Kindergarten switcheroo

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They will not give your kid what they say they will, will tell you they will have a peer group, will tell you xyz but by 2nd grade will say their hands are tied. As posters above, plan to do academic stuff at home.

Agree ES is daycare - you're on your own for teaching your kids math and reading. School won't do much until either you get lucky and win the CES lottery or MS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They will not give your kid what they say they will, will tell you they will have a peer group, will tell you xyz but by 2nd grade will say their hands are tied. As posters above, plan to do academic stuff at home.

Agree ES is daycare - you're on your own for teaching your kids math and reading. School won't do much until either you get lucky and win the CES lottery or MS.

CES is pretty bad these days. It’s not like it used to be at all. Most would be better off sticking with their home school since the cohort for CES is now so different with the lower admission standards and lottery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a staff development teacher and we do this every year. It really helps ensure that we create balanced classes. I can't speak for other schools but one non-classroom teacher sticks with a cohort of students as they move to the different rooms throughout the week. That way, the group of kids has a trusted adult who is always with them despite moving to each K room. On Thursday afternoon we meet after school and create the new classes. Students finish in their new class on Friday.
I assess my group of kids while I move with them from room to room. The K teacher leads the lessons and I pull my kiddos one at a time and just assess them on basic letter id, number recog. skills, etc. We want to ensure when we go to create classes we have peers who can learn with each other and don't have a class with one kid that is very high by him/herself.

My child is finishing up Kindergarten and her school does the switcheroo. I think it’s fabulous. As the principal said, they may not get it perfectly right every time but four days of assessing students the first week of school is better than 40 mins in April/May. With that said, this requires a ton of work on the part of the teachers, support staff, and admin that first week. It would be great if other schools adopted this approach. No harm in asking your principal!