When does APS elementary get intense?

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01/12/2016 12:57

Subject: Re:When does APS elementary get intense?

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Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Third grade. First grade is about solidifying what they started in kindergarten so that kids are entering second at roughly the same level regardless of their pre-K prep, second grade starts to encourage more self-organization and stuff in the kids, and then third is becomes significantly more rigorous and the kids are expected to be more independent.

What does that mean? "Ok, you kids here just hang out for another year or two while your classmates catch up"? APS says they scaffold the curriculum to meet kids where they are, do they stop doing that for the highest performers?

Hope, that's not what I mean at all. My oldest is in fifth at an APS elementary (one of the neighborhood schools in North Arlington frequently touted as one of the best, but I'm not saying which for privacy; also not specifying that to brag or suggest I buy into it, but to make clear that it's not a school that's dealing with a lot of issues related to to low SES, language barriers, etc., that complicate early education), my middle is in 3rd, my youngest is in 1st). All of my kids have gotten differentiated education to meet them where they are (e.g., reading groups, pull-outs for math enrichment, etc.) throughout the years. My first grader isn't being held back in reading just because he came into kindergarten reading while others are still learning in first, he's being given books that are appropriate to his level, but what he's expected to do with them will be different in third. Right now it's read a book in class, talk with the teacher and his reading group about what happened and what he liked about it. Last year in K he did one "big" project that was a very simple book report (truly, just answer a few spoon-fed questions, totally maybe five sentences plus a picture he drew), and was something all the kids did, regardless of reading level. In third grade, they will do a lot more independent reading without as many comprehension checks from the teacher, and will be expected to, for instance, do a more involved book report with a deeper analysis than they did in kindergarten. But again, the kids were able to choose their own books appropriate to their reading level.

Accidentally hit send too soon. What I was trying to get at with my original post is that, going back to the reading illustration as an example, K and first are really about making sure that, barring specifically circumstances, all kids can read, and have a certain baseline ability to think about what they're reading; if your kid can already do that, they can read higher level books, but won't be given a fundamentally different book report project from their peers. In second grade, it won't necessarily get more rigorous in terms of having meaningfully more difficult or complex assignments (by which I mean book reports and other things they do to demonstrate and reinforce comprehension) to do in these areas, but the teachers will start teaching them more how to thing about these projects and organize them on their own without being given as much structure as the kindergarten book report had. Then in third, the speed at which they will be expected to pick up new material increases, the complexity of their assignments to demonstrate comprehension increases, and they will be expected to manage it on their own without as much teacher or parent guidance.