About this Research Topic

Background

School entry is a critical life event for young children. Students begin this new phase of their lives with very different abilities due to their individual characteristics, previous experiences, and education. While some children hardly know any letters or numbers, others can already read, write and calculate quite fluently. To optimally support young learners according to their respective starting conditions, teachers must recognize students learning prerequisites and adapt instruction to students’ needs. To this end, both valid and economical assessments as well as effective and differentiated interventions are needed. This Research Topic addresses new developments in early assessments and assessment-based interventions around the time of school entry from the last year before enrollment until second grade.

In particular, this Research Topic aims to bring together research that directly contributes to assessing children's difficulties and providing evidence-based support. We highly welcome new, innovative approaches from the fields of education, didactics, and psychology that focus on the assessment and assessment-based instruction in reading, writing, and maths. Any empirical studies that help to improve the assessment and assessment-based interventions for the competencies mentioned are welcome.

We are looking for empirical quantitative or qualitative studies dealing with the target group of children around the age of school entry (last year of kindergarten to second grade elementary school) that include at least one of the following topics:
- the presentation or testing of new assessment procedures that focus on performance in and prerequisites for reading, writing and maths;
- assessment-based interventions (both whole-class or individual approaches) in reading, writing and maths;
- the co-development of (sub)skills in reading, writing, and maths and consequences for assessment and intervention

(Please note that manuscripts without prior submission of an abstract will not be considered for the research topic)

Keywords: acquisition, reading, spelling, writing, math, computational fluency, number sense, assessment, screening, monitoring, reading development, math development, prevention, early intervention

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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