Kindergarten.

Preparing young children for kindergarten is an important task. There are many
skills that need to be learned. Simple everyday school and daily living tasks are
kindergarten readiness skills that need to be taught. Many preschool students struggle to
learn these skills unless taught directly. There are a sufficient number of interventions
that have been used to teach various skills to students, but few have been identified as
evidenced-based practices for teaching skills to at-risk preschool students in the
classroom.
Literacy based behavioral interventions (LBBI) (Bucholz, Brady, Duffy, Scott, &
Kontosh, 2008) are a class of intervention that have been found to be effective to teach a
variety of skills. This type of intervention consists of a combination of sequenced visuals
and words to either teach a new skill and/or increase or decrease a behavior. Several
studies have shown that a storybook LBBI is an effective intervention for teaching new skills including daily living skills, but to date only one study has looked at the effects of a
storybook LBBI with preschool children who are at-risk (Hall, Brady, & Morris, 2017).
This study expanded the storybook LBBI literature by exploring the effect of
small group-delivered storybook LBBIs on preschool students who were at-risk and
struggling to learn basic kindergarten readiness skills. Using a multiple baseline design
across skills, this study examined the effectiveness of using LBBIs delivered in a small
group to teach kindergarten readiness skills and the children’s ability to maintain and
generalize these skills. Four preschool students were taught three skills including cutting
with scissors, using liquid glue, and matching. Data were collected on the steps correct
and independent on the task analysis for each skill. The results found an increase in skill
acquisition with students learning the new skills and maintaining those skills after the
removal of the LBBI. Students were also able to generalize these new skills to novel
materials. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the difference in pro-social
behavior, self-regulation, overall reading performance, Lexile levels, and teachers’
perception of classroom climate of kindergarten students who received the Ready to
Learn (RTL; Brigman, Lane, & Lane, 2008) classroom guidance program (treatment
group: n = 173) and kindergarten students who did not receive the intervention
(comparison group: n = 124). The study followed a quasi-experimental, comparison
group design in which teachers completed the Child Behavior Rating Scale (CBRS) and
Teacher My Class Inventory-Short Form (TMCI-SF) measures as well as collected
reading data from individual students. Descriptive statistics for each of the measures, the
findings from the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) on the CBRS and TMCI-SF data,
along with the multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) using the i-Ready data,
and partial eta squared (ηp2) effect sizes were calculated. The ANCOVA was conducted to determine if differences existed on the
participants’ pro-social behavior and self-regulation by condition. The findings revealed
a statistically significant difference on the pro-social skills but did not show a statistically
significant difference in self-regulation. The MANCOVA revealed statistically
significant differences in overall reading performance between the treatment and
comparison group; however, did not reveal statistically significant differences on the
Lexile levels for the students who participated in the intervention. Finally, the ANCOVA
reported a statistically significant difference in the perceived impact of the school
counselor by the treatment group kindergarten as compared to the teachers in the
comparison group; however, no other differences were found on the TMCI-SF scales.
With these results, there is a need for further empirical research to determine the impact
of the RTL program on students’ academic and SEL development.