Do your kids use pencils at school K-2?

[Anonymous]

Tell me if you think I am old fashioned, but I am starting to think my child is not doing enough writing and doing too much on the 1-1 iPad. He seems to be hitting milestones (like being able to print his name in kindergarten, reading by 1st grade), but I seem to remember from my school days at a crappy elementary stilldoing writing by hand, copying sentences, working on spelling lists, and doing little written projects. Nothing complicated, but maybe working on copying a little book of verse and then making matching art. Or filling out little questionnaires about family.

What are you seeing at your K-2? Are these little meaningless busy projects or are they important for learning? DS’ handwriting is horrible.

[Anonymous]

Yes. Math seems mostly on the iPad, unfortunately, but there are definitely still written worksheets for math and ELA and additional written ELA assignments. (1st and 4th graders at DCPS)

[Anonymous]

I'd say half the work is written, half on chromebook.

I wish we could opt out of the chrome book. My kids never had much screen time prior to it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Math seems mostly on the iPad, unfortunately, but there are definitely still written worksheets for math and ELA and additional written ELA assignments. (1st and 4th graders at DCPS)

How often do you see worksheets? Maybe 2nd grade is still too early to be seeing many worksheets at home? I know they do some iPad exercises for ELA because DS tells be about it, but I don’t see any of it. For math I did see a couple of 2 page worksheets per month.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Math seems mostly on the iPad, unfortunately, but there are definitely still written worksheets for math and ELA and additional written ELA assignments. (1st and 4th graders at DCPS)

What kind of math program is on the iPad for kids in 1st?

[Anonymous]

FCPS here - the new language arts curriculum implemented last year incorporates a LOT of writing, so we've been very pleased. We have an older child and the difference is night and day - it's so much better now.

[Anonymous]

Catholic school here--our grade school made a deliberate choice to have no technology use in the lower grades, and very limited tech use in the upper grades. Everything is pencil on paper. We're also doing a pledge not to give the students phones or social media at home. I'm so happy that it's still possible to find a place like this.

[Anonymous]

Reason number 723,623,612,680 to put your kids in private schools.

[Anonymous]

We are FCPS. They do a ton of writing by hand.

[Anonymous]

Entirely 100% teacher dependent in public. My 3 kids had 9 different experiences between them in terms of tech use and how much paper work was done in K-2. They all had the same first grade teacher but they had her in various times related to Covid (before, during, and after), which impacted how much paper work that teacher assigned. Different teachers for K & 2.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Entirely 100% teacher dependent in public. My 3 kids had 9 different experiences between them in terms of tech use and how much paper work was done in K-2. They all had the same first grade teacher but they had her in various times related to Covid (before, during, and after), which impacted how much paper work that teacher assigned. Different teachers for K & 2.

9 different experiences? That is wild. I assumed teacher specific differences were more prevalent in privates. I know public follow a specific curriculum by district.

[Anonymous]

You aren’t going to find any copying these days in public schools. They consider it a waste of time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Math seems mostly on the iPad, unfortunately, but there are definitely still written worksheets for math and ELA and additional written ELA assignments. (1st and 4th graders at DCPS)

How often do you see worksheets? Maybe 2nd grade is still too early to be seeing many worksheets at home? I know they do some iPad exercises for ELA because DS tells be about it, but I don’t see any of it. For math I did see a couple of 2 page worksheets per month.

For my younger one, there's no homework but she'll bring hand-written classwork home periodically and they get the Eureka math workbooks sent home whenever they finish all of the material covered in that workbook. They did iReady math lessons online definitely in third grade, I think before that also, but the kids are at camp so can't confirm with them.

[Anonymous]

our kids barely use computers at school, thankfully.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You aren’t going to find any copying these days in public schools. They consider it a waste of time.

That's a shame. I spent a lot of time copying dictionary definitions in 4th grade and really expanded my vocabulary that way.