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

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

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[quote=Anonymous]I don't think tracking and completely separating out kids by levels is the best solution either.

1. kids at this age can advance rapidly, or even stagnate.  It's very fluid.  My DH and I were both late bloomers.  DH went to a school where they tracked at an early age.  He got pigeon holed.  His parents didn't like it, so they moved to a different area where they didn't completely separate out the kids by ability. He also matured a bit and started to really take off academically.  He went on to get a degree in a stem field, now earns six figures.

2. I find that if a kid who is struggling is exposed to harder material and kids who are more advanced, they will start to pick things up.  Example - at the dinner table, we talk to the older DC about academic subjects; we discuss math, science, whatever...  younger DC (3 yrs younger) starts to pick up on some of the concepts.  The younger DC will chime in, sometimes getting facts wrong, and the older DC will try to explain to younger DC how something works. This helps older DC as well, to be able to logically think things through and verbalize the logic.  I think "explaining your thinking" can be quite a hard thing to do, for many of us, even adults, and so having a child practice this benefits the child.

My sister's kids were the same.  I was the same with my older sibling.

Yes, of course, all parents wish that the teacher could spend more time with our children, individually, or at the least in a small group setting.  Unfortunately, the reality in many school districts is that the schools are overcrowded.  We used to live in a wealthy district with very little farms/esol population. The classes in that district was still fairly large, and the kids hardly got any individual attention.  I agree with a PP, the issue is that mcps has gotten too big.  This is not a curriculum or teacher issue.  There is no large school district that does not have overcrowding issues in the classes. It's not physically possible for a teacher to spend more time with each child or small group with the class sizes that we have.   This is a budget issue.  We need more classrooms and/or more teachers or para-teachers.  This is really the only really effective way to allow a teacher to spend more time with each child or small group.[/quote]

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