Reply to I didn't know that the transition from K to 1st would be so hard

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Reply to "I didn't know that the transition from K to 1st would be so hard"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think the interesting thing is that first grade made me realize why parents have to supplement. We are in FCPS and it's been a complete black box. We get one or two worksheets once a week sent home with a check plus on it. But I have zero idea what my kid does all day beyond referring to "Stations."

We are getting an interim this week, so I imagine we'll see all sorts of issues that we have to run around and fix with expensive tutoring. It's annoying and frustrating, but I get it. The day is super busy, there are more kids, they are getting adjusted and with one teacher it's hard to accurately teach and assess the kids AND give them attention. My kid reports that the bulk of her day is self-directed learning, worksheets, learning games, etc. It's not teacher led. The teacher is seeing groups of kids, assessing reading and math, and focused on recording records.

In an ideal world, I wish each grade an an assessment teacher whose sole job was to do all of these individual assessments and recording records so teachers can focus on teaching. It's a pipe dream of course.[/quote]

It's been the same for us all the way through 6th grade. Awful. Finally middle school has actual classes and no Stations where all the kids do is talk.[/quote]

Yes! And the thing that drives me nuts is that as a parent you're told your kid can't do X, Y, Z. But when I press on how they learned whatever, the answer is self-directed stations. The focus on assessing over actual teaching is frustrating. We are doing Kumon (something I never, ever thought was going to be necessary) because there's a lack of focus on actually teaching the kids. 10 minute mini-lessons ain't going to cut it when the kids spend the remaining 80 cycling through self-directed stations while the teacher is in the corner doing a DRA with a kid one on one. It just doesn't make sense.

I wish our school was more honest about this.

FWIW, I taught in a title I school (our kids go to the neighborhood school that's actually "high" performing and I'm home on mat leave now, but will return in Jan.) I had an assessment teacher who did a lot of the testing so I could focus on the kids more directly. But we got that teacher out of Title I funds.[/quote]

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