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Go see the local school - that is the appropriate action and one that will probably leave you feeling much calmer and will likely alleviate most of your anxiety.
I wish I could, marie. We are between worlds right now, and still don't know what part of the country, or even what part of the world, we will end up in next year. Highest probability is that we will relocate back to the Atlanta area. However, we will almost surely (80-90% chance) NOT be where we are right now.
If you provide opportunities to write (not instruction - opportunity), along with normal parental encouragement, that will be more than enough.
Marie, would you mind elaborating a bit on this part, as I never knew whether I got this right. What exactly does it mean to provide "opportunities to write, but not instruction"?
For example, he has paper, pencil, worksheet books and what have you in his room at all times. He also knows his letters. But unless I sit with him and do "writing" with him (which would mean instruction, right?), he will not initiate/attempt "writing" on his own.
He scribbles and draws basic pictures (definitely not a Van Gogh in our hands) but that's about it.
I also use opportunities such as writing a letter, Thank You note, etc - but I do forget the grocery list trick.
Is this what you mean by "providing opportunity" to write?
Too much to respond to here. I'll just grab a few of them.
First thing you should do is look up your state's standards for kindergarten online. (We're anything but a standard-less country.) That'll tell you what the basic expectations are, and what will be taught in class.
I've just finished my baseline, incoming assessments for this year's kindergarten class. They're not substantially different than the other years I've taught, for the most part. I have some that came in knowing the names of all their letters. A few know some of the sounds too. A lot know somewhere between 10-20 letters. Several know between 0 and 3 letter names and can't ID the front cover of a book. The vast majority of them can't produce a rhyming word when I ask them to rhyme "bed" or "cat" after giving examples. Several haven't spoken English at all up until now and half of the class speaks another language at home even if they do know some English. Many of those have parents who do not speak or read English either. As far as writing goes, 5 or so were unable to write their name upon entering (they all do now). One didn't know his name when I called it verbally (he goes by "Junior" at home, and no one told me that until the second day). One student showed strong letter-sound correspondance in one of her first writing papers: she drew a rainbow and wrote I (heart symbol) RANBOS. And that's as advanced as I've seen thus far this year.
Oh, one pees her pants a couple of times daily too.
According to the list of what your son can do now, a whole year before he's going to start K... I don't think you have anything to worry about and I think you need to pay less attention to what every other parent and kid is supposedly doing. I've only ever seen these parents or kids you describe in your posts (not just this one) on TV.
Someone mentioned that all you "have" to do is provide books to have around the house. Well, you don't even have to do that. Plenty don't. I wish parents would (along with modeling that receiving/conveying information via print is an important part of their own lives - reading the newspaper? writing a grocery list? an email?) but I fully expect to have children in my class who do NOT come with that experience before K, let alone the ability to ID letters or write their name.
Which leads me to answering "What is it that kindergarten teachers do all day?" I'll tell you what I did today:
The kids came in and found their independent work centers on the chart, which I've spent a lot of time setting up to correlate with our core curriculum but also be things the kids can do independently. Some kids were working in "Writing" where they have a box on a table full of materials like writing utensils, notecards / birthday invitations I bought at the Dollar Store for them to pretend-write. Others were working at "Listening" (using walkmans to listen and follow along with books on tape). Still others were at "Letters and Words" (today they were matching kangaroo joeys with lowercase letters on their tummies into mama kangaroos with capital letters on their pockets) and/or using colored markers to "rainbow write" their letters - mostly tracing them on dot letters. During this time I met with one of my English Language Development Groups and did our required, scripted curriculum with them. Since it's not too rewarding by itself, we followed it up with 5 minutes of Candy Land, which, it appears, no one in the class has learned how to play before coming to K. The non-ELD kids are drooling for their turn to learn to play with the teacher too.
Then we met as a group for Whole Group Language Arts. We started with a "Same beginning sound" exercise where they covered their ears when I said two words with different beginning sounds, or clapped when I said words with the same beginning sound. We practiced vocabulary that would be in the book before reading it ("city" and "country"). We looked at real pictures of a city (Los Angeles) and the country (where we live). We read the story "City Mouse, Country Mouse". We did sentence frames where kids came up and filled in a sentence I had written on a sentence strip: When I grow up I will live in the _____ . They practiced saying the "whole sentence." They told me why they would want to live there.
Next I passed out a wordless story. We "browsed" it first. We located the title. Kids took turns making up a sentence ("a whole sentence") that would match the picture on each page. They laughed at me when I suggested things like "A dog went to Mars in a rocket ship" when the picture showed kids playing on the playground. They could tell me that doesn't match the picture.
Then we moved on to today's letter (we're doing a very brief whiz through the alphabet to familiarize with the basic concept of letters and to learn basic formation - sounds won't come until later, although I certainly accept comments about letter sounds from the kids who do know them). It was T, so we listening to a song describing how to make T and t, the kids practiced with their "magic pencil" (their finger on the rug). Then I dismissed them to their tables by singing their "rhyming names" (Willoghby Wallaby Wonny, an elephant sat on .... Johnny) and we went to our desks and practiced writing those T's with a pencil, and crossing out letters on the page that were not T's. I have an aide during that time, so she took the 8 kids who have difficulty forming the letters to another table to give them extra support...
Ok, after all that it's now 9:30am. I don't think I'll go on. But we continue on through our day with recess, then Music (we listened to Bartok today and one of the kids got to use the pointer to ID the piano as the featured instrument on our poster), Math (we graphed our favorite fruits and our favorite farm animals - which took about an hour of my prep time yesterday to prepare), went to lunch, then came back to do Writing. We have a list of 5 vocabulary words we're learning so I incorporated that into our writing today and we drew a picture together and labeled it with the vocab words. I did it on my document camera, projected onto the screen in the front, and they did the same on their papers. In this way we practiced the vocab word meanings, hit our required Language Arts objective to use labeling, and practiced writing conventions, namely left-to-right. Then they took out their Writing Journals and free-wrote for 5 quiet minutes on any subject they wanted. Pictures were fine, but now that we're in the 4th week of school the expectation is that there is also some evidence of letters and/or words. They're not "finished" until I see that. That could be their name. It could be Z F D. Or the above mentioned RANBOS.
After that they did PE, and then the book helper chose a couple of books of her choice as fun read-alouds, adn we launched into "Choosing" (kids pick play centers - unit blocks, easel painting, etc).
And that was what I did all day, not counting dealing with the kid who threw the rock at the other kid at lunch recess and a hundred other things like that.
Marie, would you mind elaborating a bit on this part, as I never knew whether I got this right. What exactly does it mean to provide "opportunities to write, but not instruction"?
For example, he has paper, pencil, worksheet books and what have you in his room at all times. He also knows his letters. But unless I sit with him and do "writing" with him (which would mean instruction, right?), he will not initiate/attempt "writing" on his own.
He scribbles and draws basic pictures (definitely not a Van Gogh in our hands) but that's about it.
I also use opportunities such as writing a letter, Thank You note, etc - but I do forget the grocery list trick.
Is this what you mean by "providing opportunity" to write?
I'm not marie, but can tell you that opportunities are everywhere every day.
Once you open up your mind to things outside the box, you will find them in abundance.
It doesn't have to be pens, pencils or markers to write with, nor does it have to be paper. Chalk on the sidewalk and paint on newspaper are other typical ways.
To be fun and creative, use:
-a spray bottle to 'write' letters on the sidewalk.
-charcoal to sketch letters on the driveway.
-a long feather with paint.
-bingo dobbers
Use things that he can write 'in' with his fingers like:
-sand in the sandbox or on the beach.
-bubbles in the bathtub, soap crayons on the bathtub.
-shaving cream on the table.
-salt covering the bottom of a shallow tub.
-pudding on a plate that he can eat after writing in it.
-peanut butter on a piece of bread.
Do things using other materials to form the letters:
-playdoh rolled out and formed on the table.
-cookie cutters in letter shapes used in the playdoh or in real cookie dough.
-golf tees stuck in a piece of styrofoam.
-push pins in a piece of cork board.
-line up pebbles in the dirt.
-sky write with a flashlight in a dark room.
It's only limited to your imagination and can be so fun. My kids, my own and the ones I provide care for, love love love shaving cream.....even the 12/13 yr olds!
We've done all those things and continue to do many; but I still can't say he shows interest in attempting to write or pretend to write on his own, even in those ways.
Granted, he does write separate letters. For example, today he used a butterfly stamp, colored it, then wrote B for butterfly next to it, and F, also for "butterfly", but in the other language; and while I think this should be more than fine for his age, in an ideal world, I am not at all sure this would be enough in a kindergarten where many/most children write full sentences, just like the OP in the aforementioned thread was reporting.
Now, I have heard more than my share of "you should not concern yourself with what other people and their kids do" but I honestly can't help asking a simple WHY?
I really believe this line of thinking is misleading, if not hypocritical and even dangerous. Pretending an environment is not competitive, or wishing it this way, doesn't mean the environment is not competitive.
Of course we are concerned with what other people and their children do, as our kids will not operate in a social vacuum. The reality is their fate will be dictated by their ability to compete in an increasingly unfriendly free market, as un-dignifying as this actually is. If they're doomed to enter a "survival-of-the-fittest" game (which they are), I am not going to pretend I am not interested in what "the fittest" looks like.
Had I had a pile of wealth to sit on, that I could have passed onto them, I could not have cared less about reading, writing and math in K, or even K altogether.
Then, they would have truly gotten to learn "at their own pace", when the spirit moved them, for the simple sake of becoming well-rounded, critical thinkers, cultured citizens, and charming conversationalists. Eventually.
How noble is that?
But guess what? They won't have that pleasure. Not in this life.
When we arrived in MA at the beginning of this year, he was not able to write his name (at 4). However, when I saw that all children were required to sign their names upon arrival on a whiteboard, every day, and he was the only one who could not do it, guess what the most secure and non-conformist ma'm in the land did?
Drilled him, "pushed" him, and taught him to write the stinkin' name.
I have absolutely no doubts that a huge number of parents feel the same way, minus the willingness to admit it.
really believe this line of thinking is misleading, if not hypocritical and even dangerous. Pretending an environment is not competitive, or wishing it this way, doesn't mean the environment is not competitive.
But I don't see this type of competitiveness in the children and parents I teach. Not a single parent "made" their kid write in sentences in any of the years I've been teaching it, or if they tried, then the kids still weren't doing it in my class at the beginning of the year. Clearly, it's not a universal American thing. So if it's really this prevalent where you are (and I can't help but believe you're exagerating it), then remove yourself from that environment because there are PLENTY where that's not at all what parents and kids are like. I've taught in both very urban and very rural areas, and did not experience what you describe at all in either one.
Later on in the year, writing a whole sentence in kindergarten IS more common... in fact, I expect it by the end of the year and only a few aren't doing it yet. But an *excellent* full piece of writing for an end-of-year K student might look like this:
I wnt to the fsh hachre. I so 4 ranbo trot. It wuz veree fun. (I went to the fish hatchery. I saw 4 rainbow trout. It was very fun.)
And the reasons that'd be so excellent are that it shows left-to-write, top-to-bottom directionality, all the taught high-frequency words he used are spelled correctly (I, to, the, it), the sound-letter correspondance of unknown words is close to perfect, regular CVC words are perfect, and for goodness' sake, it even has appropriate capitalization and punctionation. That'd be above my expectations. At the END of K.
I had just responded to your previous post and after writing the novel, my computer froze and lost everything. Ha. What a joy.
Briefly, I do admit that the environment we are in at the moment is probably one of the most competitive in the country (one of the very top school districts in MA); so that certainly doesn't help.But frankly speaking, I saw very similar tendencies in Atlanta...and pretty much everywhere, in middle to upper-middle class enviornments.
Besides, I am not sure that simply removing the kids from such competitive environments would amount to anything better than a good case of ostrichism.
(I could promise you I am not exaggerating but then again, why would you believe me ).
As for writing freely in journal, what ultimately bothers me is this lack of prior structured, step-by-step instruction and in-class practice of pre-writing skills, including calligraphic symbols like ovals, sticks and canes, then letters and groups of letters written neatly on lined paper; then dictation of simpler words, correct spelling, a gradual expansion of the vocabulary to more complex and correctly spelled words (as demonstrated in class, on a white board, etc).
There are so many pre-writing skills to be mastered before proper writing that I cannot even begin to imagine how a child could reasonably be expected to write coherently and correctly before second grade.
And obviously, they are not.
In that frozen e-mail I had written in more detail about where I think this dissonance comes from. It is cultural, after all - as I grew up in a system that did not accommodate all sorts of "individual needs", interests, orientations, feelings, learning styles, etc., and where teachers were expected to instruct and students to open up their eyes and ears, as widely as possible, to learn from them. This is the reason why no formal education, of ANY sort, was started before the age of 6-7.
Whatever individual needs the child had were accommodated at home, by parents - not in class.
I am aware that this system would be considered "antiquated" and too rigid by American standards but I still consider it gold as I saw it producing an amazing number of incredibly well-educated high-school graduates.
There is just too much to be said for a fair parallel between the two educational systems but all I know is that I am going to have a hard time adapting to this schooling style, which I find chaotic and leading to a cursory, superficial approach to any discipline.
I, personally, would prefer that "I went to the fish hatchery" be written correctly in the first place, after the child has mastered phonics and spelling; and if he didn't write it correctly, I would certainly favor teacher's loud and clear red correction on the notebook, as red has an amazing power to etch the correct spelling onto the child's brain.
And better yet, perhaps all the spelling errors should be a sign that 5-6 is too early to attempt writing "I went to the fish hatchery" in the first place.
In Kindergarten, syracusa, the children are -not- expected to be able to form full words and understand about grammar, context, spelling, capitalization, or even spacing between words. They are only supposed to understand "word recognition," that is to say, being able to recognize that a word is, in fact, a word. They don't even necessarily need to know which word it is. It's recognition, not comprehension. They need to recognize a sentence. They need to recognize that sentences go left to right, up to down.
The exercise of the journal is to get them used to doing left to right, up to down. That is all that's expected of them at first. By the end of the school year, it is hoped that they'd pick up a few more tricks, such as recognizing specific words as cat, the, it, me, I.
Once they get the visual layout of sentences down pat in kindergarten, they're ready to tackle more specific words, vocabulary, bits and pieces of sentence structure and punctuation, and learn how to do all that in first grade. But if they go to first grade not even knowing that sentences form from the left and flow to the right, they won't be ready to keep up with the rest of the class.
You're stressing yourself out over nothing. Kindergarten is OPTIONAL in the USA. It is not required. If you really want to, you can keep your child home and teach him home. You could even choose to homeschool your child all the way into high school "graduation," and never have him set foot in a schoolroom classroom. The government requires that he have an education. But that education is required to begin *after* kindergarten, not during it. Kindergarten is just a setup for grade school. It creates the facade of the atmosphere - a school room, desks, things that have certain places they must be, cubbies - it's all just the layout so kids can get used to the idea.
And writing is the same. They are taught the layout of writing. As for the writing itself, printing is generally taught first in the USA, not cursive. Block letters are easier to learn because you don't have to remember canes and hoops and loops and squiggles. Lines, circles, and half-circles for the most part. If you go into a public school's earlier grade classrooms you'll often see big block print letters up on the wall over the blackboard, so kids have a visual aid every single time they look in that direction.
Now, I have heard more than my share of "you should not concern yourself with what other people and their kids do" but I honestly can't help asking a simple WHY?
Let me start out by saying that your son will be fine in K. We do not have a "standardless" educational system. Every state has standards for education. Here is link the FL standards. Most state have similar standards. Teachers are expected to teach these standards.
As far as WHY you shouldn't care about whether your child is up to par with others it is very simple. Academic achievement is not a sprint, it's a marathon. Of course we all want our kids to do the best they can so that they can be successful. But academic achievement at age 5 is irrelevant to their eventual success or failure in the academic world.
I had a similar mindset to yours when my kids were small. However, I have developed a different mindset as my kids have moved through the educational system. My oldest is 16 now and is competing for college admission. His achievement in HIGH SCHOOL is what is going to determine his academic achievement in college. The fact that he didn't read until he was 6.5 is irrelevant now. He is a top student in HIGH SCHOOL which is where students really have to shine NOT KINDERGARDEN.
Kindergarden is the time to learn how to learn. Sometimes kids stumble when they are 5. Let them stumble, help them get up but don't worry about it so much. Elementary school is the place to learn fundamentals, and to learn how to learn. Actual achievement is not as important in elementary school. Allow them to fail sometimes. They will learn more from a failure at age 6 than success.
And lastly, enjoy your children. They are young for such a a short time.
I, personally, would prefer that "I went to the fish hatchery" be written correctly in the first place, after the child has mastered phonics and spelling; and if he didn't write it correctly, I would certainly favor teacher's loud and clear red correction on the notebook, as red has an amazing power to etch the correct spelling onto the child's brain.
And better yet, perhaps all the spelling errors should be a sign that 5-6 is too early to attempt writing "I went to the fish hatchery" in the first place.
In kinder, the kids learn to spell certain words correctly (that is, with standardized English). Those words, their "high frequency words" or "sight words" DO need to be spelled correctly in order for the student to be considered as having met that standard. We start with my, see, etc. Regular CVC words should also be spelled correctly in order for the student to have considered to be meeting that standard - sun, cat, fin, pot, let. If teachers were to wait until "hatchery" was also spelled correctly before having students write, we'd miss a LOT of opportunities to see their writing develop. In addition, when they do writing phonetically (what my fish hachre kid did), kids are working with and manipulating letter sounds, which in turn helps them learn to read. The kids I teach who are able to copy correctly spelled words off the walls just fine, but can't produce a phonetic attempt at something original, are also the ones who don't read as well, now, and in many cases I've seen when I've followed my students, later on. Copying is very different skill. We do some of it in K too, for other reasons, but it doesn't replace my encourgement of phonetic spelling.
Plus, there are a great many kids for whom that technique of memorizing every word so that everything is spelled correctly is never, ever going to be a strategy that works, even in 5th grade. My brain tends to think that way, I'd probably have done ok with the method you describe... but many don't. They'll need to learn via phonics and spelling patterns. Phonetic spelling is an excellent way to lead into that. The kid is stumped about how to write "tch" in hatchery. They're curious: what makes that sound?? It drives them crazy. I pull out the sound-spelling card for that intended for first grade and show them. Now they use it.
I don't think the teaching of writing as you describe is antiquated by American standards. I think it's antiquated, period. I can also wax poetic about back in the day when I spent days playing My Little Ponies but it doesn't mean it actually was the only effective way to spend one's childhood.
If you're going to be in Atlanta, I'm sure you could have your pick of Title I schools (where a substantial portion of families have income levels that qualify for free or reduced lunch). No need to be in an upper-class environment if it really is so problematic and the source of all of this competitiveness.
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I don't think I'll go on. But we continue on through our day with recess, then Music (we listened to Bartok today and one of the kids got to use the pointer to ID the piano as the featured instrument on our poster), Math (we graphed our favorite fruits and our favorite farm animals - which took about an hour of my prep time yesterday to prepare), went to lunch, then came back to do Writing. We have a list of 5 vocabulary words we're learning so I incorporated that into our writing today and we drew a picture together and labeled it with the vocab words. I did it on my document camera, projected onto the screen in the front, and they did the same on their papers. In this way we practiced the vocab word meanings, hit our required Language Arts objective to use labeling, and practiced writing conventions, namely left-to-right. Then they took out their Writing Journals and free-wrote for 5 quiet minutes on any subject they wanted. Pictures were fine, but now that we're in the 4th week of school the expectation is that there is also some evidence of letters and/or words. They're not "finished" until I see that. That could be their name. It could be Z F D. Or the above mentioned RANBOS. 
