I definitely agree that children should be exposed to reading. What I am not sure about is “punishing” them if they fail to achieve at such a young age. At our school, children who are behind in reading are given tutoring during periods when other children have recess. The idea is, I guess, that if they haven’t reached a certain level by the end of kindergarten, they will never catch up.
Oh, absolutely–and I that your beliefs are supported by research. Every teacher can tell you about the kid who struggled with reading all year, only to suddenly surge ahead in March when something clicked. That’s totally normal, and it’s not something we should spend much time fighting against.
An ideal pedagogy doesn’t push every student to perform to standard. An ideal pedagogy pushes every student to make appropriate advancements for that student. I think we’re slowly moving in that direction as a society, with measure that track a student’s growth over a year, but we’re far from reaching that place.
So when do kids generally read?
We only have experience with the Devilling. No friends with young children, no neighbours on the street (and with about 1000’ of woods between properties, it’s not like it’s a cozy neighbourhood either). We send him to pre/nursery school a couple times a week so he doesn’t end up all Boo Radley, but honestly don’t have enough contact with other people’s children to have an idea.
And so I thought this thread would help, but nope.
I get that there are only averages and generalities to speak in, and I get that people move at different paces at different times. But I still have no idea where the mean is.
So … the little man is 4.5. He’s a September kid so he’ll be heading in to kindergarten in a year and a half. Right now, he’s reading James and the Giant Peach to us, and can do very simply math (“dude, I just shoved four spiders up my nose. If Mommy will give me a cookie if I can jam nine up there, how many do I need?”).
Again, we have no perspective. But some are saying here that they’d expect his classmates to be learnign the alphabet in K and 1st grade? Or just some kids, but just a few, will start out with the alphabet and it’ll all be normalized to that point by the end of 1st grade?
Do they make practice ‘core’ tests we can take a look at?
They still have that. Some places call the “4-5” class preschool, some call it pre-K, or “junior K.” Just depends. I don’t think it affects the curriculum much, except, classes offered by public schools are more likely to use a term like “pre-K,” and have certified teachers.
Hence, aging up the Kindergarten.
The only problem with that is that you get kids of very different sizes in the same room. My son is very big for his age, and has an October birthday. He’s a head taller than the next tallest kid in his class. He’s pretty sweet-natured and laid back, and I still worry that he might throw his weight around-- I really don’t want him to become the class bully. We had some preemptive talks with him about might not making right. He’s only about two inches shorter than a parent I’ve seen in one of the other classes. His father is really big, and a good guy, though, so I hope the example will serve him well.
My understanding is that a 4-year-old who can read Dahl is several standard deviations away from normal–on the very high side for the general population, way behind the curve if you believe Dopers (seriously, he’s four, and he can’t even tackle Proust, and you admit that in public?). I’m having trouble finding hard statistics on the subject, however.
For reference purposes, my son, who is 5.5, and in Kindergarten, is now reading at a “beginning 1st grade” level. He is able to read very simple books, he does well with words that are 3-4 letters with standard short vowel sounds. Long vowels tend to trip him up, but he’s getting better at using context to figure out the word. His list of ‘sight words’ is short but improving.
James and the Giant Peach is a while away for him, he is just beginning to be good enough to pick up something at random and not have it be all gibberish.
Rhythmdvl, it really does vary. In my school district, almost all kids enter K knowing the alphabet, and most have basic reading (some sight words, sounding out the basics). Some are reading quite well. Here, most parents are college educated, most kids go to preschool or daycare, and so the kids are exposed to pre-reading activities, so can do more than kids in other types of environments. Still, many don’t read until sometime in K because of their own developmental schedule. I think most kids are capable of letters before K, but to read they really need to reach a certain developmental point. Reading is taught in K, and by 1st basic reading is expected (I assume kids who have trouble get extra help).
My son is in a 3 day/week preschool. His class for 3 year olds has taught the alphabet one letter a week all year, and then does games, stories, and crafts. Not hothousing at all - it’s a very laid back school, but knowing ABCs is a basic part of preschool in every program I’m familiar with.
In very broad strokes, I’d expect K to “introduce” the alphabet quickly because most kids know it, and move on to reading throughout the year. By 1st, most will be reading, but some will have more trouble with it than others. Learning the alphabet is not a 1st grade curriculum goal - any child who doesn’t know it at the start of 1st would be considered behind.
Rhythmdvl, if that’s where your kid is, you might want to consider skipping over kindergarten entirely, and starting him straight into first grade. He’s way above his peers, and there’s the risk that he might be bored in school.
Of course, we can’t say how his emotional development is going, and being a year younger than all of his classmates can also cause its own set of problems, so it’s not an easy decision. But you should at least consider it.
I pity the fool who doesn’t meet Mr. T in kindergarten!
I went to K in 1942–I was 5. I recall little of it, but it was only a half day (first term, afternoon, second term morning) and the teacher probably read to us, but I certainly had no intro to the alphabet until first grade and it wasn’t till I was in second grade that I realized I could read the balloons in comics. (They were much better after I discovered that.) The cutoff date for the first term was Jan. 31. You could also start in the second term.
My kids went to K in the 70s. But they were in French immersion and the teacher had enough on her hands speaking only French to them and certainly didn’t introduce reading. It was started in first grade, but was French only (we were advised not to let them read English, although my second child learned to read at 4 from looking over our shoulders when we read to them).
One thing that definitely led to this was Sesame Street. The kids were watching it at least from age 2 and certainly knew the alphabet and a few words by the time they started K. So they started it teaching it there. In fact, looking at my grandchildren I realize that K is what 1st grade used to be.
Do Waldorf (Rudolf Steiner) Schools still not teach reading until 2nd grade? Those kids seem to turn out fine, hippy parents aside.
I graduated from Kindergarten in 1983. Although only a few of us could read at the beginning of the year, all my classmates could do their ABCs and read at least a little Dick and Jane by graduation. Our diplomas had those letter people on them, too. Expecting to be able to read some before the end of kindergarten is definitely not a “these days” situation, at least not in the northeast.
When I was four, I had already read The Little Prince. But then again, I attended what was then considered to be one of the top laboratory schools in the world. I went back there a couple of years ago to do a half-day observation for a course I was taking. I watched a five-year-old child draw an accurate picture of the vascular system of a tree, and then correctly label the cambium, phloem, and xylem. He also spelled all three words correctly. Under the diagram he wrote “the phloem pulls sucrose from the leaves and transports it to the roots.” This is the type of education that affluent people can obtain for their children.
Until Rhythmdvl, I was frankly horrified by this thread.
My son is two and a half. He already knows his alphabet, and can recognize his name, my name, and mom’s name. He’s not particularly ahead or behind in his daycare class.
and kids twice his age don’t know the alphabet? That is really bizarre.
I remember being expected to know the Alphabet and do very simple reading in first grade, and that was circa 1991, so it’s been expected to know the alphabet by the end of kindergarten for a long time.
Reference point needed for foreign person: how old are first graders?
Generally, you’re 6 when you start 1st grade. Schools have different rules on the cutoff date, some say you have to be 6 by Dec 31 of the school year, that’s the latest date I’ve known, some say you have to be 6 by an earlier date, Oct 1, Sep 1, etc.
Perhaps it’s best to delay kids who are behind their peers as early as possible, to minimize the social cost.
What I recall is that most kids could recognize a number of simple words, and were just beginning to read at the start of 1st grade. That was in '62. Requiring that level of proficiency at the end of K makes sense to me.
I do see that kids get algebra and calc much younger than we did in my day. Lucky sots! I loathed the fact that by 6th and 7th grades, we spent 7 months reviewing dreadfully boringly simple stuff, and only got to new material in the last month or so. What a waste of time I could spend reading! (PS: I did spend it reading anyway. I mastered the “hide the book in the lap” technique.)
Thanks.
Yup, affluent people can buy overpriced education that doesn’t really teach anything. Just because the kid was able to parrot a diagram and some arrangements of letters around it doesn’t mean he understands anything about it. Ask that same child what the tree uses sucrose for, or what humans use it for, or what parts of a human serve a similar function, and I’ll bet he’d be completely clueless. But understanding those things is a lot more relevant than being able to spell “xylem” correctly.
Here are my experiences.
My daughter attended a Montessori School until Kindergarten. Kids aged 3 to almost 6 in the same classroom. At the start of her Kindergarten year all but one of the kids her age could read simple books aloud to the younger kids. Median household income was easily over $200k.
She then moved to a public school in a town with median household income over $100k. Most kids were reading at the beginning of first grade, but there was a pretty wide range of abilities. From Dr. Seuss to Encyclopedia Brown. A handful of kids (out of ~100) barely reading at all, and assigned special help.
My cousin has taught Kindergarten in the Bronx for over 20 years. 80%+ are on free or reduced lunches. About the same come from homes where English is not the primary language, and this has increased over the years. Very few kids are reading at the END of Kindergarten. Many of them are not familiar with the English alphabet entering Kindergarten.
On paper, the expectations are the same. In practice they are very different.