UNC School of Education builds pre-K toolkit
Professor Annemarie Hindman partners with Person County Schools to help caregivers teach children the skills they need for school.
When children start school already fluent in everyday skills — like taking turns and even opening milk cartons — teachers can shift more quickly into the core kindergarten curriculum.
“Since COVID, we’d seen a decrease in some of these foundational skills that our kindergartners need before coming to us,” said Joseph Warren, executive director of elementary education, school improvement and federal programs in Person County Schools. “We needed a way to reach more parents and improve the kindergarten transition, within pre-K here in our district but also with private providers and home providers.”
Since Person County is also home to the Carolina Community Academy, an innovative K-2 lab school in Roxboro that is an educational partnership between PCS and Carolina, the UNC School of Education was ready to assist.
“What do you need, and how can I help?” asked professor Annemarie Hindman, longtime literacy expert, researcher and leader of the Carolina Research in Early Applied Development & Early Reading Skills Lab.
The answer was a needs assessment about the transition from preschool to kindergarten. Assessment feedback led to the development of the Transition to Kindergarten Toolkit, funded by private philanthropy and an award from UNC Rural’s Rural Research Engagement and Advancement Fund.
The free web-based guide for caregivers of young children in Person County helps bridge gaps in readiness with helpful information about kindergarten readiness and tips for building language, social skills and independence. Colorful and easy to use on mobile devices, the toolkit also includes a kindergarten registration guide, printable PDFs and videos of read-aloud books, such as the classic “Berenstain Bears Go to School.”
The toolkit encourages caregivers to help their children to be more independent by teaching them skills they may not be aware they need, like how to open the type of milk cartons used in cafeterias or how to zip their coat.
Reaching the caregivers
In Person County, and in many rural counties, Hindman said, family members or home-based caregivers typically have less access to the curricula and tools they might need to support kindergarten readiness. As a result, these children may enter kindergarten less prepared to confidently engage in early learning — to build early literacy skills, grow in their independence or make friends.
Based on the feedback they got from interviews, focus groups and surveys, Hindman’s team developed tools and tested them in Person County. “You can’t do that well without this kind of collaboration,” she said. “We’ve been very excited to be able to think about this for Person County and build materials that are, hopefully, nicely aligned with what they need and can use.”
Calling Hindman’s energy “fantastic,” Warren also appreciated her “wealth of knowledge.”
“To have access to the resources of UNC has been a fantastic support for us,” Warren said. “This will help us reach children when they’re still in those really critical ages, and hopefully this can help them from kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade.”
“Beneficial and productive” is how Hindman described the collaboration with Person County on the project. “I think this kind of cooperation is really what the University was designed to do,” she said.
