Strength In Children Research Articles

Achievements of Numeracy Abilities to Children with Down Syndrome: Psycho-Pedagogical Implications

The paper addresses the issue of children with Down syndrome and psycho-pedagogical implications in the present. Down syndrome is the most common biological cause of intellectual disability. This intervention study was conducted to explore the effectiveness of using the tablet as a learning tool in teaching mathematics to children with Down syndrome. Also, to explore the extent to which children with Down syndrome are able to learn counting elementary mathematics concepts, such as the addition operation or subtraction. The results showed that there was significant progress in terms of basic mathematical skills acquisition in children who use electronic media than children who used only concrete objects. Research indicate that good teaching, using the children's strengths for visual learning lead us to conclusion that children with Down syndrome are able to learn and, in particular counting, if they are exposed to the appropriate conditions, which match their needs. Children with Down syndrome can improve their mathematical thinking skills through training that combines real activities with objects, math aps for tablet and visual configurations of numbers.

Creative potential in educational settings: its nature, measure, and nurture

Although creativity is considered one of the key ‘twenty-first-century skills’, this ability is still often misunderstood. Persistent conceptual and methodological barriers have limited educational implications. This article reviews and discusses the three critical issues of ‘nature’, ‘measure’, and ‘nurture’ of creative potential in educational settings. A current perspective on the nature of creative potential is presented. In contrast to a classic, but inaccurate ‘g-factor view’ of creativity, this perspective emphasises a multidimensional and partly domain-specific view, upon which new assessment tools can be developed. Based on a more comprehensive evaluation of a child's creative potential, educational programmes tailored to a child's strengths and weaknesses can be offered. These perspectives are discussed in light of current findings in the field.

Developmental trajectories of symptom severity and adaptive functioning in an inception cohort of preschool children with autism spectrum disorder.

Symptom severity and adaptive functioning are fundamental domains of the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) phenotype. To date, the longitudinal association between these 2 domains has not been examined. To describe the developmental trajectories of autistic symptom severity and adaptive functioning in a large inception cohort of preschool children with ASD. The sample consisted of 421 newly diagnosed preschool children with ASD 2 to 4 years old (355 boys; mean age at study enrollment, 39.87 months) participating in a large Canadian multisite longitudinal study (Pathways in ASD Study). Prospective data collected at 4 points from time of diagnosis to age 6 years were used to track the developmental trajectories of children. Autistic symptom severity was indexed using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule. Adaptive functioning was indexed using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Second Edition. Two distinct trajectory groups provided the best fit to the autistic symptom severity data. Group 1 (11.4% of the sample) had less severe symptoms and an improving trajectory (P < .05), whereas group 2 (88.6% of the sample) had more severe symptoms and a stable trajectory. Three distinct trajectory groups provided the best fit to the adaptive functioning data. Group 1 (29.2% of the sample) showed lower functioning and a worsening trajectory, group 2 (49.9% of the sample) had moderate functioning and a stable trajectory, and group 3 (20.9% of the sample) had higher functioning and an improving trajectory (P < .05). Cross-trajectory overlap between the autistic symptom severity and adaptive functioning groups was low (φ = 0.13, P < .05). Sex was a significant predictor of autistic symptom severity group membership and age at diagnosis, and language and cognitive scores at baseline predicted membership in adaptive functioning trajectories. Trajectories of both symptom severity and adaptive functioning predicted several different outcomes at age 6 years. Findings confirm the heterogeneous nature of developmental trajectories in ASD. Change in adaptive functioning suggests that improvement is possible in roughly 20% of the sample. Autistic symptom severity appears to be more stable, with roughly 11% of the sample showing a marked decrease in symptom severity. During the preschool years, there appears to be only a small amount of "yoking" of developmental trajectories in autistic symptom severity and adaptive functioning. It is imperative that a flexible suite of interventions that target both autistic symptom severity and adaptive functioning should be implemented and tailored to each child's strengths and difficulties.

The Strength of Children Externalizing the Effects of Chronic Illness Through Narrative Puppetry

When we turn our thoughts to children of America, we often picture healthy, active children who are involved in various physical activities. This is not the case for many American children who live...

Children of Katrina by Alice Fothergill and Lori Peek

 2015 Children, Youth and Environments Children, Youth and Environments 25(3), 2015 Book Reviews Children of Katrina Alice Fothergill and Lori Peek (2015). Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 321 pages. $24.95 (paperback); ISBN: 978-1-4773-0546-1. Children of Katrina, by sociologists Alice Fothergill and Lori Peek, is part of The Katrina Bookshelf collection available through the University of Texas Press. The series reflects a national commitment to enhance understanding about the human scope of Hurricane Katrina (the 2005 storm that struck the Gulf Coast of the United States) and the important lessons that may be learned from it. With their clear analysis of the trajectories of New Orleans-based children following the hurricane, Fothergill and Peek’s contribution to this series is nothing short of outstanding. I can identify many strengths in Children of Katrina. Fothergill and Peek bring attention to children, a group relatively neglected in disaster research. The authors highlight the range of outcomes for children after the hurricane, and explore how these outcomes connect to the social locations of their research participants. The authors take a holistic approach to understanding the spheres of children’s lives, including a consideration of family, housing, school, peers, health, and extracurricular activities. The research design reflects a commitment to gaining broad exposure to a large number of children and their experiences, while honing in on seven specific children’s stories, giving us a rich sense of actual lives. Fothergill and Peek capture the vantage points of not just children but the adults in their lives, including siblings, parents, child care workers, shelter staff, and teachers. Children of Katrina serves as both a model of good writing and an example of how research with a protected group can be conducted in a caring and compassionate manner. I’d like to discuss in more detail two additional strengths I see in the book that for me, are the most notable. First, the longitudinal design of the study enabled the authors to trace the trajectories of their focal children across seven years. Longitudinal research requires a major commitment of time and resources and is often neglected in the fast-track pace of academic research and publication. Writing up longitudinal results can require a complete reorientation in how to organize the analysis and findings, as Fothergill and Peek point out in their methodology appendix. Yet when done well, as I’m convinced this was, longitudinal research can shed invaluable light upon the factors shaping change over time, factors that lead to transitions and trajectories with long-term consequences. This longitudinal analysis adds great value and enables a deeper understanding of children’s lives across time. Book Reviews 205 Second, children whose lives were the most precarious were framed using the concept of cumulative vulnerability. This concept shaped the organization of the book and the conceptualization of key trajectories in children’s lives following the disaster. Three longitudinal trajectories emerged from analysis of the lives of the seven focal children: a declining trajectory, in which children’s lives following the disaster were characterized by “serious and ongoing instability” (37), a findingequilibrium trajectory, in which the disruption of the hurricane was followed by “a return to or a newfound type of stability” (97), and a fluctuating trajectory, in which a lack of comprehensive recovery or rapid fluctuations in well-being characterized the children’s experiences. Fothergill and Peek draw upon the cumulative vulnerability framework to characterize the children most at risk of a downward trajectory, and draw from the literature on disasters to identify groups most likely to be vulnerable following a natural disaster—racial minorities, low-income individuals, women, and children. As the footnotes indicate, the authors have previously written extensively about social vulnerability and disasters. I am not that familiar with the literature on disasters but would like to highlight how the concept of cumulative vulnerability contributes synergistically to another interdisciplinary sub-field of social research, that of social gerontology/aging and the life course. The life course perspective, a prominent conceptual framework in research on aging, draws attention to transitions and trajectories across the human life course. Key principles of time and place, timing, linked lives, life span development and...

Caregiver Perceptions of Children who have Complex Communication Needs Following a Home-based Intervention Using Augmentative and Alternative Communication in Rural Kenya: An Intervention Note

A high level of unmet communication need exists amongst children with developmental disabilities in sub-Saharan Africa. This study investigated preliminary evidence of the impact associated with a home-based, caregiver-implemented intervention employing AAC methods, with nine children in rural Kenya who have complex communication needs. The intervention used mainly locally-sourced low-tech materials, and was designed to make use of the child's strengths and the caregiver's natural expertise. A pretest-posttest design was used in the study. Data were gathered using an adapted version of the Communication Profile, which was based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) framework. The non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test was applied to data from the first two sections of the Communication Profile-Adapted. Qualitative analysis was conducted on the final section. The data provided evidence of statistically significant positive changes in caregiver perceptions of communication at the levels of Body Structure and Function, and Activities for Communication. Also, analysis of the Participation for Communication section revealed some expansion to the children's social activities. The potential impact of the home-based intervention would benefit from investigation on a larger scale. Limitations of the study are discussed.

Psychometric Properties and Factor Structure of the Greek Version of the Preschool Learning Behavior Scale

New developments in the kindergartens in Greece have necessitated the availability of assessment tools that cover a wide range of children's skills and competencies that are related to the promotion of children's learning and development. The present study focuses on children's approaches to learning and aims to provide evidence for the Greek form of the Preschool Learning Behaviors Scale as a promising assessment tool for the Greek preschoolers. A nationally stratified sample of 398 boys and girls attending kindergarten classes provided data for the factor structure of the instrument. Two reliable and valid factors emerged describing children's motivation, determination to engage and persist in learning activities, as well as their responses toward novelty and frustration with an emphasis on attention. Upon identifying children's strengths and weaknesses when participating in learning activities, teachers could organize rich and challenging learning environments in the classroom, and design activities and intervention programs to foster children's adaptive behavior and promote later school success.

Take a ‘can do’ approach

By sharpening the focus on both a child's weaknesses and strengths, Target Ladders can be used to set realistic and achievable goals for improvement.

Character Strengths in Children and Adolescents

The Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth (VIA-Youth) is a self-report inventory assessing 24 character strengths among people 10–17 years of age. This paper describes the adaptation and initial validation of a German version of this measure utilizing several samples (in total N = 2,110 self-reports of participants aged 10–17 years, 56.5% girls; N = 219 parent-reports) from Germany and Switzerland. The 24 scales yielded high reliability and exhibited stability over 4 months. Self-reports and parent-ratings of strengths converged well. An oblique five-factor solution was found to represent the data well. There were small age effects, and small to medium gender effects (e.g., girls scored higher on beauty and kindness). Character strengths of hope, gratitude, love, and zest correlated positively with global life satisfaction. Furthermore, most of the strengths were strong predictors of general self-efficacy. Overall, the German VIA-Youth demonstrated good psychometric properties and promising evidence for validity. The German VIA-Youth is recommended for the assessment of character strengths in German-speaking children and adolescents.

Mastery motivation as a predictor of occupational performance following upper limb intervention for school-aged children with congenital hemiplegia.

To determine the extent to which children's mastery motivation predicts occupational performance outcomes following upper limb intervention (ULI). In this cohort study, participants received 45 hours of ULI, either in an intensive group-based or distributed individualized model. The Dimensions of Mastery Questionnaire (DMQ) measured mastery motivation at baseline. Occupational performance outcomes were assessed at baseline and 13 weeks' post-intervention using the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM). Multivariable models determined the contribution of mastery motivation to COPM outcome irrespective of group membership. Forty-two children with congenital hemiplegia (29 males, 13 females; mean age 7y 8mo [SD 2y 2mo]; range 5y 1mo-12y 8mo; Manual Ability Classification System [MACS] I=20 and II=22; predominant motor type unilateral spastic n=41) participated in the study. Significant gains were seen in COPM performance and satisfaction scores (p<0.001) post-intervention with no between group differences. Children who had greater persistence with object-oriented tasks (p=0.02) and better manual ability (p=0.03) achieved higher COPM performance scores at 13 weeks. Children's persistence on object-oriented tasks was the strongest predictor of COPM satisfaction (p=0.01). Children's persistence with object-oriented tasks as well as manual abilities needs to be considered when undertaking ULI. Predetermining children's motivational predispositions can assist clinicians to tailor therapy sessions individually based on children's strengths, contributing to effective engagement in ULI.

Influence of physical activity on bone strength in children and adolescents: a systematic review and narrative synthesis.

A preponderance of evidence from systematic reviews supports the effectiveness of weight-bearing exercises on bone mass accrual, especially during the growing years. However, only one systematic review (limited to randomized controlled trials) examined the role of physical activity (PA) on bone strength. Thus, our systematic review extended the scope of the previous review by including all PA intervention and observational studies, including organized sports participation studies, with child or adolescent bone strength as the main outcome. We also sought to discern the skeletal elements (eg, mass, structure, density) that accompanied significant bone strength changes. Our electronic-database, forward, and reference searches yielded 14 intervention and 23 observational studies that met our inclusion criteria. We used the Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP) tool to assess the quality of studies. Due to heterogeneity across studies, we adopted a narrative synthesis for our analysis and found that bone strength adaptations to PA were related to maturity level, sex, and study quality. Three (of five) weight-bearing PA intervention studies with a strong rating reported significantly greater gains in bone strength for the intervention group (3% to 4%) compared with only three significant (of nine) moderate intervention studies. Changes in bone structure (eg, bone cross-sectional area, cortical thickness, alone or in combination) rather than bone mass most often accompanied significant bone strength outcomes. Prepuberty and peripuberty may be the most opportune time for boys and girls to enhance bone strength through PA, although this finding is tempered by the few available studies in more mature groups. Despite the central role that muscle plays in bones' response to loading, few studies discerned the specific contribution of muscle function (or surrogates) to bone strength. Although not the focus of the current review, this seems an important consideration for future studies.

The Ocean as a Unique Therapeutic Environment: Developing a Surfing Program

Educational aquatic programming offers necessary physical activity opportunities to children with disabilities and the benefits of aquatic activities are more pronounced for children with disabilities than for their able-bodied peers. Similar benefits could potentially be derived from surfing in the ocean. This article describes an adapted surfing program that was designed to develop and enhance the children's strength, flexibility, range of motion, coordination, balance, and psychosocial development. Throughout the program, the children and their surf instructors were encouraged to set realistic individual goals. Many positive outcomes were derived from the project, including gains in social development and self-confidence.

Preventive family service coordination for parents with a mental illness in the Netherlands.

The Preventive Basic Care Management (PBCM) program is a Dutch service coordination program for parents with mental illnesses, which focuses on organizing tailored support from various services for parents and their children from a preventive perspective. The article discusses our efforts to make PBCM evidence-based, as well as the theoretical underpinnings, goals, the model of service coordination, and steps of the intervention. The main elements are systematic monitoring of parents' and children's vulnerabilities, strengths, and resources; strengthening parenting skills; facilitating access to a variety of services to address vulnerabilities; and overall planning and coordination of these preventive services. The theoretical underpinnings and intervention methodology of PBCM were developed in critical dialogues between practitioners and researchers about the focus and effective elements of service coordination for parents with mental illnesses. Data on feasibility and effectiveness came from pilot studies and retrospective interviews. Descriptive data about participants of an ongoing randomized controlled trial illustrate the needs of these families. The service coordination program for parents with mental illnesses seems feasible and effective in tackling bottlenecks caused by fragmentation of the services supporting these families, who have varied and fluctuating needs.

Book Reviews

Please Don't Label My Child: Break the Doctor-Diagnosis-Drug Cycle and Discover Safe, Effective Choices for Your Child's Emotional Health. Scott Shannon and Emily Heckman. New York, NY: Rodale, 2007, 304 pp., $25.95 (hardcover).According to the title of Please Don't Label My Child by Shannon and Heckman (2007), the main themes of the book should have been about avoiding labels and things to do to prevent or counterbalance the effects of labeling. The book does an excellent job of describing what labeling is and how it can be both useful in some situations yet cause more harm than good because of the negative connotations, or stigmas, associated with labels. However, the book seemed to be more about the authors' concern about medicating children, and after the first chapter, the main focus of the book seems be how to properly raise children. There were no suggestions or alternatives to labeling; the best advice the authors gave on labeling was to avoid giving children labels, especially because the labels often represent a misdiagnosis. From a practical standpoint, it is often argued that giving labels is beneficial because children can then receive the help that they need in multiple sources, such as at school, home, or at the doctor.The real problem seems to lie in the stigmas that are associated with both diagnostic and disability labels, which is mentioned in the pros and cons discussion in the book. This position has been expressed by others. Green (2003) extends the negativity to the family members, stating that they also feel the backlash of labeling (a courtesy stigma). Green's article, "What do you mean 'what's wrong with her,'" captures the essence of how important it is to look at the individual as a person and not someone who is his or her diagnosis/ disability or even someone who has a diagnosis/disability.Modified labeling theory is a theory that Green (2003) and Kroska and Harkness (2008) cite as a source of negativity; it is when diagnoses and disabilities, both labels, become personally relevant and foster negative self-feelings. The second part of this theory is that cultural meanings, or stigmas, associated with these labels create expectations that trigger defensive behaviors aimed at avoiding rejection. Kroska and Harkness call these defensive behaviors a "secondary deviance" of the labels that further damage the social interactions, occupational successes, and self-image. It is the belief of Kroska and Harkness that stigmal sentiments can be operationalized through the evaluation (good vs. bad), the potency (powerful vs. weak), and the activity (active vs. inactive). In addition to these, there are reflected appraisals as part of the self-stigma sentiments.The best source of strength comes from within; the second comes from having a close support system. These are the issues addressed by Shannon and Heckman (2007); the latter is expressed also by Green (2003). Shannon and Heckman wrote that the keys to being emotionally healthy is to play into the child's inner strength by teaching the child to have a strong sense of self-identity, be able to self-regulate, and be resilient. …

Teaching Balance Training to Improve Stability and Cognition for Children

This article describes how to use balance boards to improve children's balance, coordination, leg strength, upper-body strength, and core development.

What do diagnostic test data tell us about differences in the profiles of children diagnosed with reading disability or language impairments?

A detailed evaluation of a child's strengths and weaknesses allows for a valid and reliable diagnosis of reading disability for the selection of optimal intervention practices. Using archival data from a clinic that specialized in the diagnosis of reading disabilities, we compared the performance of 60 children diagnosed with specific reading disability (SRD) and 31 children with language impairments and reading disability (LIRD) on measures of cognitive reasoning, verbal ability, phonological manipulation, rapid serial naming, and phonological memory. While the SRD and LIRD groups did not differ in their phonological processing, children with LIRD performed significantly below their peers with SRD on thinking ability and verbal ability measures. Rapid naming skills served as current predictors of text reading fluency and verbal ability skills served as concurrent predictors of reading comprehension in both groups. These findings highlight the need for reading diagnosticians to conduct comprehensive evaluations using a range of cognitive and language processes to ensure the most accurate and specific diagnoses of children with reading disabilities.Learning outcomes: Readers will be able to (a) describe general characteristics of reading disabilities, (b) differentiate features of two learning disabilities, specific reading disability and language impairments and reading disability, and (c) identify key clinical issues and approaches for identification, diagnosis, and intervention of these two diagnostic profiles.

Becoming Multimodal Authors: Pre-Service Teachers' Interventions to Support Young Children with Autism

THE PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE is to describe two case studies of classroom-based teaching interventions, conducted by final-year pre-service teachers, which were successful in assisting young children with autism engage in and learn literacy through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The 10-day interventions were carried out as part of a two-year Master of Teaching course at an Australian university, and were designed to identify specific learning needs in young children, and then implement targeted interventions. The two cases described here show how ICTs were successfully used to create multimodal texts to support the literacy learning and engagement of young children with autism. The first case involved an intervention that employed two iPad apps—which were not intended specifically for children with autism—to support the literacy learning and engagement of a five-year-old. The second case involved the use of Microsoft PowerPoint on a laptop to develop multimodal non-fiction texts to improve an eight-year-old's attitude to, and engagement with, reading. Each intervention was found to be effective in improving the participating child's literacy achievement and engagement. Each used multisensory and student-centred approaches that acknowledged the children's strengths and interests, with ICTs being used to transform teaching and learning tasks. This article illustrates the successful drawing together of pre-service teachers' technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK), as well as their knowledge of the children concerned, to devise evidence-based interventions using ICTs to assist young children with autism to engage in, and learn, literacy.

Growth Hormone and Muscle Strength in Children

When I was asked to write an editorial to comment on the article by Simon et al (1) in this issue of the Journal, I felt it would be a real challenge. The use of GH therapy in children has provoked more discussion in the last few years from a legal, journalistic, economical, and even political point of view than from medical and scientific perspectives. I decided to take the challenge and to comment on the facts as I perceive them. An impact of recombinant human GH (rhGH) on muscle strength is controversial. As physicians, we are essentially warned about rhGH doping in professional and Olympic athletics, with the presumption that it has a beneficial effect on muscle strength. This is despite the fact that there appears to be no evidence that rhGH enhances muscle strength, power, or aerobic capacity in trained adult athletes. However, rhGH does increase modestly anaerobic exercise capacity when administered alone and to a greater extent when combined with testosterone (2). Thus, despite the abuse of rhGH by athletes, there is little support of performance benefit except for an effect on anaerobic exercise capacity (2). In GH-deficient patients, replacement of rhGH improves aerobic exercise capacity, although it remains to be elucidated whether this is due to the direct effect on muscle function or on other factors influencing cardiovascular function, well-being, and motivation. Long-term rhGH replacement in excess of 12 months seems to be required for improved muscle strength to take place in GH-deficient adult subjects (2). It has been reported that 10 years of rhGH replacement therapy in GH-deficient adults increased muscle strength during the first half of the study and then protected partly against the normal decline withage inmusclestrength,resulting inapproximatelynormalized muscle strength after 10 years (3). Even fewerdataareavailable inchildren,with theexception of data gathered from children affected with Prader-Willi syndrome(PWS),araregenetic formofobesitywithhypothalamic involvement that leads to GH deficiency. One group assessed the impact of rhGH therapy begun early in life on the natural history of PWS and compared height, body composition, and strength in similar-age children with PWS naive to rhGH with those treated with hGH for 6 years (4). Motor strength testing included broad jump, agility run, sit-ups, and upper arm strength assessments. The evaluator of motor strength testing was blinded to the treatment status of each child. PWS children treated with rhGH demonstrated greater motor strength (increased standing broad jump 22.9 2.1 vs 14.6 1.9 inches (P .001) and sit-ups 12.4 0.9 vs 7.1 0.7 repetitions in 30 seconds; P .001). Clear trends were seen in the 2 other areas of the testing, including improved agility run and weight-lift repetitions, although these did not reach statistical significance. Thus, thisnonrandomizedstudysuggestedabeneficialeffecton muscle strength in children affected by PWS. However, these few reports on young active adults, on GH-deficient adults, and on children affected by PWS may not be relevant to the chronically ill and less active children included in the study of Simon et al (1). In this study, the authors evaluated the effects of rhGH on muscle strength in children receiving long-term glucocorticoid therapy. Expected effects of growth hormone on height and body composition were assessed and confirmed, but those will not be commented upon here. This was a pilot study, randomized and controlled, with a delayed-start of rhGH for 12 months. rhGH was started after randomization (month 0) or 6 months later (month 6). A total of 30 children with various diagnoses, on glucocorticoid therapy for a chronic disease, startedat least1year earlierwithheight1SDorat2SDscore (SDS) below and bone age 15 years in boys and 13 years in girls. rhGH was administered at a dose of 0.065 mg/kg/d for 6monthsandtheninthedosagemaintainingserumIGF-1levels

An Increase in School-Based Physical Education Increases Muscle Strength in Children

Children and adolescents are encouraged to maintain a habitually active lifestyle because of the known health benefits associated with regular physical activity, but there are some reports that a high level of activity may be associated with increased fracture risk. This prospective controlled exercise intervention study in prepubertal children evaluated if a school-based exercise intervention could enhance growth-related gains in muscle strength and muscular function without affecting fracture risk. Fractures were registered in 417 girls and 500 boys age 7-9 yr in the intervention and in 836 age-matched girls and 872 boys. The intervention included 40 min·d of school physical education for 2 yr, whereas the controls achieved 60 min·wk. In a subsample consisting of 49 girls and 80 boys in the intervention and 50 girls and 53 boys in the control group, body composition was measured by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, muscle strength by isokinetic peak torque (PT) of the knee extensors, and flexors at 60 and 180°·s by a computerized dynamometer and neuromuscular performance by vertical jump height. The rate ratio (95% confidence interval) for children in the intervention group to sustain a fracture was 1.07 (0.66-1.68). The annual gain in knee extensor PT at 180°·s was significantly higher for both girls (P < 0.001) and boys (P < 0.01) in the intervention compared with the control group. Boys in the intervention group also had a greater annual gain in knee flexion PT at 180°·s (P < 0.001), and girls had a greater gain in vertical jump height (P < 0.05). An increase in school-based physical education from 60 to 200 min·wk enhanced muscle strength in prepubertal children without affecting fracture risk.

How Do I Write…? Scaffolding Preschoolers' Early Writing Skills

AbstractProviding preschoolers with rich writing experiences can help to lay a foundation for their later reading and writing success. Early writing experiences can be greatly enhanced by how preschool teachers answer young children's questions about writing and engage them in productive writing instruction. With appropriate scaffolding, early writing provides support for children's overall literacy development. Taking an individualized approach to writing instruction allows teachers to capitalize on children's literacy skills at each level of development. This article provides a framework for teachers to evaluate and understand the writing that young children produce and research‐based guidance on how to shape instruction in response to each child's strengths. Scenarios are presented to illustrate the varied child‐centered responses teachers can use to support and develop foundational literacy skills through writing across typical preschool classroom contexts (i.e., centers, journals, morning message).