Reply to How Common Core is wrecking kindergartner -- with SPECIFIC examples

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Different K teacher (long retired).  
To the question about managing a K class.  I’ll admit that 30 kids with one aide is not easy or ideal.  However, there are lots of things a teacher can do.  It’s been a while since I taught.  Here are a few ways you learn:
1.	You observe how the kids behave and react when they are in the large group (storytime, sharing, etc.) You would be surprised how much teachers learn in this atmosphere.  I would keep notes.
2.	There are many diagnostic tests available that are not machine graded “bubble tests” .  Teachers even create their own.  Believe it or not, these are tools that teachers have used for years and years—long before Common Core or NCLB.
3.	You interact with kids on an individual basis every day in some way.  And you watch, watch, watch.  You also listen, listen, listen.
4.	You may have the aide read a story or supervise centers while you work with kids one on one or in small groups.  
5.	You can learn a lot about the child’s social skills by paying attention at recess.
6.	I used to keep notes on each child—especially when I would see something that concerned me.  This is in addition to samples of work and tests, etc.
7.	A teacher can learn a lot about a child by having them draw and tell a story.  
8.	The one thing good about being a K teacher is that it doesn’t take long to “grade” work.  But, you do learn a lot from looking at what the child does-or does not-produce.

[/quote]

I'm a college student majoring in early childhood education/teacher education. I want to be a kindergarten teacher when I graduate. Everything this pp listed is what they are teaching us right now. It's about assessments. As a teacher, you write the lesson plans based on whatever the learning outcomes are supposed to be, and you assess the students as they demonstrate the skills that they learned from your lesson plans. It could be during group work, (large or small), or you demonstrate a task and ask them to complete it, but mostly at this young age, it's performance based assessments, and this is truly the best way to measure progress.

Let's say that the kindergarten class has 30 kids. Well, it's most likely in a district that has more resources (not a title one, or high farms school).[b] Chances are that this school has plenty of parent volunteers in the class to allow the teacher time to focus on each individual student as needed[/b], and chances are that many of the students are coming in with an academic advantage over those who are in the title one/ high farms rate schools.

Let's say that the kindergarten class has a high percentage of farms students (title one). In this case the class size will be smaller. Maybe 20 or less. In addition, there will be money for extra instructional aides. They may or may not have parent volunteers, but they will have aides. The teacher will still need to write lesson plans and assess the students, and the teacher will still have help.

The point is, assessments are a better measure of learning than tests. Ask yourself, would you rather demonstrate your knowledge and skills by answering a multiple choice test, or by showing how you know what you know. It's no different with students of any grade level. If I'm uncertain, heck yes I'll take the multiple choice test, but if I'm confident in my abilities (as a college student), I'll write the essay or report, or do the lab practical to prove that I know what I'm doing.[/quote]

There are K classes where the teachers don't allow parents to volunteer as aides.  My Dc's K class for one.  There are 26 kids.  The only thing the teacher wanted the parent volunteers to do was to prepare materials, like cut/glue/staple teaching materials.  This is pretty common actually. I've volunteered at my DC's K class, and even when the teacher is meeting with a small group, the teacher gets interrupted every few minutes because the teacher still needs to keep one eye on the rest of the class and what they are supposed to or not supposed to be doing.  Personally, I find it hard to assess or concentrate on anything if I'm interrupted every few minutes, as this K teacher was, and I'm guessing a lot of other K teachers are.

Regardless of whether the kids are from an advantaged background, you are still trying to assess each child, and when you have a large class with no aide, it just seems this type of assessment for each child would be inadequate because you are not able to really concentrate on each child for a good amount of time.  This is why in our school, the kids are pulled out for reading assessments because it's too difficult for the teacher to do this alone with such a large class size.  Also, I recall someone mentioning that it took the K teacher about 3 months or so (can't remember exactly, but it was in months, not weeks)  to assess every kid's reading level from the start of the school year.  That's one quarter gone before each child gets on the level he/she should be on.  [/quote]

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