as the ability to construct meaning from text at a reading level higher than the students’ age. The research showed the following six universal qualities displayed by proficient readers: understanding the purposes of reading, applying prior knowledge, processing the structures of print, self-monitoring, applying strategies, and reading meaningful text. The strategies examined were metacognition, preparation, organization, elaboration, summarization, and prediction.”
Doug, the stats you love to cite on 15 year old reading, are based on data, that does not necessarily measures proficiency. It is assume that the processes are taking place.
That said, the value of introducing early reading, I can attest to, and the value of an academic orientation in pre-school, was a God-sent for my daughter. Without the exposure, she would have had a much harder time learning to read, than what she already had experience, and that was difficult.
And Doug, money would be better spent, at directing some monies to educate parents to explain why it is important to read to their child, and to develop simple methods for parents to teach the phonemic sounds of language.
http://www.dominican.edu/academics/education/faculty/madaliennepeters/proficiency.html

Am I suppose to disagree? I don’t. I find one of the interesting arguments on this boards revolves around spend money on this not on that. Seems you drank the Tory Kool Aid somewhere along the line that there is a limited amount of money available so we must fight over it. Nonsense. Education is our one chance at a strong economy, more equality and more sheer human happiness all rolled into one. The more you spend the better the prodictivity so it all pays for itself.

A couple of points: we don’t know what shape the full-day Kindergarten will take as yet. The K program (it’s not a curriculum) will doubtless be revisited to fit the greater allocation of staff and instructional time. There is no reason it could not have an academic focus included.

A promising initiative already in place and expanding to a few more schools is from U of T :
http://www.artsetobicoke.com/Page.asp?IdPage=4269&WebAddress=artsetobicoke

Administrators from schools where this has been in place say it has made an astonioshing difference in the speaking and writing achievement of K-2 students.

This “From 3 to 3” initiative specifically addresses oral language development, which Bereiter and Engelmann, in their groundbreaking work in the 70’s, found to be the biggest obstacle in the academic and social growth of children in poverty. Even with accelerated teaching of other academic skills, the gaps in language development severely impeded children’s growth in verbal reasoning and comprehension. Their book, “Teaching Disadvantaged Children in the Preschool” is now out of print (easy to find on alibris or abebooks, however) and is a very enlightening look at all the issues involved in getting disadvantaged children to the level at which they can succeed in elementary school and beyond.  Subsequent to this experience they modified their reading programs to have a foundation of oral language skills taught first, and discovered children’s proficiency at the end of third grade was hugely improved.  See also Hart and Risley’s “Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Life of Young American Children” and Ernst Moerk’s “Guided Acquisition of First Language Skills” for more insights on the teaching of early verbal skills. Not only vocabulary, but also concepts and inferential reasoning can be taught in an everyday, interactive manner.  Many parents do this instinctively, but those who don’t can learn to do it with modeling and practice.

If all-day K provides more intensive focus on systematic oral language development that will have long-term spin-off effects even if they do not teach “literacy” skills per se.  Since we do not know how this new initiative will roll out we can’t pre-judge whether it will be effective or not.

Doug, what I am objecting to is how funding is directed to the various parts of the education system, where the funding is under a centralized format and in sync with an regulation regime, that impacts on the educational / learning needs of the individual schools. More money in a system that is highly centralized and regulated, will result in less money for students and their learning needs. A highly centralized regulated system, will promote division and completing agendas among the key stakeholders, to a a pot of money that is seen as being limited, due to the constrictions imposed on it by the centralized regulated system.
Here is a link, a paper by the International Centre for Education Change, called Policy Trends in Ontario Education (1990-2006). Even though it is about Ontario, it can also be applied to the other provinces, as well and that is a centralized regulated education model.
http://icec.oise.utoronto.ca/research.htm

From 3 to 3, is a type of program, that would provide benefits in the later years. As stated in the link, “In particular, it is assumed that through exposure to language, children acquire the language necessary to communicate and learn, and the ability to explain, predict and interpret why other people represent the world differently.”  This assumption, is common in the public school system, and it is the underlaying assumption, that if a child has acquired oral language, they have the necessary skills to learn how to read.

I have heard American researchers say poor kids arrive at school with anywhere from half (500) the vocabulary of middle class kids 1000 word vocab to even worse, only one third of the oral language vocabulary. As TDSBNW says, closing that gap would be a giant leap forward.

There was a study done in Canada called “Are 5-year-old children ready to learn at school? Family income and home environment contexts”
The study’s conclusions:
“Before children begin their journey into formal education, differences in readiness to learn at school already exist between those from lower- and higher-income households. At the age of 5, children from lower-income households had lower scores than those from more affluent households in six of the eleven readiness-to-learn measures: receptive vocabulary, communication skill, number knowledge, copying and symbol use, attention, and co-operative play. However, children from all four income levels had similar scores in work effort, curiosity level, self-control of behaviour, independence in dressing, and independence in cleanliness—the other five dimensions of readiness to learn.
Children’s readiness to learn at school has been linked to their experiences in the home and in the community, including educational activities at home, the quality of their relationships with parents, and opportunities to participate in group activities with peers, whether in recreational or educational contexts.
Regardless of income level, daily reading, high positive parent–child interaction, participation in organized sports, lessons in physical activities, and lessons in the arts were linked with higher scores on readiness-to-learn measures. The fact that children in lower-income households were less likely to experience these positive home environment factors may help to explain the differences in readiness to learn between children at different income levels. However, the study demonstrates that engagement with specific home environment factors may assist children in low-income households by increasing their readiness to learn at school.”
Curious thing, of late and in the last 10 years or so, there has been an extreme focus on work effort, self-control, independence in dressing and cleanliness, the five of the 11 readiness-to-learn measures, and where in this study, children have found to have similar scores across the income spectrum. Would it not be wiser, to have children tested on the other six readiness-to-learn measures, prior to entry into school, and include the home background, plus the child’s development milestones, so a teacher can group children together that have similar scores, keeping in mind of the home background and development milestones? 
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-004-x/2007001/9630-eng.htm

Grouping children by ability or readiness is called streaming in Canada and the UK, tracking in the USA and should be minimized at all costs. We can hope some day that it can be totally eliminated because it exacerbates the learning gap rather than closing it. See the work of Jeanie Oaks and John Goodlad.

Doug, the work of Jeanie Oaks and John Goodland, has been added on since 1986. I am talking about groupings, where targeted lessons are directed at children who share a cluster of weaknesses, that need to be improve, before the instruction of reading begins for some sets of students. If one child improves to the point, and where assessment testing, shows a dramatic improvement, than the child should be moved into the next change. What I am talking about are groups that are fluid, and no child is committed to any one group. The groups are formed and is dependent on weaknesses and strengths of the individual child.
As stated in one education blog: ” We also recommended that teachers in the school work in collaborative teams to gather information from frequent common, formative assessments to determine which students need more time and more support to acquire the intended essential skills & concepts and which students are ready for a deeper application of those skills/concepts. Students could then be assigned to flexible, fluid, homogenous groups for intervention and enrichment – student-by-student, skill-by-skill – for a brief, designated portion of each day. Each member of the team, as well as other human resources the school might employ, could then be responsible for providing extra time and support for intervention and enrichment during that designated period each day.”
http://www.allthingsplc.info/wordpress/?p=65

Near the end of the article, it states: “There is a significant difference between differentiated instruction and differentiated curriculum. Tracking is dedicated to the later. Differentiated instruction is not just clustering all students with similar learning needs into one group and providing them with different curriculum, but rather it requires giving students who are struggling to learn the essentials more time, more support, and new learning experiences with different strategies and different structures such as small-group instruction and individual tutoring.”
This is not happening in the K to 3 structure. Students are sent to remedial class, rather than allowing the students more time, support using different methods, to improve the base skills needed to advance reading. Sending kids out to the learning resource room, and kids call them the dummy room and for good reasons, are only children who are perceived as failing, based on their work in the classroom. This leaves about 40% of children, that are considered passing, but just barely, without the needed targeted instruction within the classroom, other than what is provided for the whole class, and as a result these kids will struggle in reading, and unlikely to become skilled in reading,but are passing,  because their strengths will help them make a passing grade. The system is set up to ignored learning struggles, in favour of using grades as its base line, to determine who needs help over and above what the classroom provides. Within the system, it is where the teachers unions have played a great part when determining the role of the general teacher and the structure of the classroom, in their contracts. I have lost track of how many times a teacher, a principal, a board staff member, and right down to the top levels, will use grades to defend their position, and the structure of the public school system.

Nancy,

I don’t trust the fluid groups. They have a way of becoming permanent or semi permanent because educators have this false instict that grouping by ability, however temporary, is good for kids. It isn’t good for them.

I should interject here that the ELP is not being rec’d with open arms in all regions of the province. What works in larger urban boards usually has a profoundly different effect elsewhere as is proving the case in some communities.

Doug, than you do not trust the training that teachers are provided, and why is it not good for them. At least 40 % of a K class, would benefit in having intense instruction on learning their phonemic sounds, regardless of parent’s income. What is being provided at the primary grade, is not enough, and you know it too. There is retired teachers who are back working in the schools, trying to provide the instruction, but due to the system, kids like my daughter are denied help through that avenue. What is happening in those classroom is a crime in itself. The crime of not providing the right type of help for all children, and this is your way Doug?  Your way, condemns children to thinking they are dumb-asses, and where they think basic skills such as reading, depends on your intelligence. Reading and other basics must be taught, just like learning how to ride a bike, or tap dance or taking piano lessons. You must be taught the basics, and all essential basics, with no skipping the steps, in order to master the other part, knowledge. Your way discriminates by making the assumption that all children are equal and will obtain knowledge at the same rate, and for those who do not, can be streamed into other levels, that dumbs down the curriculum. Any more dumbing down of the curriculum at the applied stream in high school, will ensure that there will be a two year prep course for those students in the colleges, to teach them the essential skills that the K-12 system felt was unnecessary and too much of a burden.

I take it ELP means early learning program. I can predict an upheaval, with children who are getting professional help via through health, and the child development centres. Using my daughter’s example, where she was receiving intensive speech therapy, plus two nursery schools, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, plus enrolling her in a number of physical activities for tots, underneath the services for children of special needs. Children who have a delay in speech are not normally seen as having a special needs, but this has started to change, and it is much easier now for children to receive intensive speech therapy at very young ages, where development milestones do not progress normally. Today, if my child was small today, one more thing would be added and that is to teach the phonemic sounds of language.
I really do not think a certified teacher will be equipped to have a deep knowledge needed to address the individual needs of a child, and I fear that early education in public schools, will be formatted and canned programs will be the norm. Children like my daughter, the professionals would tell me, to stick to the private nursery schools, and where the same professionals could monitor her progress on site, without climbing a mountain of bureaucracy tape to do so, and often when other professionals from other fields are not welcome in our public school systems. Nor are they willing to take their advice.

Flexible grouping and differentiated instruction are mandated by the Ontario Ministry of Education. This is not “ability grouping” but grouping by instructional need as determined by ongoing formative assessment.

The document entitled “Education for All” is an excellent summary of the best recent research in meeting the needs of diverse learners (not just “special ed” kids but at-risk or struggling students as well) and can be found here:
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/reports/speced/panel/speced.pdf

A tiered approach, with intensive support in small groups for those who need it is being implemented by several Ontario boards, including some schools in Hamilton-Wentworth.  It has a solid base of proven success in schools in various settings.  This is in fact similar to what is done in Finland, where more than 25% of students receive special education services at some time or other. This can be done without “labeling” or classifying anyone, and the MOE is pushing this approach instead of IPRC’ing students.

Parents should be aware, however, than an IPRC designation can have advantages for the student in accessing other needed services though community agencies and organizations such as the Geneva Centre and Integra Foundation.  Thus, they should push for appropriate disignation if it will benefit their child.  The school, however, does not need to classify children in order to teach them effectively. Teaching by instructional need is the way to go.

Especially note Chapters 6-9 of “Education for All” above. Additionally, most boards in Ontario require Guided Reading to be taught in small groups based on current reading level and instructional needs.  Students make much more progress when taught in their ZPD (zone of proximal development). Equity doesn’t mean giving everybody the same thing, it means giving every student the instruction s/he needs.

Just a note of caution as what is happening in NL, from a parent’s observations and experience. Flexible grouping and differentiated instruction is only operating as pilot programs. For other schools, it is mandated to use differentiated instruction on a defined group of students, that have multiple problems. Children that are mild to moderate LD, do not meet the criteria, and are sitting in the regular classroom. The Ontario program hold much more promise to reach all students, and as a result, overall grade averages will improve for all, long with improve reading/writing skills.