Reply to 2.0 1st grade curriculum: Carbon Dioxide? Yes! Telling time? No!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I have one kid in the lower track and I absolutely hate hime being in a class with kids mostly smarter than him  He struggles daily and I would love for him to be with peers at his level.  Maybe lower ratios and more direct teaching would help these kids.  Right now he blows off worksheets because he is embarrassed.  And because he can.  No one is watching him or helping him.  Then he gets labeled as a problem child.  Very frustrating.  [/quote]

My DD is in first grade, and I see this weekly when I volunteer.  If I'm there, I can sit with the kids who are having difficulty and walk them through what they should be doing.  Otherwise, the kids who don't get what's going on just blow them off and learn that they're stupid (which I adamantly do NOT believe, I just hear the kids say 'Larla is good at math, I'm not').  More direct instruction would be better for ALL the kids.

I agree with lower ratios of the kids who need to catch up.  Putting them with the kids who are more advanced isn't helping.  Some people on here have argued that the kids who are above level are helping the kids who need to catch up, but I don't see this happen.  The kids who speed through the worksheets, just go to the reading corner and read or take extra bathroom breaks, etc.  [/quote]

It definately happens, what people who don't volunteer with these early primary grade kids don't realize is that they compare themselves to each other constantly.   It has nothing to do with parent pressure or anything else, it's just a human fault to look at others and notice if they are better than you.  As we mature, the reflection is one of admiration, for the very young it leads to not wanting to compete.

I volunteer often and see the same thing. It is sad that these struggling kids just give up after watching peers move faster than them. [/quote][/quote]

Not only do these struggling kids need a tracking class to themselves, but they need a lower ratio than their peers and a support of a full time aide. This needs to start immediately in K.   They need written material in multiple languages that these kids can bring home and practice.  Not only to help the kids but to help the parents learn what their kids are learning to better help them.  By the time the kids are coming to parents for help, some parents have no idea what to do.  Trying to get kids to pass their parents education by upper elementary school is tough.  By the time they hit middle school there is no one to help them.  Heck, I even had to Google mean, median, mode to make sure I remembered which one was which.   Most kids getting good grades in MCPS are parent or tutor led and not teacher led.  The struggling kids need more help early and quickly.  They don't get it in combined classes watching peers excel 1-2 grade levels past them.  And many also get pulled out for ESOL and they lose more ground missing material that was taught when they were gone.  The system makes no sense.  It encourages a huge achievement gap.   [/quote]

So true!

I'm college educated (and definitely no genius) and I had to Google some videos to help my 3rd grader with some math strategies that she did NOT understand in school.  I thought the same thing - how does a busy/ESOL/lower SES whatever parent figure this out well enough to explain to the kid who isn't understanding it in school?  This system does a disservice to all the kids.

What the PP said make sense - lower ratios for the kids who are struggling with extra teaching help.  So the kids actually learn the material, and don't just get passed on to the next grade (which is what is happening now).  And, I agree that the way it is now, encourages the achievement gap.  The kids who can get help at home, or whose parents can afford tutoring perform better.  The kids who do well in MCPS would do well in any school system.  It's not MCPS that generates the high performing kids.  If it was, the achievement would be getting smaller. [/quote]

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