Starting Off on the Right Foot: The Influence of Four Principles of Professional Development in Improving Literacy Instruction in Two Kindergarten Programs

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe changes made in two kindergarten programs to improve literacy instruction. Four principles of professional development supported the work of teachers and researchers to implement instructional approaches critical to early reading success. The two primary target areas were phonemic awareness and alphabetic understanding. Activities incorporating these components were tailored to meet the goals of each school. In one school, the focus was on integrating new teaching practices within the entire kindergarten program. In the second school, the goal was to develop a supplemental program for kindergarten students most at risk of reading difficulty. We provide background on the two schools, highlight the changes made, link these changes to student performance outcomes, and illustrate how four principles of professional development were operationalized within each school.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 56 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.