Kindergarten Communication from Teacher

[Anonymous]

Hoping to hear from parents of current or recent Kindergarteners.

Is it normal to not have homework or textbooks?

Are you getting weekly updates on the class app with a brief overview of what they’re learning?

Otherwise, how do you know if your child needs help before progress reports? I’m not concerned about the grade, but making sure my child is understanding.

[Anonymous]

Homework varies by school. So yes, some schools having no homework is normal.

No, it would be very unusual to get weekly updates on what they're learning.

Your question of how to know if your child needs help is a great one for the teacher. Presumably, they will let you know if there's a problem.

[Anonymous]

My kid is going into 7th grade and I have seen 2 textbooks total in his schooling - 5th and 6th grade Social Studies.

[Anonymous]

We are in Arlington. No homework in K (or at all in elementary). We get a weekly newsletter via email from each of our kids’ teachers that highlights what they worked on that week. The teacher will reach out if there is any issue, but if there is something you are worried about reach out to them.

[Anonymous]

No textbooks, and we did have some "homework" eventually - a packet that was sent home on Fridays to be returned the following Thursday or Friday - one page of ELA and one page of math concepts a day, usually. But the truth was I never had any idea where she was with her learning or whether she was on track. And even at the PT conferences it was not clear at all - I'd hear "oh, she got a 576 on I-ready" but that means . . . nothing to me? And when I asked what she needed to work on the teacher would pull up the test and go to look at the questions she got wrong and say "Oh, we haven't gotten to that yet, we haven't covered this yet" so I'm not sure WTF the testing was even supposed to be covering since it's not what they've learned?

My advice as a parent of a now-rising 1st grader - work on reading, writing, and math basics at home. This is all stuff you can teach your kid and if you wait for the teacher to tell you where your kid is falling behind you'll probably be disappointed. I was shocked by both 1) how little reading progress DD made in Kindergarten, and 2) how few weeks it took me this summer to get her from a handful of sight words to staying up late reading chapter books by herself. Her teacher sucked but luckily it wasn't a statistics or calculus teacher. I can still teach whatever she needs to learn at age 5.

[Anonymous]

Are you a tiger mom? Kindergartners should be learning through play.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No textbooks, and we did have some "homework" eventually - a packet that was sent home on Fridays to be returned the following Thursday or Friday - one page of ELA and one page of math concepts a day, usually. But the truth was I never had any idea where she was with her learning or whether she was on track. And even at the PT conferences it was not clear at all - I'd hear "oh, she got a 576 on I-ready" but that means . . . nothing to me? And when I asked what she needed to work on the teacher would pull up the test and go to look at the questions she got wrong and say "Oh, we haven't gotten to that yet, we haven't covered this yet" so I'm not sure WTF the testing was even supposed to be covering since it's not what they've learned?

My advice as a parent of a now-rising 1st grader - work on reading, writing, and math basics at home. This is all stuff you can teach your kid and if you wait for the teacher to tell you where your kid is falling behind you'll probably be disappointed. I was shocked by both 1) how little reading progress DD made in Kindergarten, and 2) how few weeks it took me this summer to get her from a handful of sight words to staying up late reading chapter books by herself. Her teacher sucked but luckily it wasn't a statistics or calculus teacher. I can still teach whatever she needs to learn at age 5.

This right here is my exact concern. We’ve made so much progress on reading at home, but there really does not seem to be a serious emphasis on phonics at school. I want him to have the fundamentals down, but the day is so long and he’s too tired for enrichment at home. I guess just the weekends and summer will have to suffice?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you a tiger mom? Kindergartners should be learning through play.

I’m the child of immigrants, but my spouse who isn’t is also concerned. I don’t think it’s a Tiger Mom thing, but a generational shift.

[Anonymous]

OP, your questions are great questions for back to school as it is very dependent on the school and the teacher. I have interned in K (I could never teach it) and there were zero textbooks but there were workbooks. The teacher gave out homework and it was just a way to connect learning from school to home and was not graded. There were weekly updates via the app. To know how your child is doing, just ask. As a teacher, part of our job is customer service.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No textbooks, and we did have some "homework" eventually - a packet that was sent home on Fridays to be returned the following Thursday or Friday - one page of ELA and one page of math concepts a day, usually. But the truth was I never had any idea where she was with her learning or whether she was on track. And even at the PT conferences it was not clear at all - I'd hear "oh, she got a 576 on I-ready" but that means . . . nothing to me? And when I asked what she needed to work on the teacher would pull up the test and go to look at the questions she got wrong and say "Oh, we haven't gotten to that yet, we haven't covered this yet" so I'm not sure WTF the testing was even supposed to be covering since it's not what they've learned?

My advice as a parent of a now-rising 1st grader - work on reading, writing, and math basics at home. This is all stuff you can teach your kid and if you wait for the teacher to tell you where your kid is falling behind you'll probably be disappointed. I was shocked by both 1) how little reading progress DD made in Kindergarten, and 2) how few weeks it took me this summer to get her from a handful of sight words to staying up late reading chapter books by herself. Her teacher sucked but luckily it wasn't a statistics or calculus teacher. I can still teach whatever she needs to learn at age 5.

This right here is my exact concern. We’ve made so much progress on reading at home, but there really does not seem to be a serious emphasis on phonics at school. I want him to have the fundamentals down, but the day is so long and he’s too tired for enrichment at home. I guess just the weekends and summer will have to suffice?

Our pre-K teacher told us not to work on it because they had a system, and in pre-K it seemed the sytem was working! She was "blending" sounds and was really good at sounding out words, picked up some sight words, etc. In Kindergarten she stagnated and then regressed some (lost some sight words), probably because the teacher really only let the kids who came in already knowing how to read do any reading in class - the rest were put on tablets to "learn." I was starting to worry she was dyslexic! But like I said: a month or so of focusing on reading together every single day and she's reading chapter books alone now. She is bright and capable but the teacher was really bad, which is just the luck of the draw unfortunately.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No textbooks, and we did have some "homework" eventually - a packet that was sent home on Fridays to be returned the following Thursday or Friday - one page of ELA and one page of math concepts a day, usually. But the truth was I never had any idea where she was with her learning or whether she was on track. And even at the PT conferences it was not clear at all - I'd hear "oh, she got a 576 on I-ready" but that means . . . nothing to me? And when I asked what she needed to work on the teacher would pull up the test and go to look at the questions she got wrong and say "Oh, we haven't gotten to that yet, we haven't covered this yet" so I'm not sure WTF the testing was even supposed to be covering since it's not what they've learned?

My advice as a parent of a now-rising 1st grader - work on reading, writing, and math basics at home. This is all stuff you can teach your kid and if you wait for the teacher to tell you where your kid is falling behind you'll probably be disappointed. I was shocked by both 1) how little reading progress DD made in Kindergarten, and 2) how few weeks it took me this summer to get her from a handful of sight words to staying up late reading chapter books by herself. Her teacher sucked but luckily it wasn't a statistics or calculus teacher. I can still teach whatever she needs to learn at age 5.

This right here is my exact concern. We’ve made so much progress on reading at home, but there really does not seem to be a serious emphasis on phonics at school. I want him to have the fundamentals down, but the day is so long and he’s too tired for enrichment at home. I guess just the weekends and summer will have to suffice?

Our pre-K teacher told us not to work on it because they had a system, and in pre-K it seemed the sytem was working! She was "blending" sounds and was really good at sounding out words, picked up some sight words, etc. In Kindergarten she stagnated and then regressed some (lost some sight words), probably because the teacher really only let the kids who came in already knowing how to read do any reading in class - the rest were put on tablets to "learn." I was starting to worry she was dyslexic! But like I said: a month or so of focusing on reading together every single day and she's reading chapter books alone now. She is bright and capable but the teacher was really bad, which is just the luck of the draw unfortunately.

Keep an eye on screen use. Yes, kids aren’t super reliable reporters but the weaker teachers rely on screens a lot, while the stronger ones use them sparingly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No textbooks, and we did have some "homework" eventually - a packet that was sent home on Fridays to be returned the following Thursday or Friday - one page of ELA and one page of math concepts a day, usually. But the truth was I never had any idea where she was with her learning or whether she was on track. And even at the PT conferences it was not clear at all - I'd hear "oh, she got a 576 on I-ready" but that means . . . nothing to me? And when I asked what she needed to work on the teacher would pull up the test and go to look at the questions she got wrong and say "Oh, we haven't gotten to that yet, we haven't covered this yet" so I'm not sure WTF the testing was even supposed to be covering since it's not what they've learned?

My advice as a parent of a now-rising 1st grader - work on reading, writing, and math basics at home. This is all stuff you can teach your kid and if you wait for the teacher to tell you where your kid is falling behind you'll probably be disappointed. I was shocked by both 1) how little reading progress DD made in Kindergarten, and 2) how few weeks it took me this summer to get her from a handful of sight words to staying up late reading chapter books by herself. Her teacher sucked but luckily it wasn't a statistics or calculus teacher. I can still teach whatever she needs to learn at age 5.

I don't understand why you didn't do stuff like look up i-Ready tables to find out what her assessment meant, or notice that she wasn't reading fluently and do some extra work at home. Why didn't you know until summer? Why did you need the teacher to tell you? Also did your child get a report card at any point? That would have told you whether your kid was on, above, or below grade level.

[Anonymous]

My daughter went to K last year. We had a wonderful teacher. She sent a weekly newsletter. We got additional emails periodically about any special events. No homework or textbooks. We had a fall conference with the teacher then as needed.

[Anonymous]

Assuming you’ve already taught her to read she will be fine. If you haven’t taught her to read yet then you should start now, using an actual phonics program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Assuming you’ve already taught her to read she will be fine. If you haven’t taught her to read yet then you should start now, using an actual phonics program.

Yes, I’ve taught him to read with a program. I’m just worried that I’m going to burn him out by expecting him to do enrichment after he comes home from a long day of school. I think that alone proves that I’m not a tiger mom. I really don’t think my parents would’ve cared about my level of exhaustion. Haha