Is Common Core too hard for kindergarten? Absolutely not!

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debbie
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Is Common Core too hard for kindergarten? Absolutely not!

Post by debbie »

Thanks to Susan Godsland for flagging this up via Twitter:

Is Common Core too hard for kindergarten?

Robert Pondiscio

February 11, 2015


http://edexcellence.net/articles/is-com ... ndergarten
A report last month from a pair of advocacy organizations, the Alliance for Childhood and Defending the Early Years, argued that “there is a widespread belief that teaching children to read early will help them be better readers in the long-run,” but that there is “no scientific evidence that this is so.” The Washington Post and its Common Core-averse education blogger, Valerie Strauss, have been particularly aggressive in highlighting this report and running pieces from both parents and teachers arguing that “forcing some kids to read before they are ready could be harmful.”

The report, titled Reading in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose sounds an alarm over a perceived shift “from play-based, experiential approaches to more academic approaches” in early-childhood classrooms starting in the 1980s. “Under the Common Core State Standards (CCSS),” the authors claim, “the snowball has escalated into an avalanche which threatens to destroy appropriate and effective approaches to early education.”

The authors make much of the fact that no one involved with writing the standards was a K–3 teacher or early-childhood professional. The more important issue, however, isn’t who wrote it, but whether Common Core is beyond the abilities of five-year-olds or the expectations we should have for them. The short answer, I think, is “no.” But let’s look at some of the report’s specific complaints.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

AMAZING VIDEO FOOTAGE: THIS REALLY SHOWS THE WONDER OF PHONICS - AND THE CAPACITY OF CHILDREN TO LEARN WHEN TAUGHT THE RIGHT THINGS, WELL!


I'm not advocating teaching two year olds to read - but you have to see this video footage of two year olds reading by phonics decoding to see how successful this is:

http://www.childrenlearningreading.com/ ... Ny9J4vQQyF

Then, consider that people are arguing against the four, five and six year olds being taught to read explicitly.

So - children two, three and four years older than the tot on the video!
Last edited by debbie on Thu Feb 12, 2015 3:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

When I first discovered 'Jolly Phonics' many years ago, I bought the initial 'teaching kit' for my own use as a teacher.

Fiddling around with it at home, and making some additional word cards (cumulative word bank), my youngest son, then three and a half, watched the videos and asked me what I was doing.

I didn't 'teach' him or force him to learn the code, he really did just play around and pick up the knowledge - then he would decode the word cards I had made and 'do' or 'respond' to whatever the word was.

So, if he decoded /f/ /r/ /o/ /g/, he would say the sounds, then say the word "frog" - then hop around the room being a frog.

I was not a pushy mother whatsoever and never urged him to read beyond this playing around with phonics - and of course I read stories to him - and he learnt along with his four to five year old friends in a Reception class where Jolly Phonics was also being used.

The other day I found a note that he had typed to me on his big sister's word processor when he was five years one month. It is so endearing that I thought this was a good place to share it since the topic is whether it is cruel or damaging to teach four to six year olds how to read and write.

This is what he wrote:
To Mummy
This is for you - you arr rite
I was triying to do mageic but I
figerd This out if I Throo the coyn in my mowth and bownst
the coyn on carpit with my tung
wen I bownst it on my tung I
wood of swolowd it.
Many years later, I promote a 'two-pronged systematic and incidental phonics teaching approach' - and this includes addressing invented spelling such as you see in the fantastic message above.

This would not amount to picking the message to bits and correcting all the spellings, but if this was in the school context, I would be picking up on some of the feature words and "helping" the child with such 'tricky/interesting/unusual' spellings.

I would have already introduced the children to some history of the English language - spoken and written - and to the notion of the 'alphabetic code' - explaining that the English alphabetic code is the most complex alphabetic code in the world which will take a lot of teaching and learning but that I, the teacher, and other teachers, will always "help them with that".

I would also be using the visual aid in the class of a 'giant' Alphabetic Code Chart as a constant reference chart - along with a large-scale Alphabet Poster.

Little did I know all those years ago, when I tinkered with my first Jolly Phonics kit with my three year old son hopping around the room like a frog - where all that would eventually lead.......! :wink:[/quote]

By the way, within four weeks of me getting the kit, my son knew all the letter/s-sound correspondences of the 'simple' code - and could blend (decode for reading) or segment (encode for spelling) any length word.

PS: I am so grateful to the Jolly Phonics folk for educating me - and my youngest son!
Last edited by debbie on Thu Feb 12, 2015 3:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

Here is some information about my 'two-pronged systematic and incidental phonics teaching' approach:

http://www.phonicsinternational.com/Deb ... andout.pdf

I expect the people criticising the expectations of the 'Common Core' curriculum would be horrified at what I promote, and what many teachers 'do', in some Reception classes in England nowadays -that is, for the four to five year olds!

But the children love it - and children are designed to learn - they have amazing brains and amazing capacity to learn - and they deserve to be taught well.

In schools, we are hugely advantaged by the kind of children who get 'taught' things at home by chatty parents and grandparents, and by older brothers and sisters. They bring their knowledge and understanding of the world into the setting and their ability to chatter - and then we, the teaching professionals, think that 'teach' is an unacceptable experience for the same youngsters in our early years settings?

This does not make sense to me.

We either have to match what content-rich, chatter-rich homes provide.

Or we have to make up for what language-poor homes don't provide.

This is not a value-judgement on the variety of homes that children live in - just that it is surely doing children a disservice if we think it is not age-appropriate to actively teach them all manner of things - including the beginnings of how to read and write. :?:
Debbie Hepplewhite
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