The PreK to Kindergarten Transition Toolkit: A Strategic Roadmap for Administrators
The transition from PreK to kindergarten is more than just a move down the hallway; it is a critical developmental milestone that sets the stage for a child’s academic future. For students with moderate to severe disabilities, this shift requires even greater intentionality to ensure they enter elementary school set up for success.
To bridge the gap between early childhood philosophy and K-12 expectations, we are providing administrators with a strategic PreK to Kindergarten Transition Toolkit that is grounded in best practices and outlines four essential pillars: data, curriculum, professional development, and family partnership.
1. Data
In early childhood, there is often a misconception that data collection is too difficult because students are young. However, establishing a clear data baseline is imperative, and strategic data collection in PreK serves several vital functions:
Accurate Grouping: Data allows educators to group students based on demonstrated skill levels, maximizing the impact of small group instructional time.
Targeted Referrals and IEPs: Observational and benchmark data help identify students who may need additional special education services, ensuring they enter kindergarten with the right IEP goals and accommodations in place.
Tracking Growth Over Time: Using standardized tools allows for consistent progress monitoring toward kindergarten readiness skills.
Informing Instruction: Real-time data shows exactly where a student is stalling, allowing for immediate reteaching or curriculum adjustments before they fall behind.
2. Curriculum
A successful transition requires a PreK curriculum that takes a standards-first approach and builds the foundational academic, adaptive, and functional skills students will need in elementary school. Key curricular elements that support the transition include:
Routine and Structure: PreK curriculum should mirror the schedules used in elementary settings, such as whole group, small group, centers, and independent work time.
Leveled Differentiation: The curriculum must offer multiple levels of support to meet every student where they are and guide them toward their goals.
Build Foundational Success Across Domains: A transition-ready curriculum explicitly builds the foundational academic skills (emerging literacy, phonological awareness, and number sense), functional adaptive skills (handwashing, managing materials, and following routines), and motor skills (fine motor cutting/tracing and gross motor coordination) that serve as the direct prerequisites for kindergarten standards.
3. Instruction & Professional Development
For administrators, the goal is to create a cohesive instructional ecosystem where PreK and kindergarten staff are no longer operating in silos. Transition success depends on educators who are not only trained in early childhood pedagogy, but are also experts in the specific scaffolds required for students with moderate to severe disabilities. To ensure your team is equipped to bridge the gap, focus on these three professional development (PD) priorities:
Vertical Alignment Workshops: Training should bring PreK and kindergarten teachers into the same room, allowing for a seamless handoff of instructional strategies.
Evidence-Based Scaffolding & Tiered Support: PD should focus on helping staff deliver systematic, explicit instruction and differentiated support, ensuring teachers can adapt lessons to meet different developmental needs within the same classroom.
Cross-Functional Collaboration for IEP Integrity: Successful transitions for students with disabilities require a unified approach between general education, special education, and related service providers (OT, PT, SLP). Professional development should emphasize collaborative coaching models, ensuring that every adult in the room is empowered to collect data and implement accommodations with fidelity.
4. Family Engagement
Families are a student’s “first and forever teachers.” For a child with a disability, the move to kindergarten can be an anxious time for caregivers. Strengthening home-to-school partnerships is a requirement of IDEA and a major driver of student success. Best practices for partnering with families during the transition include:
Transparent Progress Sharing: Provide families with clear reports and work samples that show their child’s growth toward kindergarten readiness.
Bilingual Resources: Provide take-home materials, literature, and digital access in a family’s primary language.
Weekly Letters: Share what is being learned in the classroom so caregivers can reinforce those same concepts at home.
Launch Toward Success with TeachTown
TeachTown’s Launch for PreK is a comprehensive, inclusive early childhood curriculum designed to meet the needs of students with disabilities and the peers who learn alongside them. Launch for PreK addresses and builds a strong foundation for kindergarten success with:
Full group, small group, and individual instruction
Comprehensive assessment and data tools to monitor progress
Spanish resources to provide literary opportunities and support for ELL learners
Built-in family engagement
To further support this critical milestone, we are proud to introduce the Launch to K Assessment. This foundational tool serves as a seamless data bridge between our PreK and enCORE elementary programs, providing educators with an actionable snapshot of a child’s skills through observational and benchmark data. By establishing clear baseline skills and identifying students needing immediate support, Launch to K empowers educators to:
Establish a clear data baseline before instruction begins
Screen for foundational skills to identify students requiring additional support
Tasha McKinney brings over eight years of experience in education. After four years of teaching outdoor education programs, she pursued a Master’s in Early Childhood Special Education at the University of Texas. Since then, she has worked in classroom settings and created content for EdTech companies.
Establish a clear data baseline before instruction begins