Hello there, Amy asked me to write a little about what I think parents can do to help kids get ready for school. My name is Adrianne Fulton (for those who don’t know me) & I teach kindergarten in
My first thing that I have the strongest feelings about is…if your child is not ready don’t send them. The requirements for these little guys to meet anymore are so extreme for a 5 year old that if they aren’t ready to do it…pushing them will make it worse. They will struggle, get frustrating because they are struggling & then eventually give up. It is amazing how much of a difference there is between kids who are early bdays (Sept.) & late bdays (July). The first few weeks of school, without even looking at their birthdays, I can tell who is the oldest & who is the youngest. As a future parent & a current teacher, if it was my child who had a birthday during the summer I would SERIOUSLY consider – are they truly ready. Even if their birthday is a May, April or March, if they are obviously not ready it would be easier to send them to preschool another year than to have them have to repeat kindergarten or struggle for the rest of their schooling because they met the age requirements for the school district, so you decided to send them. Boys are typically a lot more immature and more "unready" than girls at young ages. Keep in mind. If they struggle in kindergarten, they will almost definitely struggle in the majority of their schooling. Their attitude towards school and learning depends a lot on how they perform in their early years of school.
Like I said before, your kids will learn so much by the end of kindergarten. In order to truly know what you should have the kids know I would talk to a kindergarten teacher in your area to get specifics. But below are things that we do that will be pretty general and most likely done in pretty much any kindergarten.
One of the biggest things is…READ! Let them see you reading. Kids truly learn best through example. If they see that you love reading, they will want to emulate that & they will want to read & be interested in that as well. I have heard (I don’t know if it is true or not) that kids who have their fathers read to them become more interested in reading/better readers because they feel special that "DAD" is reading with them & taking the time to do that & therefore it must be a special thing. It is so important to read EVERY single day. At a young age get them into the habit. My sister was so good at this & her little boy would get out of his bed & take a pile of books to his night light (so he wouldn’t get caught by turning on the light) & “read” by reciting his favorite books at about age 4 or 5. Be a reading example.
One thing to keep in mind while your kids are in school is that if something is slightly suggested, really take it into consideration. For example, I had a little kid once that really should have repeated kindergarten & because of the laws & everything legal that you have to deal with in schools you can’t say – keep your child back. It is more of a – your child is struggling, these are your options, what do you want to do? - Because of the legality of it, really take it into consideration & realize they CAN’T tell you what to do. They can only suggest and let you make the best decision for your child. If they are mildly suggesting something, it probably means that they would strongly like you to consider it.
As far as what to work on & when it is required, here are a few suggestions. Another thing to keep in mind is – less, more often, is more. If you are planning on working on something for 30 minutes a day, it is better to do 10 minutes 3 times a day than 30 minutes in one sitting. Little kids obviously can only focus for a small amount of time, so spending 5-10 minutes (or even 2-3) on a topic is better than spending 30. Driving is a great time to review and talk with your kids. Ask them education questions while you drive and make a game out of it. If there are only a few things that you can do these are the things I would suggest – know most of their letters- if not all & some sounds, write & recognize their name, rhyming, numbers to 10 at least & to 20 would be amazing, hold a pencil…correctly, holding scissors…correctly, zipping their coat & at least start working on shoe tying. Obviously these are high requirements and would help your child be the higher end of the class...but by no means a requirement to enter kindergarten. Here are more specific requirements and the quarter that we do it in.
*1st - rhyming (which is either really easy or really hard for kids…work on this a ton), patterning, sorting, numbers, letters, letter sounds, shapes, beginning sounds, knowledge about a book (where to start, punctuation, words vs. letters, etc), 5 senses
*2nd – numbers, letters, letter sounds, counting by 10’s, 5’s & 2’s, even & odd #’s, 3-dimensional shapes, blend/segment onset & rime,
*3rd – numbers, letters, letter sounds, time & money, measurement, blending phonemes, reading ability, seasons
*4th – numbers, letters, letter sounds, addition, subtraction, graphing, syllables, phoneme substitution, reading ability
These are the big things that they are tested on in
*1st: colors - 2nd: I, to, my, at, a, see, like, mom, yes, dad, me, no – 3rd: for, here, go, can, is, and, have, you, it, love, in, by – 4th: play, the, said, he, are, she, on, up, we, am, look, this
A book that I would definitely recommend for parents with boys is “Mind of Boys” by: Michael Gurian. It is a book about how boys are different than girls. They learn differently, they express themselves differently & therefore they need to be treated & taught differently. When I began the book I was thinking – oh another book that I will read & then stick on the shelf. The first chapter is a rough one to get through, but keep going. It is an amazing book that truly helps you understand your boys better. I honestly read a lot of it & would think “oh that is why my husband/students/nephews/friends kids thinks or does that”. It was an amazing book & I would recommend it for anyone who has a boy, works with boys or just wants a good book that is an easy & very informative read.
Hopefully my pages of rambling didn’t totally bore everyone. But that is my opinion :) If there are more questions I would be more than willing to give more of my opinion…but remember I am not amazing with this yet, this is just what I think after two years.
12 comments:
Ady, thank you so much! You are a peach and everything you said was so helpful!
this was really great - I will have a 2nd grader and a kindergartener in the fall. And I agree with everything you wrote as far as my experience last time goes. It was also a good reminder for this next time around - we've been in two school districts and the curriculum varied more than I'd expected and both are different from your outline. our first district didn't do ANY time or money, which is a bit of a shame. That is a HARD concept. I wish I'd started earlier with my first. It just takes a lot of practice and involves so many skills... anyway, I just wanted to say, yes, yes - I agree! Thanks for the tips/reminders!
WOW! That was good advice! They do have a lot to prepare for. Great ideas! thanks for taking some time and really writing detail!
I just want you to tell me what a phoneme is.
Phoneme...They will have to blend and segment phonemes. Basically it is just the parts or sounds of a word. When I teach it, I tell them you are going to segment or you are going to blend and then they know what to do (they like the big words). But if I say segment (take apart) the word "bat"- they say each SOUND (not letters) b...a...t - completely separate from each other with a space/breath in between to make sure it is separate. Then to blend (put together) I will say the sounds - c....a....t - and then they tell me the word that I just gave the sounds to - "cat" and they say it at a normal speed. It helps with beginning reading to be able to hear the sounds slowly and put them together just like they would when they come to a word in a book they don't understand. To be able to hear it and take it apart and put it back together to decode what the word is. Does that answer it?
Thanks for this post...I'd really like to know why kindergartners need to know how to read before even getting into school. Hopefully I don't sound negative or anything, but I really want my daughters pre-kindergarten years to not be filled with the pressures of academic learning. I totally get the idea of "making things fun" and I already do a bunch of stuff that is learning that she doesn't recognize as such..but what I'm saying is that I feel like kids need to be be able to play and run and just not have such an intense life. I feel like the public school system wants kindergartners to be able to take the GRE as a pass to first grade, and there's something wrong with that picture! :)
I really do appreciate everything you mentioned, because it opens my eyes to what my daughters will face when they get into school.
Amy, what was William's experience like? Did he know how to read beforehand, maybe you could shoot me an email and give me some details, I'd love to know!!
Thanks again.
I didn't say...nor did I mean to give the impression that kids need to be able to read before entering kindergarten. Sorry if that impression was given. I meant - have a good attitude toward reading so that your kids will have the desire to learn and want to read later on. They will be WAY far ahead of the curve if they are reading before they enter. I have only had one kid who could read before entering kindergarten and it was because she was the oldest and just ready to.
I totally agree with you that schools today are expecting too much. If I could put it back to how it use to be...I would in a second. But the reality is, that they will be expected to read and do all of those things before the END of kindergarten...not before it starts.
Definitely let your kids play and be kids as they are young. I wasn't meaning to sound like you need to sit down and have "school" each day. I was just suggesting things that if you wanted to and if your kids were ready for them...do it. But I would keep it fun so that it isn't "school" and that is why I said don't do it for long periods of time. Hopefully this helps. But definitely I would not be working them to death so that they are reading before...because they are too little for that and it isn't expected.
However, the reality is that most kids will enter kindergarten with most of their letters and some sounds...so I would definitely still work on educational things so that they aren't behind their peers. As kids are in school it is important to make sure they are passing the curriculum, but it is also important as to where they are compared to their peers. As a parent, I will work on those early things with my kids, because I don't want them to be the lowest kids in the class. I won't have them reading before kindergarten, but they will hopefully have a head start on their letters.
Thanks for your additional comments Ady...I realized after re-reading my first comment that I came on too strong and could have phrased things more tactfully. I'm terrible with that sometimes---so sorry about that!
I guess this subject is a sensitive one for me; generally speaking it concerns me that there is more pressure put on kindergartners than seems appropriate, and I worry that I will face an uphill battle if I try and voice my concerns to educators.
Kristen - I agree with you about the pressures on these little ones. I have read many books/articles that have phrased what we -as society- want our kids to be as "miniature adults". It kills me that they are taking the play out of school and it is an uphill battle that we are losing very quickly. Because you do have strong opinions about it (which are rightfully valid and you are not alone in this respect) the most important thing that you can do is a teacher request. Investigate your teachers in your area and make sure that you find one who isn't pressing the academics in rote learning, but helping the children learn in fun, academic and valuable ways. There are teachers out there that even with the requirements that are given to these little ones, they can still meet the requirements of "play" as well as what the districts require...no matter how developmentally inappropriate they continue to become. Since we can't change what they expect, we can make sure that we choose teachers who agree with our belief of the importance of "play" and being able to be a child and develop their social skills which are just as important as the academic.
Yes, I am definitely going to be doing this once my daughters get into school. Great idea. My dad has been in education for his entire professional life and so he had high expectations for my teachers all growing up...and so I guess he passed on the high expectations to me. I know that I can't change the way things are, with the legislation the way it is, but like you said, it's not unreasonable to be able to seek out the type of learning experience I want my children to have. There are teachers out there who have figured out how to have balance.
I also have the feeling that a strong home life may be able to compensate at least in some ways for faults in public education system. I mean, when I think about what will make a child successful in school, I really believe that the whole "parents are teachers" theme is not just to get parents motivated. Parents really have a lot of influence over how their children perform based on the type of home environment they create. So if expectations are unreasonably high and my children get stuck with a teacher who wants them to do crazy things....they can thrive in spite of it if I am really involved with things.
Sorry I haven't responded, we're in utah now...
William had an amazing kindergarten experience at Meadowlane (Lincoln, NE, full day) I did not stress drilling him in everything before hand. He knew most abc's and could count to "five-teen" before getting muddled :) He learned everything quickly, and the teacher was always keeping me up to date on what he needed to work on, so we could practice a bit at home. I loved the good teacher-parent communication. What helped a lot was that Taneil would watch my kids on a Tuesday from 9-11:30 so I could go and help in Will's class, and then the next tues I would watch her kids so she could go to her kindergartener's class. That way I always knew what their routine was, and what and how they learned, and I could keep in touch with his teacher easily. I would highly recommend trading with someone like that, it was awesome and william loved having me there and i loved helping :)
Fantastic post, Ady. Thanks for telling us about Teachers "suggestions". I will remember that when my little guy starts school. In the mean time I look forward to reading your book suggestion. Thanks!
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