When I'm President Some Day

I have not written for awhile not just do to the busy time we would normally have with two kids in school, but because my youngest, my son, has been having a bit of trouble adjusting to the school day. I'll save the long story, and just say that it is getting better and I think we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

The reason for my title to this post, is that my son today told me that some day he is going to be the President of the United States some day, and when he's President, he will change some school rules. I asked him what he would change and he told me that recess must be longer every day and that kids should not get any homework. I would have to agree with him that a 5 year old who is almost 6 should not have homework every night. But I'm not in a place right now where I can stand up for that issue.

My son is reading D level books at school as the level the school finds to be "just right" or "good fit" books. But at home, he's reading levels D-J with me depending upon what book he is interested in any given night. The most difficult books are much more interesting to him as they have more interesting stories. And since he doesn't have to sit on a carpet and read these books to himself, I see no need why we can't work on more challenging books together so long as he's not frustrated. This, I think, is how he will move ahead.

My daughter is doing really well with her reading. She's reading everywhere. She reads in the car, on the bus back and forth to and from school, at daycare, and in her bed at night (past her bedtime.) So, I think my worries there are pretty much over. Just to be sure, though, I am continuing her reading tutoring. Her spelling and writing are getting much better too.

School Right Around the Corner

School starts again in just a couple of weeks. My daughter will be going into third grade and my son will be starting first grade. I did not as much work in with the kids as I would have liked this summer. We had lots of fun swimming and playing at playgrounds.

But through the whole summer, I had a reading tutor work with both kids. My daughter is carrying books around with her almost everywhere we go and is reading very well. My son is starting to emerge as a beginning reader.

Because of my daughter's abilities, my focus is now on my son. My son will have a different teacher than my daughter did for first grade. I hope he'll be exposed less to the methods that allow him to guess words. But I will work with my son my way, and I will continue his tutor so that hopefully he won't have the same difficulties.

I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to the new school year or not....

Shame the Child - Meeting to Discuss Lack of Handwriting Effort

It's been awhile since I've written. I have been doing my best to keep up with school homework for my kids, which is never tailored to their specific needs, but instead keep us from getting to those areas.

Regarding the title above, I just discovered tonight that my daughter's teacher left me a note in the homework book that I must sign every night to verify that I did my job in forcing my daughter to do all the homework. The note, which my daughter could have read herself, btw, asked for a meeting with my regarding my daughter's lack of effort in having neat handwriting. The teacher further requested that I bring my daughter along to sit in on the meeting.

Regardless of intent, this to me seems like a way to shame a child who is not even 8 years old yet, and over something really truly minor. Overall, her handwriting is not perfect, but it is usually legible.

So, I wrote and told the teacher that I did not think it was a good idea to have such a meeting with my daughter present - that I thought it would damage her self esteem. I also told her that I would work with my daughter if she would point out to me in a return email those particular weaknesses that I need to work on with her. Although I wanted to write that I felt such a meeting would only result in shame to my daughter, I toned it down to avoid conflict with the teacher as much as possible.

I'm so frustrated... I already have a tutor for my daughter who tutors her for her spelling and reading to make sure there are no holes left in my teaching, which I had to do because the school did not teach phonics in any significant way.

Then I received a comment about my daughter not doing well in daily oral language. I was just starting to think about how I was going to address this issue, when I got the report card and saw my daughter marked at below grade level because she hadn't passed enough of the timed math facts tests yet. And, now as I mentioned, it's all about the handwriting.

As for the daily oral language, I decided to do some research and found the following page which goes into the reasons why DOL is a terrible way to teach grammar.

http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/why-daily-oral-language-d-o-l-doesnt-work/

As for the math, I'm all for memorizing the math facts. But I could swear I was told at parent teacher conferences that the grade requirement was test 4 by the end of the year. And when my daughter started studying test 4, I slowed own a bit to focus on other matters. My daughter just passed test 4 this Friday, and I have requested that the teacher give me copies of all the other required tests ASAP, so I can have my daughter study those too.

Then there's my son in kindergarten (just 5 1/2) who is doing fairly well in his reading. He can sound out words, and they have not yet pushed the bad techniques on him too heavily. But he doesn't like to write because he knows he can't spell, and his teacher wants him to be able to write a two page story by the end of the year. The kids get up in front of all of the parents at the end of the year and read their stories to the parents. I don't think even if my son wrote a story that he would actually agree to read it to a group of people. And, getting him to do any homework is like pulling teeth most nights - so there's not much hope for me to get him to do anything extra.

Eight weeks left...eight weeks left....

School vacation is here! Also, new books.

It's school vacation week, so there will be no homework. Yesterday we had a family day trip to an aquarium and a children's museum. Monday, my kids will have a play date with some other kids. But hopefully the rest of this week, I can get in some of my own teaching.

If schedules permit, I may also have my daughter's reading level tested by a phonics based reading teacher in our area and see if she can help determine what areas I should consider focusing on with my daughter to improve her spelling and reading. Although the school tested my daughter and found her to be above grade level (I'm not sure how far above), I want to make sure, with all the gaps I've discovered thus far in her education, that my daughter continues to develop appropriately in her reading. After all, studies show that the years before the end of 3rd grade are crucial for a child's ability to read their textbooks through the rest of his/her schooling.

New books - In my quest to find some helpful resources for my children for spelling, I have discovered an excellent set of books that can also be helpful with the teaching of reading. They are appropriately named "How to Spell" and are written by Laura Toby Rudginsky and Elizabeth C. Haskell. I'm not sure if these are still in print as I had to purchased as used.

There is teaching handbook and 4 workbooks. I have worked through most of the 1st book with my daughter. Although, most of that is review for my daughter, there were some very helpful sections. Generally speaking, the books seem to set out general rules with examples of the exceptions.

The second book has a review sheet of various phonics combinations with sample words, which can serve as a nice review. The second book also has instruction on how to break words into syllables to make them easier to read, Some of this book is still review for my daughter, but it has no many additional tips that are useful, and there is nothing wrong with a little review to enforce learning.

I had been using phonics books from Spectrum, which I still believe are extremely useful. But I think these books will make a good compliment for us.

As for my son, I am slowly working with him on his phonics. We have been reviewing the consonant blends and many of the vowel combinations. I will be using these new workbooks with him too. He has enough phonics to read some of the early readers with some help from me with the more complicated words, and he finds these much more interesting than the books they send home from school, which I still do read with him on using phonics. I'll try to squeeze in some letter writing practice with him too. But I do have to be careful because he's not as interested in sitting down and doing these things for a long period of time and I don't want to overwork it and lose him. I may have to resort to some bribery...oh, look at those cookies that we can have after we're done. (laughs)

Should a second grader be able to sound out the word delicatessen?

We were in the grocery store last night and as we passed the deli, my daughter stopped me and said, I am going to sound that word out. She really didn't get any father than del- before she started adding letters that were not there. We've worked so hard at sounding out and she knows all the sounds and many, many of the rules- why is it still so hard at times. The word delicatessen can be figured out if you just break it up and don't just start guessing. At times its so frustrating, and I wonder if as she grows older it will come together better? I also thought it was just the big words that she might not know the meaning to, but every so often, something like "cold" trips her up. One night she read cold as clod. And, I know she's not dyslexic.

Am, I expecting too much? She's reading well above grade level - but I'm not sure how much of it is that she's memorized a huge vocabulary of words, or that she is using her phonics. Should I just relax about it and just keep on what we're doing and hope it just naturally works out?

I'm thinking of having a retired reading teacher (who teaches phonics) to do an evaluation. Maybe she can either point to some things that are missing that we can work on or help me put this all into perspective.

I don't want to be too hard on her. But I don't want her to have problems when she's later reading textbooks (science, social studies, etc.). When she's reading about cold blooded animals, I don't want her thinking they are clods.

The Reading Instructions for the Kindergarten Reading Books

Here are the instructions that the school sends home with the books the school expects me to read with my son. Note the lack of any encouragement at all for us parents to help our kids sound out words.

Encourage your child to ....
Before Reading:
- look at and talk about the pictures
- look at and talk about the title and cover of the book
During Reading:
- point to words while reading
- encourage correction of errors (i.e. look at first letter clues, ask "Does that make sense?")
- praise independent correction of errors
After Reading:
- count letters in a word, count words on a page
- point to words that begin with a certain letter
- tell words that are the same on every page
-using a similar pattern, tell a new page that could do with this book

Remember to ...
- Keep it short (3-5 minutes)
- Have fun! Make reading an enjoyable, quality time with your child!

Tossing out the School Books

I'm not tossing the school books out literally. But I've generally decided that except when I have time or I have to sign a note saying we read the book, I will not have my son read the books the school sends home.

I started my rebellion recently when we read some books I bought for my son at a parent/teacher store, but now I'm convinced this should not be a one time event, but a much more regular one. I just won't tell the teacher....

My son and I will select the books he will read together. We will select more appropriate books that my son is excited about reading than the school is sending home.

We will not read the Bob books anymore (which I had him reading at the beginning of our phonics), because my son has outgrown sentences like "Mat sat on the cat." He is ready for a real story.

We also will not be reading school selected books which teach my son to rely on the pictures or use words that there is no way at his age and his ability he can decode on his own without the pictures or substantial help from me (or resorting to sheer guessing).

I particularly do not find it helpful for my son to read books that have substantially the same sentences over and over again, with the only difference being the last word which is displayed in a picture. An example is "A cat has ears." "A cat has eyes." "A cat has whiskers." There is no story, and no learning lesson for my son in such books other than to spot and decipher pictures to figure out the last word. How is this really reading???

And, as for books that he can't possibly be expected to read at all on his own, here is an example of a made up book from the school - printed out and stapled together, which we found especially frustrating the other night ---

Do You Know about Dinosaurs?
Brontosaurus had a long neck and a small head.
Stegasaurus had spikes on the tail.
Diplodocus was the longest dinosaur, as long as 3 buses.
Protoceratops had a beak. Eggs were found in a nest.
You can see dinosaur bones in a museum.

Ironically, tail, spikes, beak and eggs are not words on the word wall at school. So they are not memorized. Nor has the school taught my son any phonics to help him decode these words. Nor did he read the dinosaur names on his own; he recognized the pictures for two of the dinosaurs, so he supposedly "read" those words.

So, Monday on the holiday weekend, we went to the library and picked out a couple of books from the Biscuit series (about a dog). Monday night we read Biscuit Wins a Prize instead of the boring, unhelpful books from the school. My son was so excited when he finished that book. But we did not have time to read it again last night because the homework from the school (invented spelling exercises) took up all our available time.

And, if we have to read the books from the school, I'm covering up the pictures!! There will be no reading by picture or guessing based upon the first letter of a word - at least not in our house. Unfortunately, I can not prevent what the school does to him during the day. I can only try to immunize him at home the best I can.

In an event, I need all the time I can get to work with my son on his phonics and to teach him his printing because instead of teaching them printing letter by letter in an organized fashion, they had them first printing sight words and now asking him to write stories. My son is just not comfortable yet with his command of printing yet to be doing that. So, I have to supplement that too. Once again, another example of the school skipping over the primary steps of learning and throwing one of my kids in the water without any swimming lessons.

I so much wish I could home school my kids..... It seems like I'm doing quite a bit of the primary education here already -- I just can't do it 17 hours a week as the state would require for me to home school with a full time job.

Spelling Troubles

I knew that someday invented spelling (or as I like to call it - creative spelling) would show its ugly results to us at some point. But I had hoped that with using phonics to teach my daughter to read the spelling would fall into line as we went along. But as with all my other trusting beliefs with regard to my daughter's education, this too has proven to be naive at best.

And, it is even more clear now just how much the school's endless week by week spelling lists for the kids to memorize have really done nothing to help. It is so bad that there have even been words on the list for which my daughter did not know the meaning. For instance, the following are my favorites: earnest, yearn, mourn, pioneer, and peer. There are also words on the list that are homonyms with other words, but the other words are not on the list for the students to make the comparison and connection. I have to admit in some of the lists, the words do have patterns to them. But I'm not so sure that these patterns are explained in the class, or if the kids are supposed to learn the significance of the patterns by osmosis as it appears they are expected to learn how to read. I do know that at least they did learn about removing the -y from certain words to add -ies as my daughter explained it one night - and I was pleased.

I don't think I have mentioned it before but at parent teacher conferences, my daughter's teacher informed us for the first time of her concern that my daughter can not spell in her writing when she's writing research reports and stories (in 2nd grade). But it was not that she didn't spell correctly per se, but that she did not incorrectly spell words clearly enough that the teacher could figure them out. The teacher showed me some examples and I could see what she meant. Then she asked me to work with my daughter with regard to her writing and spelling, including the following, in addition to the spelling issues: how to properly indent, write alongside the margin and break her writing into paragraphs either).

So, I've been wondering how I am to go about helping my daughter learn to spell correctly. I started trying to work with her a bit by having her say the words to herself and then spell them. But I don't know what words to give her to work on to most efficiently and effectively help my daughter.

So I went to our local parent/teacher supply store looking for some helpful workbooks. But all I could find were books with random type lists like the ones the school uses and books that go through the phonics rules, which are just repetitive our reading efforts and obviously not what we need. Nowhere did I find a book that covered rules like "i before e except after c."

I have also been at a loss because its one thing to work on a problem after you've examined the symptoms and determined the likely cause. It's another when you're dealing with kids being told to spell however they want and trying to figure out what your child is specifically missing that prevents her from spelling things incorrectly but still recognizably (I know that sounds strange, but that's just how it is, unfortunately). If, for instance, I knew that there were certain types of words giving her trouble, I could isolate that problem and work on those types of words with the appropriate tools. But it's really like everything else connected with these haphazard, new ways of teaching. There's no systematic approach but instead, it's just tossed at the kids with the expectation that they will somehow learn by osmosis.

So that brought me to the Internet and I found this wonderful site that goes through the various spelling patterns (which you might call rules) ---

http://www.lewrockwell.com/taylor/taylor79.html

As with phonics, there are exceptions to these spelling rules, but the rules do work often enough to help a person spell many words correctly. I will also be looking for other resources, but this site seems to be a great start!

Somehow I have to figure out how to break these rules up into my own lesson plans and see if I can deliver it to my daughter in an interesting but educational way. I also can't overwhelm here with these all at once, so I have to figure out how to systematically teach it in manageable portions. Why oh why can't the teachers be doing this (as an aside, I'm not blaming it on the teachers - in our school district the district basically takes the discretion away from the teachers and tells them how to teach so it's supposedly uniform between all the elementary schools, so its not entirely the teachers' faults.)???

Btw, I realize that I am writing based upon my own personal experiences with one school and there may be schools out there that are doing a fantastic job. But from what I've been reading on other websites and other blogs, I know I am not alone with these challenges.

I realize this has been a long post...but one more thing.... At the same time that I am going to be working on these spelling issues with my daughter, I am working on reading with my son with phonetics and working on his letter writing (the actual forming of the letters) to get him more confident to write the stories that the school expects him to write after only a little more than 4 months in school, and no idea how really to spell (and he's smart enough to realize he really can't spell).

Sir Small and the Dragon Fly

Well, we didn't do the bingo. I had my son read all the words and point out words with 1,2,3 and 4 words. So, we're done and I'm signing the thing.

Tonight we were supposed to read two books. Both very picture reliant, like My cat has ... paws. My cat has .... ears. We did not read those, but instead I had my son pick from a stack of Level 2 readers that I bought at the teacher supply store the other day. He was resistant at first but I announced bed time and then he offered to read with me. I'm too sly...

I purchased the Level 2 books for him because the level 1 books are too short, too easy and too picture based. There does seem to be a big jump though between level 1 and level 2 books. But I figured we could go slow.

My son picked Sir Small and the Dragonfly, which is about a very tiny knight that is smaller than a toothpick. There was some humor in the books and of course a dragonfly, a kidnapping of a princess and the knight saving the day.

My son read about 8 pages with some help from me reminding him of some of the phonics and then rereading the sentence once my son figured out all the words. He did pretty well, so I will continue with this method. Hopefully, I can get him reading confidently without the guessing problem that my daughter still sometimes deals with.

After the 8 pages, I read the rest of the book to him as well as a truck book that I read to him as an extra reward.

Somehow I have to get him to do more writing with me - he is supposed to write short stories for school by the end of the year. Now, he is to draw a picture and then write a sentence about the picture. Sometimes at school he hides under the table instead of writing the story becaue he know he really doesn't know how to write and spell and he's too afraid of being incorrect.

I'm working on the reading now there are so many hours in the day and I work full-time outside the home. So, with working to fill so may gaps in this education, it's like I'm home schooling them part-time and I have to pick and choose. Right now, I'd rather my son can read.

Two Topics Tonight - Crayola Curriculum and New Hampshire

Tonight, my 5 year brought home homework from the teacher with an apology note for giving it over the weekend, and stating that she recognized the hardship and that we could have until Tuesday to complete it. The homework is a bingo game that we have to make out of pages she gave us filled with a list of sight words my son already knows. We have to cut up one of the pages so that we have bingo balls so to speak. The other pages are the bingo boards. I am to sign a note vouching that he read the words on the cards and that he was able to group words with 1, 2, 3 and 4 letters. Since my son already knows these words, the value of reading them to me in a bingo game is really nil. Also, since he can count to 20 already, I'm not sure of the value of rest of this project either.

This homework brings to mind some articles I read awhile back about "Crayola Curriculum," where the kids are supposedly learning about reading and other topics, by cutting, pasting and coloring. When I read those articles, I thought about our 100 days of school projects where the point is to show the kids what 100 items looks like. For one project we glued 100 beads into the shape of a tree, and for another we strung 10 strings of beads and glued them to a piece of paper. Guess who really had to count the beads to make sure they were all there.... It also brings to mind the "Star of the Week" type projects in which I helped my daughter gather together pictures, and special items to put on display for the class to see so that she could feel extra special for a week. What we learned from that one, I'll never know, other than my daughter had fun and felt extra special, and that it took me a long time to figure out how to photoshop her photos on to a piece of paper that we could glue to the construction paper supplied to us.

On top of all this, the teacher has "outsourced" (thanks FedUpMom for calling my attention to this process) the duty for me to teach my son how to write stories when he can't read much yet and really has no idea at all how to spell because he's only had 3 months of kindergarten. And, this was entirely outsourced to me, including lesson plans, as the teacher isn't sending home any homework that I could do with my son to work on these issues - I just get this homework this weekend that makes him do busy work for things he already knows.

Now, New Hampshire....
Below is a link to an article about a law that just passed in New Hampshire that allows a parent to object to any part of his/her child's curriculum at school and to have the school teach differently in a way acceptable to the parent. The parent, of course, gets to bear extra costs for exercising this right. I think this does go a bit too far as it appears to be pretty much unlimited. But when I think about my children being taught how to read in such unhelpful, harmful ways and constantly wishing I could make the school stop, it makes me think about whether I should move to New Hampshire.

Just tonight, I caught my daughter reading the word "slimy" as "simply." Then when I point out that for one thing there's no p in the word "slimy" she sounded out "si mil e." I wanted to pull my hair out - but I went through it with her and actually wrote out what she was saying and showed her how it can't be right. And, again I reminded her that she needs to look at the letters and in order and that reading a word incorrectly has consequences. What if she was reading her science book about the slimy frog and through it was a simile frog? When she looked closely at the word and was careful, she got it, including the additional, extra words I made her read to be sure. But the fact that I had to remind her once again, really goes to show what the school has done to her with their reading teaching methods involving guessing at unfamiliar words and memorizing as many others as possible...again, New Hampshire????

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/new-hampshire-legislature-curriculum-objection-law_n_1184476.html

Long Overdue Update - There's two of them now

Hi all. This is definitely a long overdue update.

I had these grandiose ideas for educational progress over the summer. I would have my almost 5 year old reading before he went to kindergarten and started to experience the whole language method, which the school would claim is balanced with some phonics. I would have also had my son writing all of his letters. For my daughter, 7, she would have memorized all of her addition and subtraction facts as well as further refining her reading skills.

We didn't accomplish all of those grand plans because we had some fun for the summer - swimming, biking and other activities. But I did continue reading with my daughter and I did get my son started with his phonics. My son, however, did not want to learn to write his letters and I didn't get as far as I wanted with the phonics.

I'm going to cut to the chase and just tell you where we are now. My daughter is reading very well. She is well above grade level and she is being much more careful with her reading, although she has some days. But our new problems are that the school suddenly does want them to memorize their addition facts and that my daughter apparently has some terrible issues with spelling when she's writing her own stories.

As for the math, the school gives a once a week 60 second test with 30 math problems. The kids have to pass 4 of these tests before the end of the school year. This was sprung on us with no guidance on how best to approach this new system. Further, from what I can glean from my daughter, there is no studying of these math facts during the school day. It's only the tests. So, we're supposed to do all of this studying at home. I don't mind helping her study at home and I absolutely agree that these math facts have to be memorized for future math success, but why aren't they also studying them at school? After home studying nad my daughter still not passing, I have finally scanned a copy of the test and have given my daughter the test multiple times, starting with 180 seconds and widdling the time limit down towards the 60 seconds. Tomorrow she might come close to passing the first one, and if not tomorrow, she may just pass next week.

As for the spelling, there are spelling tests through the year. But there seems to be no rhyme or reason for the choice of the particular words on the test. Some of the words are words that my daughter doesn't know the meaning of until I explain it to her. It just also seems like phonics has no place in studying spelling. So after focusing so much on reading and hoping the spelling would come into line, it just didn't happen. The teacher first presented this problem to me at parent-teacher conferences right before Christmas, and pretty much dropped this in my lap with a comment about some other teacher is trying to help my daughter. I'm currently trying to figure out how to address this at home. One thing I'm finding that seems to help is to have my daughter say the word she wants to spell herself, rather than me continuing to repeat it, and to have her attempt and then trying to read what she writes.

And, now my son... He can use his basic phonics to read, but he's getting exposed to the guess-it strategies. And, I have to remind him to look at the words and not the pictures. I also remind him that the picture doesn't always point him to the right word. I think I'm going to get set 3 of the Bob books and see if I can continue him in his phonics with books not sent home from the school, which often contain words he can't sound out easily because they don't follow the rules. Honestly, you should see some of the ridiculous words in some of these books that are really inappropriate to expert a kindergarten student to read.

At parent-teacher conferences, I was alerted to the teacher's concern that my son won't be able to write stories this year because he won't attempt to write words. He claims he can't spell - and he's right. But the teacher wants him to try to guess the words and write each word however it sounds. He's a little perfectionist and he's afraid of being wrong. It seems to me almost like we're throwing our 5 year old into immersion spelling, reading and writing without anything in the way of fundamental instruction other than the focus on what the word starts with. I just can't imagine sending him into an immersion weekend of a foreign language, so how is this any better? So, on top of his regular homework, I have been instructed to help him write stories at home.

I love my kids and I feel appropriately responsible for making sure they have the best education possible. I will, thus, invest the time needed to make sure whatever holes are occuring in their education are filled. But, honestly, sometimes I feel like I should prepare a bill for the school itemizing my time. I work full-time outside the home and it's so difficult finding all the time to do my household duties, educate my kids, have fun with my family and having some amount of rest. What are they really doing during the school day????? Do, I have to pay for private tutors???