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
If I were in your shoes, there's no way I would waste time on the silly bingo project. I would either ignore it entirely or send the teacher an e-mail explaining that the homework doesn't suit my child's needs and we're not doing it. The alternative, which I don't usually take, would be to just sign the silly form and have done with it. You'd be amazed how many parents do just that.
ReplyDeleteYour 5-year-old is expected to write stories, and you're supposed to teach him how? That's just ridiculous. The teacher might as well have sent home a note saying "We'd like your child to write and sell a screenplay by the end of next week. Thanks for your co-operation! :)!"