APS Elementary Experience Today
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Anonymous
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On enrollment thread we saw some things that surprise us.
We are entering K next year. Do kids really get an iPad in Kinder? I thought they weight until 3rd grade before work happens. What grade do they start having homework? Do they have cursive again? |
Anonymous
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My kid is in first, so K was kind of messed up and obviously they used the ipad last year. This year, he uses the ipad occasionally but rarely. It typically remains on one charge all week and most days comes back fully charged.
My other kid is in 4th and still does not have HW, but I hear some of the 5th grade teachers give it. We are at Claremont. |
Anonymous
| Nope - no homework. Even for my MS child |
Anonymous
| Homework depends on school. We don't have it, but are expected to read with child or have child read for 20+ minutes a day. Occasionally, the teacher asks all parents to help with a skill - math word problems or spelling. 1st grader used to bring iPad home but now it stays at school. He had no reason to use his iPad at home this year. Older DD did cursive in 2nd or 3rd to a limited extent. I take all notes on my computer so don't see the need for the cursive as much anymore. |
Anonymous
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My current 2nd grader started K in the fall 2019. They were not given iPads, but they did occasionally use them during "station time" in school. As you know, since then we have been in a global pandemic which upended education as we know it. We have (THANK ALL THAT IS HOLY) not needed to be virtual this year. But at our school they are still instructed to carry their iPads back and forth each day.
They may revert back to *not* giving out iPads in a 1 to 1 ratio but I haven't been following enough to know. Just tell your kid it's for school and they can't use it at home. We do reading for homework, but it's not assigned like that. Our teacher just asks that the kids read at home each day on their own. So we do that. |
Anonymous
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Our school, Discovery has very little homework. 20 mins reading a day and one math worksheet for the week that takes my kid 5 minutes (5th grade).
No formal cursive (we missed that due to COVID) but trying to catch them up by offering it during "encore/specials". |
Anonymous
We're in 1st at Claremont too, and my son uses Lexia/Dreambox sometimes in school, but based on the charged levels and his progress, its not used a lot. We told him the school can see everything he is doing on it and it's not for games/playing, at school or at home, so bottom line he doesn't use it much. |
Anonymous
Has homework become an equity issue since some kids don’t have stable home situations that support homework? |
Anonymous
| Piggybacking on this thread - how has your APS experience been? Are you surprised with the rigor / level of learning in elementary? Several of our neighbors left the neighborhood school for private and are not returning. So now we’re wondering if it’s covid, or if covid exposed that schools are not as good as we thought |
Anonymous
I've been pretty impressed with the quality of teachers we've had in early elementary (@McKinley now Cardinal). My kids always seem to get placed in the most experienced teachers' classrooms. Those teachers were able to accomplish a ton during the pandemic such that the kids are slightly above grade level. I don't think I really need "rigor" for little kids, I just need them to be able to successfully build on knowledge at subsequent grade levels. |
Anonymous
This is where I am. I am happy with the education my kids have been receiving. I also don't think my young kids need rigor and they don't need to learn the way I learned in ES because times and technology change. I tihnk private schools hold parents hands a bit more and I can see why that is more pleasant experience for parents. But I have friends who teach at top/popular privates here and they are teaching the same things my kids are learning (with the same methods). |
Anonymous
Curious - why do they need to learn cursive? As an adult, the only time I ever need it is to sign my name and honestly, my signature looks nothing like any recognizable letters anyway. |
Anonymous
Race to the bottom. Great job APS in the name of equity. |
Anonymous
There’s research out there of the benefits of putting pen to paper and cursive allows you to write faster and generally is just a different way to take in information. There’s lots of advanced classes and other stuff taught in schools that basically no one will ever need to use in every day life. Is that the standard for whether something should be taught? I don’t think so. Exercising your mind and learning new stuff is good. Also my elementary kid found a hunch of letters my father wrote me from overseas all in cursive and couldn’t read them. That’s when I started trying to teach it at home. A lot of our historical records (including family history) is in cursive and it’s a good skill to have. |
Anonymous
APS has never stated that as a reason |