NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on Dec 18, 2015 15:59:24 GMT -5
Reading what exactly? We keep discussing "expecting them to know how to read" but that can be anything from Hop on Pop to being able to read Socrates. The goal in our school system is 20 words by sight recognition at the end of the year. They are extremely small words like "we" "dog" "me", etc. They do a baseline at the beginning of the year and then each kid's progress is measured by where they were at the start of the year. She explained how it works but I wasn't paying attention since Gwen can already read all 20. If they can't read all 20 then the work is continued in 1st grade. I am sure there is a cut off for when they decide more intervention is needed but we didn't get into that. I am not convinced that 20 small words at the most by the end of the year is a huge burden put onto kids.
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NoNamePerson
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Post by NoNamePerson on Dec 18, 2015 16:08:38 GMT -5
My son went to all day kindergarten (private) and they had play period, art. I still have some of the pictures. They also had music and all the other stuff but they had learning basic skills like reading and writing too. I didn't expect him to be reading Les Miserables when he got to first grade but will say that he was ahead of lots of kids in class (not all)
His teacher called for a conference early on and she said he wasn't paying attention in class. I asked her to show me what they were doing. I told her he was bored since he had done most of that in Kindergarten. Thank goodness he had a good 1st grade teacher and she gave him other stuff to work on along with a couple of other children who were the same way.
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alabamagal
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Post by alabamagal on Dec 18, 2015 17:26:06 GMT -5
Early reading is great, but all kids learn at different paces.
My middle child seemed to be slow to start reading. Like maybe at the end of K5. But once he started he caught on fast.
Youngest started reading before his 4th birthday. He was reading at a second grade level when he was tested for his early entrance to K5. He was also doing math, adding and subtracting 3 digit numbers. I joke that he was a genius in K5. Somewhere along the way other kids caught up and passed him. He was top 20% of his class but no longer genius level.
And both my boys had identical SAT scores, although I think the older one is better at math and younger had to study to get same SAT score
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Lizard Queen
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Post by Lizard Queen on Dec 18, 2015 20:28:41 GMT -5
I think that my son is supposed to be learning 50 sight words by the end of the year. I'm fine with it, but I don't like the sight word method. I try to explain phonics to him when we're going over them. I think it beats guessing until he has them memorized.
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Dec 19, 2015 10:10:48 GMT -5
I don't know. I guess I dont' view that as such a monumental life decision. We live in a small town. There is one school. So, that's a pretty easy decision. There are no private schools in our town. There are some Catholic schools but they are in the next town and transporting there would be a big PIA. So, whether they started later or early just seems of very little consequence. I dunno. There are (I think) 12 schools with kindergarten within 5 miles of my house. Charter schools, schools of choice, private schools and public schools with open enrollment, so they were all available to me. Most of them are quite large. The school my kids went to was K-4, so I had to choose from an equivalent number of schools for 5th grade. Each of the schools has their own personalities and styles, strengths and weaknesses. Parents around here are pressured to 'find the best fit' for their kid. It almost seemed easier in 5th grade, because I knew what kind of students they were and we had already had good and bad experiences, so I at least had a base knowledge to start from. When I was trying to decide if my son should start on-time, I had several people say "Why not start him on time, but at a smaller school?" So I didn't just have to think about now vs. later - but also research all the smaller schools to see if they would be a better place for him. It was a matrix decision.
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Dec 19, 2015 10:19:15 GMT -5
We are leaning toward sending him, I'm more concerned than my DH is about it. It won't let me bold on here for some reason, but the part you wrote where your son wasn't disliked but had no close friends, I can see that happening already. And it makes me sad for him. He tells me I'm his best friend, which is sweet. I just feel bad that he will have (and is having) a harder time socially, when socializing with peers is hard enough to begin with. I asked this board if it was weird that the neighbor kid said my husband was his best friend and everyone told me I was an asshole. But, I will tell you that his birthday is shortly after the cut-off so he is one of the older kids, but not freakishly older. Holding your son back may not make him "better" socially. And, he will grow up and be just fine. My point is that maybe social reasons shouldn't be a primary concern?
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on Dec 19, 2015 10:54:43 GMT -5
I don't know. I guess I dont' view that as such a monumental life decision. We live in a small town. There is one school. So, that's a pretty easy decision. There are no private schools in our town. There are some Catholic schools but they are in the next town and transporting there would be a big PIA. So, whether they started later or early just seems of very little consequence. I dunno. There are (I think) 12 schools with kindergarten within 5 miles of my house. Charter schools, schools of choice, private schools and public schools with open enrollment, so they were all available to me. Most of them are quite large. The school my kids went to was K-4, so I had to choose from an equivalent number of schools for 5th grade. Each of the schools has their own personalities and styles, strengths and weaknesses. Parents around here are pressured to 'find the best fit' for their kid. It almost seemed easier in 5th grade, because I knew what kind of students they were and we had already had good and bad experiences, so I at least had a base knowledge to start from. When I was trying to decide if my son should start on-time, I had several people say "Why not start him on time, but at a smaller school?" So I didn't just have to think about now vs. later - but also research all the smaller schools to see if they would be a better place for him. It was a matrix decision. Yes if you have multiple schools to choose from then that something to consider. I just see people literally agonizing over a lot of school issues which i just think are inconsequetial. Like being devasted if your kid doesn't get the "right' teacher or whatever. I just don't think it is that important in the scheme of life.
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Dec 19, 2015 11:22:14 GMT -5
Yes if you have multiple schools to choose from then that something to consider. I just see people literally agonizing over a lot of school issues which i just think are inconsequetial. Like being devasted if your kid doesn't get the "right' teacher or whatever. I just don't think it is that important in the scheme of life. I agree that as parents we don't always concentrate on the right things. The hard part is that it is often difficult to see what is important and what will wash through until you are in a hindsight position.
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on Dec 19, 2015 13:34:54 GMT -5
Yes if you have multiple schools to choose from then that something to consider. I just see people literally agonizing over a lot of school issues which i just think are inconsequetial. Like being devasted if your kid doesn't get the "right' teacher or whatever. I just don't think it is that important in the scheme of life. I agree that as parents we don't always concentrate on the right things. The hard part is that it is often difficult to see what is important and what will wash through until you are in a hindsight position. Agreed. But you just make your best decisions. There are life lessons in everything.
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Lizard Queen
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Post by Lizard Queen on Dec 19, 2015 16:07:47 GMT -5
I had a hard time with the kindergarten choice. The neighborhood elementary is getting worse, but the one near DS's sitter--in the same district--is still very good. 25 kids to a class though. The private school he went to last year for preschool is very good, located literally around the corner from my house, and limited to no more than 16 per class. Then, there's an arts academy charter about 10 miles away, maybe less, but nearer to the sitter. So, my choice was arts, religion and location at a price, or continuity and convenience near the sitter. I chose the sitter, assuming he would be able to ride the bus to and fro. The bus thing didn't happen, so I lost the entire advantage to choosing that school. I wish I had chosen one of the others, but DS is doing well despite the large class size.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 19, 2015 17:44:01 GMT -5
I'm not really understanding the "sight word" thing. My kids learned strictly by phonics. It is also how I learned to read. I don't know if it is still around, but Open Court was the publisher then.
I deliberately did not teach my children because I do believe you can screw it up. But remember I am a phonics believer. At the end of first grade (that's when they taught reading back in the early 80s), they could read anything. My daughter made us laugh at age 7 by reading the Presbyterian Covenant. She had no idea what any of it meant, but she pronounced covenant perfectly on the first try.
If your kids aren't learning using phonics, I would teach them myself. As a teacher, I constantly see kids read "county" as "country" and "than" as "then." They are "guessing," which is what some methods encourage.
My two cents . . .
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NoNamePerson
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Post by NoNamePerson on Dec 19, 2015 18:56:27 GMT -5
This thread makes me wonder how I became such a avid reader. I learned to read from Dick and Jane books I learned to spell by being told "look it up"!!! Shoot now all we have to do is put misspelled word in google and it asked "did you mean"
Maybe reading and spelling just come natural to some folks cause it did for me. Now if they had just had a way to teach math by phonics I would have been a whiz at math
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Anne_in_VA
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Post by Anne_in_VA on Dec 19, 2015 19:19:25 GMT -5
I learned to read using the phonics method (late 50's) and from what I've seem, my grandkids are learning the same way. I don't understand the "sight" method, but I guess it would work. Thankfully the kids love to read! We're giving one of the older kids an e-reader and gave the oldest one a tablet for his birthday. He downloads books from the library and a website his teacher gave him access to.
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Lizard Queen
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Post by Lizard Queen on Dec 19, 2015 19:23:25 GMT -5
I'm not really understanding the "sight word" thing. My kids learned strictly by phonics. It is also how I learned to read. I don't know if it is still around, but Open Court was the publisher then.
I deliberately did not teach my children because I do believe you can screw it up. But remember I am a phonics believer. At the end of first grade (that's when they taught reading back in the early 80s), they could read anything. My daughter made us laugh at age 7 by reading the Presbyterian Covenant. She had no idea what any of it meant, but she pronounced covenant perfectly on the first try.
If your kids aren't learning using phonics, I would teach them myself. As a teacher, I constantly see kids read "county" as "country" and "than" as "then." They are "guessing," which is what some methods encourage.
My two cents . . .
I agree about the sight words. I think my son's teacher mentioned their building up to learning phonics, I guess? I didn't know there was that much to ramp up to, but I guess learning letter sounds? During the school year, I'm trying to stick to the teacher's agenda, but I have been showing DS how the letter sounds go together to make words. The complete guessing at super short words annoys me.
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whoisjohngalt
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Post by whoisjohngalt on Dec 19, 2015 19:39:07 GMT -5
I I'm not really understanding the "sight word" thing. My kids learned strictly by phonics. It is also how I learned to read. I don't know if it is still around, but Open Court was the publisher then.
I deliberately did not teach my children because I do believe you can screw it up. But remember I am a phonics believer. At the end of first grade (that's when they taught reading back in the early 80s), they could read anything. My daughter made us laugh at age 7 by reading the Presbyterian Covenant. She had no idea what any of it meant, but she pronounced covenant perfectly on the first try.
If your kids aren't learning using phonics, I would teach them myself. As a teacher, I constantly see kids read "county" as "country" and "than" as "then." They are "guessing," which is what some methods encourage.
My two cents . . .
I am using a very very good phonics program to teach my kids to read. 2 done, 1 to go. In addition, I am also using an excellent spelling program. That being said, there are so many exceptions to the exceptions in English language and so many caveats that teaching all the phonics to a 5 o 6 yr old seems a bit silly. Re: highlighted part - when my kids do that I tell them to stop being lazy, bc it's not the lack of phonic instructions that they had. It's simply them not wanting to take the time to actually read the word. And things like that don't just happen during reading. And not just by kids. Adults do that all.the.time. We skim things, thinking that we know what was written. Not bc we don't know the difference between the words. Just being lazy and not paying attention to details. To me, that's a much bigger problem than not knowing phonic rules.
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whoisjohngalt
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Post by whoisjohngalt on Dec 19, 2015 19:41:20 GMT -5
BTW, it doesn't have to be either/or - phonics or sight words. It can be both at that age.
I am much more interested in my kids actually understanding what they are reading. I don't care if they don't pronounce every single word correctly
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Lizard Queen
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Post by Lizard Queen on Dec 19, 2015 20:18:58 GMT -5
My frustration with sight words isn't as benign as confusing "county" and "country", but confusing something like "frog" and "cat".
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Post by Deleted on Dec 19, 2015 20:33:00 GMT -5
My frustration with sight words isn't as benign as confusing "county" and "country", but confusing something like "frog" and "cat". How benign is the difference between 'United" and "untied"? It is all the same letters.
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Lizard Queen
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Post by Lizard Queen on Dec 19, 2015 20:41:55 GMT -5
My frustration with sight words isn't as benign as confusing "county" and "country", but confusing something like "frog" and "cat". How benign is the difference between 'United" and "untied"? It is all the same letters. ;0 Bad choice of words. ? The way I'm feeling today, it's lucky I even make any sense at all. (The ?was supposed to be a smiley. Must not translate over from my phone.)
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Post by Deleted on Dec 20, 2015 3:19:34 GMT -5
R eading what exactly? We keep discussing "expecting them to know how to read" but that can be anything from Hop on Pop to being able to read Socrates. The goal in our school system is 20 words by sight recognition at the end of the year. They are extremely small words like "we" "dog" "me", etc. They do a baseline at the beginning of the year and then each kid's progress is measured by where they were at the start of the year. She explained how it works but I wasn't paying attention since Gwen can already read all 20. If they can't read all 20 then the work is continued in 1st grade. I am sure there is a cut off for when they decide more intervention is needed but we didn't get into that. I am not convinced that 20 small words at the most by the end of the year is a huge burden put onto kids. Socrates bores me silly. I was reading "All Of A Kind Family" before I started kindergarten. I will admit that I had help in the form of a high school English teacher for a father. It kind of felt like the scene from "To Kill A Mockingbird" where Scout knew how to read before she started school because Atticus taught her. Same here, except Dad's name wasn't Atticus. Disclosure: (Favoritest book in the world!!!)
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alabamagal
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Post by alabamagal on Dec 20, 2015 9:54:18 GMT -5
My son learned to sight read first. We would read to him one of those books with 30 words. So a month before he turned 4 he took the book and said "I am going to read it". And he did. Then we went to the word list in the back of the book and he knew every single one. He then went on to read a lot more. It was a lot later that he learned to sound out words.
When he started K5 he tested at 2nd grade level and advanced rapidly from there. But somewhere along the way other kids passed him. His SAT scores were good but not great.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 20, 2015 9:57:14 GMT -5
I haven't read new research lately but when I was teaching research did not show that early reading made better life long readers, and in fact sometimes those who read early were worse off later.
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formerroomate99
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Post by formerroomate99 on Dec 20, 2015 17:58:18 GMT -5
Frankly, I think it is a sensible decision. Some kids are just late starters. Also, if your kid wasn't in daycare all day, he will be competing with kids that have been in an institutional setting all their lives and have had academic instruction since age 3.
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milee
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Post by milee on Dec 20, 2015 20:52:37 GMT -5
Obviously a single story doesn't prove the theory is true for everybody, but I'm a good example of this and have wondered about this exact thing lately. Growing up, I was a very early reader and excelled at academics, but had absolutely zero athletic skill or spatial ability. No men in the house. I assumed (partly because I'd been told it so many times growing up) that I was a weak klutz and had no spatial ability in large part because I was a girl and it was in my genes. Weird thing happened when I grew up and was around strong, athletic women and women who were engineers and sailors... I found I could do those things, too. Not well at first, but it was possible. And with practice, I was actually pretty good at some of those things it hadn't even occurred to me to try. If I were growing up today in a fairly normal family, I think I might have been a pretty good student athlete and would probably have gone into engineering. But if you'd suggested those things to the teenage me, I would have laughed out loud at how impossible that would have been...
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TheOtherMe
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Post by TheOtherMe on Dec 20, 2015 22:27:48 GMT -5
I am much older than you and when I was getting ready for kindergarten, the cut off date was November 15. I have a mid October birthday, so I started school at age 4.
I was ready because I had taught myself to read and do simple arithmetic but as I got older, I was socially immature. Even my parents agreed by 7th grade or so that I had been sent to school to early. They were not going to hold me back due to the social stigma so I muddled through.
I see nothing wrong with sending kids to school at a later age than when they can first go to kindergarten.
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973beachbum
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Post by 973beachbum on Dec 21, 2015 8:21:05 GMT -5
@anne81 my DH has a different theory. He says guys are better at things like engineering and military stuff because they have to learn things like trajectory when they learn to pee standing up. Throw some cheerios in the potty for them to aim at, and they even get target practice.
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finnime
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Post by finnime on Dec 21, 2015 9:45:03 GMT -5
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nikiz628
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Post by nikiz628 on Jan 3, 2016 23:31:18 GMT -5
After a discussion I had two years ago with an experienced preschool director, we decided to hold off on sending our son to preschool for 2 years, and just do 1 year of pre-k before Kindergarten. At the time, this was because we were going to red-shirt him, as his birthday is early September. The director's advice was that boys tend to do best when red-shirted, due to their "maturity" level at this age. Boys that began Kindergarten closer to 6 seemed to excel more, especially regarding behavior and attention spans. Great advice, plus it would allow me to have him all to myself for another school year.
As it turns out, his birthday was 6 days past the Kindergarten cut off anyway, so he was basically red-shirted by the corporation anyway. He will start this August, so basically at age 6.
Our fear now is that he will be bored in Kindergarten. He does okay in Pre-K, even though the material isn't anything he doesn't already know because he is more interested in the social interaction/play time with kids. He won't have that so much once he begins K, so it may not be as exciting to him.
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