Reply to Expectations for kindergarten classroom?

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[quote=Anonymous]We're in APS, but some questions/thoughts. Before I comment on the specific items, it helps to remember that young children are notoriously unreliable narrators, especially when it comes to quantifying stuff. Are you familiar with the old teacher suggestion, "If you only believe half of what your child tells you about school, we'll only believe half of what they tell us about home"? It sticks around for a reason. As to your specific concerns:

[i]The class watches a video every day.[/i]

What kinds of videos are they watching? Sometimes schools will use videos to cover certain topics like bullying to make sure all students are given appropriate and consistent content. Also, there are a couple of lines of short educational videos that involve getting the kids up and dancing, they're really short (maybe five minutes), kids really engage with them and it helps break up their day a bit and give them some movement. If the teacher is just putting on an hour of cartoons in the afternoon, that's a different story.

[i]DD brings home a bunch of letter tracing worksheets she did in class.[/i]

She's been there a week, and her teacher has to evaluate all of the students in the class to see where they are with things like reading and writing. The letter tracing worksheets may be part of that evaluation process. Also, at that age most kids still need practice forming their letters properly and getting fluent in writing them before they're ready to move on to substantive writing. Worksheets are an appropriate way to practice this.

[i]Teacher gave DD a lollipop for being a good listener. [/i]

I'm with you on this, I don't like food being used as a reward in the classroom. I don't know the FCPS policy on this, though.

[i]Teacher uses a behavior chart.[/i]

I'm also not a fan of this, but whether I made a fuss about it would depend on whether it was negatively affecting my child.

[i]DD asked me why her teachers spend so much time typing on their computers.[/i]

See my comment above about children being unreliable narrators. You don't know how much time the teacher is actually spending on her computer, and you especially don't know what she's doing on it. If she's on her computer responding to parent emails or checking for a follow-up on a potential change in class schedule for the afternoon while the kids are getting a break to play in the classroom, there's nothing wrong with that.[/quote]

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