Anonymous wrote:

The new standards call for kindergarten children to master over 90 skills related to literacy and mathmatics. Is this necessary for children to succeed in school? Experts know of no research showing that children who read at age five do better in the long run than children who learn at six or seven. The proposed standards will almost certainly add to the stress already afflicting many children in kindergarten and the early grades—stress associated by clinicians with growing problems of aggressive behavior in young children and with burnout by third or fourth grade.

Totally agree with this statement. I taught first grade for years and saw many kids that came in not reading and quickly surpassed others.

Phonemic Awareness Research
• The two best predictors of early reading success are alphabet recognition and phonemic awareness. (Adams, 1990)

• Phonemic awareness is central in learning to read and spell. (Ehri, 1984)

• The probability of remaining a poor reader at the end of fourth grade, given a child was a poor reader at the end of first grade, was .88....... the probability of remaining an average reader in fourth grade, given an average reading ability in first grade, was .87. (Juel, 1988)

• The lack of phonemic awareness is the most powerful determinant of the likelihood of failure to read. (Adams, 1990)

• Phonemic awareness is the most important core and causal factor in separating normal and disabled readers. (Adams, 1990)

• Phonemic awareness has been shown to be a very powerful predictor of later reading achievement. In fact, it [phonemic awareness] is a better predictor than more global measures such as IQ or general language proficiency. (Griffith and Olson, 1992)

• Phonemic awareness is the most potent predictor of success in learning to read. It is more highly related to reading than tests of general intelligence, reading readiness, and listening comprehension. (Stanovich, 1986, 1994)

• Yes, there really is a difference in brain activation patterns between good and poor readers. We see the difference when people carry out phonologically based tasks. And that tells us that the area of difficulty - the functional disruption - in poor readers relates to phonological analysis. This suggests that we focus on phonological awareness when trying to prevent or remediate the difficulty in poor reading. (Shaywitz, 1999)

• The most comprehensive reading program EXPLICITLY [sic] teaches about the sounds of language. It teaches children that words can be broken up into these smaller units of language, that the letters represent this unit of language - phonics. (Shaywitz, 1999)

• ALL [sic] children can benefit from being taught directly how to break up spoken words into smaller units and how letters represent sounds. (Shaywitz, 1999)

Even more suggestive evidence comes from a closer look at  the distributions between phonemic awareness and reading skills  concurrently measured. If you plot skill in phonemic awareness  against skill in decoding (measured as reading individual  pseudowords), you find triangular distributions. In these  distributions, there are many instances of either low skill  in both domains or high skill in phonemic awareness coupled  with either low or high skill in decoding. However, there  are no instances of low skill in phonemic awareness and high  skill in decoding. This pattern suggests that phonemic awareness  is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for skill  in decoding. That is, you must have skill in phonemic awareness  if you are to acquire skill in decoding, but having skill  in phonemic awareness is no guarantee for successful development  of skill in decoding. To get the latter, you need something  in addition to phonemic awareness (you also need knowledge  of the letters and of the alphabetic principle, plus lots  of practice pairing written and spoken words).

The strongest evidence for a causal relationship between  phonemic awareness and reading comes from training studies.  In the typical training study design, children who lack phonemic  awareness skills are randomly divided into different groups,  one receiving training designed to develop phonemic awareness  skill and the other receiving training designed to develop  a skill that is unrelated to reading (say, a mathematical  skill like counting). After training, the different groups  are given the same reading instruction, and one looks to see  whether those groups that received phonemic awareness training  in fact do better in both assessments of phonemic awareness  and reading than those who did not. Many studies like this  have now been conducted, and the majority of them report that  the groups receiving phonemic awareness instruction subsequently  did much better in reading development than those who did  not receive such training.

Now it is true that reading by itself does advance skill  in phonemic awareness. Reading practice advances reading  skill, and the more skill in reading, the more skill in phonemic  awareness. This indicates a reciprocal relationship between  phonemic awareness and reading, where skill in one supports  development of skill in the other and vice versa. But the  critical question is whether some amount of skill in phonemic  awareness is critical before skill in reading can advance;  the evidence suggests (especially that from training studies)  the answer to this question is yes.

The new standards call for kindergarten children to master over 90 skills related to literacy and mathmatics. Is this necessary for children to succeed in school? Experts know of no research showing that children who read at age five do better in the long run than children who learn at six or seven. The proposed standards will almost certainly add to the stress already afflicting many children in kindergarten and the early grades—stress associated by clinicians with growing problems of aggressive behavior in young children and with burnout by third or fourth grade.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The first problem:

Those K standards should be grade 1 standards.

Huh! Well, besides you, who else says that, specifically, adding and subtracting to 10 with objects is too hard for grade K (neurotypical) students?

Most professionals familiar with how children learn would tell you this.

And in my state, children often enter K when they 4 years old.

C'mon, cite some references. Now don't find some article where some educator is quoting a "Common Core math worksheet" and saying how this math is horrible for K students. Cite some recent experts (people working in the field) who are saying that it is developmentally inappropriate for 5 and 6 year old kindergarten children to be able, by the end of their Kindergarten year of school, to add 2 oranges and 4 oranges and count 1-2-3-4-5-6 oranges.

http://www.edweek.org/media/joint_statement_on_core_standards.pdf

Joint Statement of Early Childhood
Health and Education Professionals
on the Common Core Standards Initiative
Issued by the Alliance for Childhood
March 2, 2010
www.allianceforchildhood.org
WE HAVE GRAVE CONCERNS about the core standards for young children now
being written by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State
School Officers. The draft standards made public in January conflict with compelling
new research in cognitive science, neuroscience, child development, and early childhood
education about how young children learn, what they need to learn,
and how best to teach them in kindergarten and the early grades.


...

Anonymous wrote:

Kindergarten should be for play. Learning letters and numbers. Getting the basics down of a classroom.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The first problem:

Those K standards should be grade 1 standards.

Huh! Well, besides you, who else says that, specifically, adding and subtracting to 10 with objects is too hard for grade K (neurotypical) students?

Most professionals familiar with how children learn would tell you this.

And in my state, children often enter K when they 4 years old.

C'mon, cite some references. Now don't find some article where some educator is quoting a "Common Core math worksheet" and saying how this math is horrible for K students. Cite some recent experts (people working in the field) who are saying that it is developmentally inappropriate for 5 and 6 year old kindergarten children to be able, by the end of their Kindergarten year of school, to add 2 oranges and 4 oranges and count 1-2-3-4-5-6 oranges.

Anonymous wrote:

Why? It's unrealistic to expect kindergarteners, by the end of the year, to be able to solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within 10, e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem?

Yes. It is unrealistic for some. Probably not for the kids of those who write on this board--but it is for some.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The first problem:

Those K standards should be grade 1 standards.

Huh! Well, besides you, who else says that, specifically, adding and subtracting to 10 with objects is too hard for grade K (neurotypical) students?

Most professionals familiar with how children learn would tell you this.

And in my state, children often enter K when they 4 years old.

Why? It's unrealistic to expect kindergarteners, by the end of the year, to be able to solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within 10, e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The first problem:

Those K standards should be grade 1 standards.

Huh! Well, besides you, who else says that, specifically, adding and subtracting to 10 with objects is too hard for grade K (neurotypical) students?

Anonymous wrote:

The first problem:

Those K standards should be grade 1 standards.