Optimization of children’s transition from preschool and family environment to the first grade of primary school in Slovakia by implementation of an adaptation programme

Abstract

• Elaboration and implementation of an adaptation program to eliminate adaptation difficulties of children in the transition from kindergarten and family environment to the first year of primary school. • The implementation of selected program has significantly accelerated the process of adapting children to initial education. • The adaptation program has strengthened the social and emotional competencies of pupils and improved their school motivation. The presented contribution is devoted to the issue of children‘s transition from kindergarten and family environment to the first grade of primary school. This period is accompanied by several changes which bring about various adaptive difficulties for some children. An adaptation programme has been developed to mitigate or eliminate the difficulties, aimed at optimising the conditions in the transition period. In order to verify the effectiveness of the programme, a pedagogical experiment was carried out in selected primary schools in Slovakia. The results of the experiment were analysed using selected statistical methods. Experiments confirmed that the proposed adaptation programme had a statistically significant effect on the quality of the adaptation process. A significant improvement in pupils' adaptation occurred not only shortly after the application of the program, but the improvement also had a long-term effect.