It's time to stop the madness! I was told that children entering kindergarten in Maryland

[hedgehog]

are tested and must be able to identify the letters of the alphabet and sight read 20 words from a list. Is this true? Aren't children taught the alphabet in first grade, and what's up with the sight reading?

[supernova]

1. You're behind the times

Kindergarten is no longer the bastion of games, puzzles, and naps.

There is readin, writin', and a little 'rithmatic.

Seriously, if your kid isn't at least familiar with her letters and numbers by K, then they will be behind.

[gatorboy]

5. And homework!

Good, God my son had a lot of homework in Kindergarten.

[hedgehog]

10. Homework is a crime against family life!

[Echo In Light]

20. Our elementary school-aged daughter has more HW than I had in junior high

Some of the mathematics is beyond what I'd have thought plausible for most that age ... stuff that we didn't encounter until well into junior high/HS freshman era.

[derby378]

2. Our national IQ average is starting to slip

If we don't reverse the trend somehow, we're heading for a real-life Idiocracy.

[hedgehog]

9. So, are you for or against pushing small children ahead this fast?

FWIW, every one of my six kids was checked out for a possible speech impediment before kindergarten. My accent is a combination of West Virginia and West of Ireland brogue and that's what all the kids had. It sounded strange to the people from the school district. A couple of my kids were actually reading before kindergarten because I read to them and they wanted to read for themselves. What made them special , though, wasn't what they knew going into kindergarten, but their eagerness to learn and curiosity about the world.
All six of my kids went to college with scholarships.

[SPedigrees]

3. Sounds like craziness to me.

Kindergarten is supposed to be about becoming acclimated to a classroom of other kids and a classroom schedule. Activities traditionally include drawing with crayons, cutting with blunt ended scissors, pasting, learning colors, games with other children, both indoors and on the schoolyard.

First grade was where letters and numbers traditionally are learned.

(What is "sight reading?" As opposed to what.. brail?)

[raccoon]

6. I think "sight reading" means memorizing the whole word, same as in Chinese

you have to memorize the whole character.

[Obamanaut]

13. What raccoon said. Here's a link re sight reading

<snip> Sight Words: In kindergarten, your child will get a list of words to memorize. These words are called sight words because children learn to recognize them by sight. These are basic words that form sentence structures. If your child can read these words then he is better able to figure out the remainder of the sentence.

Sight words include articles, pronouns, verbs, colors, and numbers. Sometimes pure memorization is not enough. Your kindergartener may also have to sound out the words in order to learn them.<more>


http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1423952/kinder...

[TheKentuckian]

16. You're livining in yesteryear.

Now, with virtually every household being single or dual incomes the kids are learning the socialization and craft activities in day care. Its almost unavoidable since the kids are already in more or less a classroom setting and certainly need constructive things to do that will occupy them for stretches of time.

The general layout of society naturally creates a situation where things are happening on an accelerated basis as far as the settings most kids will be in from the classroom, to being home alone, probably dating, and in some cases college course work therefore being exposed to the uptick in responsibility, variety of people, and self determination.

[TxRider]

24. Yesteryear?

Dunno about everyone but mom taught me to that level when I was that age, back in the early 60's.

[SPedigrees]

45. Of course I'm living in yesteryear. I was born in 1950 and

I have no children. I'm describing Kindergarten "curriculum" as it was in my day. As a child (like most of my peers) who never had daycare experience, kintergarten was a starting point.

[TxRider]

59. Yeah me too, born in the late 50's..

But my mom prepared me teaching basic spelling etc..

The sheer amount of knowledge increase since I was in school though I would think means kids have a lot more to learn in the same time as we did in the 60's and 70's.

For example all that we learned, plus computers and digital etc. that weren't around back then.

[gmoney]

48. That sounds like the purpose of pre-school to me...

"Kindergarten is supposed to be about becoming acclimated to a classroom of other kids and a classroom schedule. Activities traditionally include drawing with crayons, cutting with blunt ended scissors, pasting, learning colors, games with other children, both indoors and on the schoolyard."

I'd say that's the purpose of pre-school... getting the kids used to the social aspects, basic sharing, basic sitting in a group and paying attention and following a teacher's instructions.

[Fumesucker]

4. Get 'em a "Speak 'n Spell" before they are two.

They will have letters down cold by kindergarten and be reading some words too.

Utterly painless on the part of the parent too, the kids love doing it.

It worked in 1981 with my daughter and in the 2000's with my grandkids..

[Kalyke]

8. My 2-year-old daughter can say the alphabet

She can't recognize most of the letters, yet, but she's working on it.

We use toys similar to Speak N' Spell.

[Fumesucker]

25. I have three grandkids, six, seven and nine.

My seven year old granddaughter is the best reader of the the three, I tried her out over the summer on Machiavelli's "The Prince" (since I happened to be reading it at the time), she could actually read quite a bit of it, she routinely maxes out her nightly one minute reading test.

The other two are by no means stupid but the middle one is almost scary smart (and a born button pusher, you can't keep her away from computers, cell phones or anything technological). We were talking last night about music and I mentioned Johnny Winter being an albino and how he became a musician because he was picked on in school so much so we spent twenty minutes on teh google looking up albinos..

[Carl Skan]

7. It's not child care, it's school.

Even the slowest of our kindergarten class knew their ABCs by the end of the year. I remember because we got a pizza party for it and we all helped a kid named "Chris" get his down right. It was a pretty darn big day.

[hedgehog]

11. Shouldn't school be child care, in the broadest sense of the term?

I'm not talking about babysitting, I'm talking about preparing the child to be a fully functioning adult.

[Carl Skan]

12. Okay, then "It's not babysitting, it's school"

You are playing on my words.

Fully functioning adults, heck even fully functioning 7 year olds, know their alphabet.

[hedgehog]

17. I'm objecting to the push for rote learning at an early age in place

of real education. Reading should not be a parlor trick, it should be something kids are desperate to master because they want to know what all those books are saying.

I've been skeptical of this attitude ever since my sister told me about her son's work in about 5th grade. They spent days in class and hours in homework analyzing a children's novel every which way possible. It was a stupid throw-away about the sinking of the Titanic. Far better, imo, if those kids had spent the time being exposed to classic short stories and poems.

[Carl Skan]

18. What's your opinion of Sesame Street

And their daily sponsors?

[hedgehog]

23. My kids watched Sesame Street sometimes. What I recall is that the

program talked about numbers and letters, but also about life as people interacted on Sesame Street. I also recall simple films like one that explained how crayons are made. Sesame Street was about way more than most people realize.

[Fumesucker]

27. Sesame Street was (and is) a great program..

Has a little for everyone, including the adults.

[Kaylee]

30. You do realize that Kindergarten isn't a bunch of kids sitting at

desks struggling over learning to read. My son is on a field trip to the local park right now for his "science" lesson on the sense of touch. Yesterday, he was excited about cooking (math) and loves circle time in the afternoons(storytime). He was really proud of his oral report last week (show and tell) and is head over heels to be "reading" his first sight word (THE). And homework is done in less than 15 minutes (color the fish that are alike).

I'm not sure what you want the kids to be doing in kindergarten. They want to learn and are having fun doing it.

[hedgehog]

46. I think what you describe is what kindergarten is meant to be.

[Carl Skan]

47. Then you are complaining about nothing.

Because that's what kindergarten is. It's why teaching the alphabet is a year long objective and not a one-week goal.

[hedgehog]

51. According to the woman I was talking to, children were required to know the alphabet

and some words before entering kindergarten.

[Carl Skan]

55. Or what? They're not admitted?

It sounds like what another poster said lower down on the page, it was an evaluation of where the kids are so that classes could be structured accordingly.

Kids come to kindergarten with all sorts of preparation. You have parents who have them actually reading, some can recognize a few words, some know their alphabet, some know a few letters, and some have parents who don't think that stuff is important enough to spend time on at home.

[hedgehog]

58. You're probably correct. The more I think about this, the more I realize

that this woman is a closet racist and I think I was picking up other vibes when she mentioned this.

[Carl Skan]

60. My gosh.

Did you really attempt to tie early learning to racism in your other reply?

You are a teacher's worst nightmare.

[hedgehog]

62. It's not the early learning that's tied to racism. It's the use of early learning

to game the system.

[Carl Skan]

43. Do you think kids in kinder are sitting in a lecture hall

learning the alphabet all day?

[Bill McBlueState]

56. that film about the crayon factory was awesome

I go on youtube and show it to my two-year-old sometimes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMU-wXsgyR8

[Carl Skan]

57. It was great but it kept me from learning about the great works of literature in pre-k

j/k

[dugaresa]

28. i don't like parlor tricks but sometimes rote learning helps

build basics. specifically in math. kids who memorize their times tables and simple math problems are a bit faster than those who undertand the concept but don't have the memorization stuff down. it isn't that both kids aren't learning but the kids who memorize certain standard pieces can do better.

as for reading, my one child was not a phonetic reader gosh that was an awful period of my life trying to find the best way to teach reading to a child who has a different way of learning. we eventually found a method via the school but it was trying at times.

[Carl Skan]

15. In addition

You aren't going to convince other parents to stop teaching their kids early.

If you take the attitude you appear to want to take with your original post, that kids shouldn't need to learn the alphabet until first grade, do so at your kids detriment. You're starting them off behind their peers and it's not the fault of the school system.

[hedgehog]

21. Parents need to teach their children, the question is what are they teaching them?

Literacy and numeracy are tools that open up a greater world. If the emphasis is solely on accomplishing a skill without igniting a basic curiosity about the world, all that is being created is a drone ready for the corporate world. Nothing is sadder to me than seeing a young child spend hours on a computer with no access to a patch of woods or grassland, with no capacity to just be.

[kwassa]

41. Why does one preclude the other?

Children are curious all on their own, and their curiousity doesn't need to be ignited, it simply doesn't need to be stifled.

What exactly is your expertise in education, by the way?

[hedgehog]

49. My expertise is limited to my own experience as a student and mother.

Throw in a little time spent teaching religious ed.

The woman who told me about her grandchild in MAayland was boasting that she could read her letters and 20 words. What got my back up was realizing that this woman has spent her life living her own little world, perfectly happy to be totally ignorant.
She thinks Fox is the only accurate news source.

[Carl Skan]

44. Agreed with the other poster about one precluding the other

You can learn the alphabet in a year while still doing the typical kindergarten stuff.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

32. If the child is not developmentally or emotionally ready

too much academic pressure at an early age can be damaging.

I'm a former college professor, and what I saw was not students who couldn't read but students who hated to read and whose only thought was not what they could learn but how they could game the system.

Later, when I tutored street kids for their GEDs, I was surprised to find that every last one of them could sound out words. They had the mechanics of reading down cold. What they could not do was interpret what they read if the sentence was more than about five or six words.

My idea of academic success is:

1. The student loves to learn, perhaps not every subject, but s/he loves to learn SOMETHING and enjoys reading about it.

2. The student can evaluate evidence and think and write clearly about a problem or question.

3. The student knows all the math needed for everyday life and for understanding basic science.

4. The student knows enough about science and the scientific method to be able to follow discussions on public policy that touch on science.

5. The student understands how the U.S. and state governments work and how these institutions evolved over time.

6. The student knows geography and American and world history well enough to be able to spot the bullshit on right-wing radio.

7. The student is able to practice at least one lifetime art or craft: drawing, pottery, woodworking, playing a musical instrument, acting, creative writing, anything else that can fill their leisure hours after they're too old to play sports and get bored with TV.

8. The student speaks a foreign language well enough to function as a tourist outside the tourist ghettos and to make small talk with the locals.

[Bluerthanblue]

64. Much wisdom in what you say Lydia!

when my youngest son started school after 2yrs of HeadStart, they identified him as needing a program called "Reading Recovery".

He was not even 6 yet, and he needed a "recovery" program.

I was one of those very fortunate children who read at age 3, and by 5 was reading better than my 4th Grade sister. Reading came naturally to me, almost instinctively. Raising my children, who have faced some difficult learning disabilities, has been an incredible eye-opener.

Sometimes the pressure to perform put on kids by teachers who are being pressured to produce "test scores" can backfire and really turn what should be something wonderful into a nightmare. The "fault" isn't with the child, or the teacher- it is with the system. Test scores are a poor way of measuring "progress", but make nice charts and easy statistics.

I think your list of "Academic Success" is excellent.

[Hello_Kitty]

38. Yeah, because god knows we can't expect parents to do that anymore.

http://www.canada.com/topics/lifestyle/parenting/story....

[slampoet]

14. I entered kindergarten at 4 years old and could read about 10 words and all the alphabet.

This was in the early 70's and in a Podunk little town. i was retaught the alphabet in Kindergarten.

[Kaylee]

19. No. My son just entered Kindergarten in Maryland.

Now, by the time the end of the year is up, he will have to know these things for first grade. You must be able to read fairly well by first grade to have any hope of keeping up.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. This is madness

My mother is a former kindergarten teacher, and she hates this development. Not all children are ready to read at age five, and if they're forced to do so too early, they get frustrated and feel like failures--at FIVE.

Kindergarten was conceived as a way to teach children to get along in a group setting outside their family, work on their eye-hand coordination, increase their cultural and practical knowledge through hands-on and experiential activities, and to create a DESIRE to read. Teachers created a desire to read by reading interesting stories to the children, playing games that let the children develop their visual memory, and exercises that involved putting pictures in order to form a coherent story. In traditional kindergarten, children learned the alphabet and numbers and how to print their names in the last month of the school year.

About thirty years ago, the British school system ran an experiment where they introduced reading to five-year-olds at some schools. After a few years, they realized that any advantage the early readers enjoyed completely disappeared by age TEN.

That's right, if your kid learns to read at age five, s/he may be the star of third grade but will be just average by fifth grade.

Did you know that Finland, widely regarded as having the world's best school system, doesn't start reading instruction until age SEVEN? And their writing system is a lot more phonetic than ours.

All this talk about "Oh, our children have to compete" is bullshit.The best school system in the world does not teach children to read until they are seven.

[hedgehog]

26. I had the hardest time understanding what teachers were talking about when they

discussed different aspects of reading. Then, as I interacted with other people's children, I realized that learning to be able to follow a story is an acquired skill. The best thing I ever did for my kids was to talk with them all the time about everything and to read to them. (Of course, I did saddle them with my accent) We used to look at bugs and watch the folks from the gas company install new pipelines. We walked around the neighborhood daily.

We were lucky; I was able to be at home with them until they started school. More and more, I think that two symptoms of what's wrong with our society today is that we have to keep our dogs tied up and so many of our children are raised by paid employees rather than family members.

[TicketyBoo]

29. My son was reading

by age 4, but it was because he was so anxious to learn. Because of Sesame Street, he was asking what certain letter combinations he would see on signs spelled. I recognized the fact that it was the same thing I did in first grade, and realized that he was ready to learn to read. I bought a set of Hooked On Phonics, and we only had to open two decks of the flash cards, and he was reading. All he needed was a clue, and the whole process opened up to him. It was truly magical. I think it's a matter of catching them at just the right time, and this is different for each child.

I certainly don't think that any child should be pressured or rushed.

[eShirl]

31. In kindergarten '69-70, we learned our letters and had our first Dick, Jane & Sally reader.

I couldn't imagine waiting until first grade to learn the alphabet!

[pampango]

33. I think it's to determine who's needs "Readiness Kindergarten" and who goes into regular

Kindergarten. About 15 years ago our son was entering K and all the kids were tested to see which type of K class they would go into.

Apparently there is a lot of diversity in terms of the developmental level of kids at that age. Our school district tried to give the ones an extra boost to catch up developmentally more intensive help (Readiness Kindergarten) than the others got.

[hedgehog]

53. There is a possibility that part of what is going on here is a form of

racism and/or classism. "If I teach my kid these advanced skills, s/he will go into the advanced class with the other middle class kids and not into the regular class with those people."

Like I said, it's a possible motive for some parents. At least two of my own kids were reading before they started kindergarten.

On edit: I live in a small town that covers all groups from people on welfare to people in McMansions. I realized over the years that there was a clique of middle class women who knew all the ins and outs of the school system far better than I ever did in my naivete. They knew what pre-K to send their kids to so they'd get the best Kindergarten teachers. Of course, by high school, it didn't matter for my kids. What hurts is wondering about all the kids who'd dropped out. I'm afraid they were done with school by second grade, and I wonder how our school system could have done a better job.

[CBR]

34. My husband teaches pre-K and they review

the letters and basic words.

[Renew Deal]

35. They learn the alphabet before kindergarten

And should be able to identify a number of "sight" words by the time they finish kindergarten. Kids are tested in the beginning so the teachers know what they're dealing with and to track progress.

[livetohike]

36. 30 years ago when I was teaching Kindergarten

I had about 6 students who were able to read at the 2nd grade level by the end of the year. They started learning the alphabet on Day #1. Learning sight words is part of learning to read - learn cat, substitute b for the c is bat, substitute h for the c you have hat and so on. So hopefully, things have not gone downhill since those days .

[ctaylors6]

37. are you sure they "must" be able to do those things? or is it a screening test?

My children's public elementary school tests similar things the spring before kindergarten (not Maryland). The teachers and administration use the information mostly for deciding how to make up the different kindergarten classes. One of my friend's is a kindergarten teacher and she says it's as much a social observation testing. For example, they don't want a lot of live wires all in one class. They also like there to be a wide range of abilities in class (eg not have tons of great readers with one kid who can't read at all). Finally, the teachers like to know early in the school year if there are any kids who may need a little more help or a little more challenge.
I saw a huge range of ability in kindergarten. Most kids around here go to preschool, so they usually know letters. The reading ability varies wildly.

[kwassa]

39. My daughter knew her alphabet at 18 months

and she knows her alphabet and numbers in English and French at her current age of two and a half.

What madness? She loves books, memorizes stories, though she can't write, yet. She often takes a book to bed with her, or reaches for it first thing when she wakes up.

Maryland has some of the best public school systems in the country, by the way, between Howard and Montgomery counties.

[dysfunctional press]

40. we learned the alphabet in kindergarten.

i was born in 1961, and i attended a lutheran grade school.

[AngryAmish]

42. How are they supposed to get into a good kindergarten if they can't read at least a little?

[hedgehog]

50. I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Either way, your statement epitomizes

an attitude I see more and more.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

65. Yes, that's been the attitude in Japan for over thirty years

and believe me, if you see a large percentage of society acting like that, it's not pretty--or good for the children.

[TrogL]

52. I flunked Kindergarten

Using the evidence of "doesn't play well with others" and various obsessions to reach the conclusion that I was too stupid for grade 1.

When parental outrage forced them to give me an IQ test, they couldn't mark it. You're not supposed to be able to finish it.

[hedgehog]

54. According to my Dad, I flunked coloring.

[AngryOldDem]

61. Kindergarten isn't an extension of playtime anymore.

And I'm glad for that.

[hedgehog]

63. We need to learn to play as well as to work. Otherwise you end up with

a nation of all consuming shopoholics who measure their worth by how much they own..








Oh, wait.....