Re: 2-year-olds reading?
- From: Chookie <ehrebeniuk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:19:19 +1100
In article <393c53b8-ad44-4456-945a-3876f45e0edb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Beliavsky <beliavsky@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 31, 6:13 am, Chookie <ehreben...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <fsc7l4$iv...@xxxxxxxx>, "toypup" <toy...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Kindergarten started out very difficult. There was loads of written
homework from day 1. They started writing sentences the second week of
class, which I remember, because I just couldn't believe it. Of course,
there were kids who couldn't even trace the alphabet or knew their
letters,
so it was ridiculous.
Crazy. How long did it take before they started treating the children like
children?
There are different opinions about what this entails. How do you know
that your expectations are the right ones?
I am surprised that 5-year-olds of normal intelligence would not know
the alphabet. What have their parents been doing with them?
Not everyone has a Noice Family, you know. Do you think ice addicts are
sitting down with the alphabet books? How about the illiterate parents? The
drunks? The severely mentally ill? Or the families headed by an older
sibling because the parents are in a gaol or gutter somewhere? Or the ones
where the home language is not English, or does not use Latin letters?
That leaves aside the question of what *knowing* the alphabet is. I would
expect that most Anglophone children would be able to sing the alphabet song,
but not necessarily write the letters, at the start of school.
My expectation is that children should be taught what they need to be taught,
not expected to have skills which they manifestly do not (or conversely, be
taught things that they manifestly already know). My expectation is that
children should not be made to feel like academic failures on the first day of
school because some idiot teacher thinks that all parents have taught their
children to write.
Both of my
sons have done so long before their 5th birthdays. If schools are
clear about what entering kindergarteners are expected to know, I
think many parents will prepare their children accordingly.
*Many* does not mean *all*. What provision are you making for the Great
Unwashed Masses (and I assure you that even if they are absent from your
school, there are plenty of them elsewhere)?
Our schools do not assume ANY academic knowledge of beginning kindergartners,
and they should not. There are a set of outcomes for the END of K -- the
teachers are obliged to teach to them. The Department of Education doesn't
have jurisdiction in the houses of preschoolers' parents.
Children
who are slow in learning the basics should not hold back everyone
else.
Who said they were? Children who do know the basics should not be forcing the
pace on those who are not, either. Each should be taught at the point where
he can learn, rather than a point where they are bored or overwhelmed.
--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)
http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/
.
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