Why so much focus on reading levels?

[Anonymous]

13:35 What do you mean? Reading comprehensions are based on what they learned from the book or passage. If you're reading a book about hurricanes, the reading comprehension questions will be about hurricanes, what the child has learned and what they can relate to other areas of learning. If it's a fictional book questions will be about what that character learned and how what that character went through relates to your life.

How do other countries assess reading comprehension? Curious.

[Anonymous]

Are you saying in other countries there is no such thing as "language arts"? If not, what do they do in place of it? How do they teach reading and writing?

[Anonymous]

At least in my country, you are tested in reading comprehension and you pass or not. There are not levels. The concept does not exist. You are tested in fluency too and you I think you need to be fluent by 3rd grade.

[Anonymous]

Background knowledge is very important in reading comprehension too. If you ask a student to read a story about baseball and they have no concept of baseball, they will have a harder time comprehending the story. I am a teacher and I read a story to my students about a salamander. They already knew a lot about them because the STEM teacher taught them all about them.

[Anonymous]

OP here, they do have language arts however the kids are learning two languages from kindergarten (Native language and English). In middle school, they are suppose to add another language. They are tested on it every year however there are no levels. Other subjects are introduced much earlier and they spend much more time on math.

What I don't understand is why do we spend so much time on lnaguage in school here? My kid is in 2nd grade and he spends 80% of the time in school working on something related to english language (spelling, comprehension, writing, etc). Everything else (Math, music, arts, etc) in done in remaining 20% of the time.

[Anonymous]

Not sure. It should be for about 2 hours a day. Definitely more than other subjects but not half the time. Eventually it's the same length as other subjects. My 2nd grader is learning a 2nd language for about 1 hour a week and some want to do away with this. How much time do kids spend on a language in other countries?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not sure. It should be for about 2 hours a day. Definitely more than other subjects but not half the time. Eventually it's the same length as other subjects. My 2nd grader is learning a 2nd language for about 1 hour a week and some want to do away with this. How much time do kids spend on a language in other countries?

In lower elementary grades, they spend 1/3rd of the time on English, 1/3 on native language and 1/3rd on Math. We did have arts and once a week. Music was not offered in school when I was growing up.

They introduce environment science and social studies in either 2nd or 3rd grade. I think formal science starts in 4th grade.

[Anonymous]

So what's your issue? Sounds like 2nd grade is very similar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So what's your issue? Sounds like 2nd grade is very similar.

How is it similar? Here the kids are spending 4/5th of the time on one langauge and in other places its like 1/3.