Overediting in first grade

Hannah's teacher is having her students edit the writing they do. I think this is, at least in part, a consequence of the many years that we spent on making sure that the kids were fluent writers. So much emphasis was placed on fluency that now the pendulum has moved to accuracy. Kids in Hannah's 1st grade class writing several paragraphs in which they have to do pre-writing in a graphic organizer that asks them to write the intro sentence and then what happened first, next finally and a conclusion sentence. When the kids turn in their writing, the teacher writes a lot of red on their papers. Then, much like we do in an academic ESL class, she gives them a handout with some "mistakes." She asks students to correct the mistakes. The problem with this handout is that there are way too many mistakes in each sentence. And there is no pattern to the mistakes. My concern is that if you are going to have your students edit their work, don't overload them with problems, and find a pattern if there is one. As I wrote in another entry, teaching goes well beyond giving out handouts and getting students to do a lot of busy work.....

It's hard to see your parents getting old

It's very hard to see your parents getting old. Especially when they have always been strong and not scared of anything and now suddently they are terrified about death. They know it's coming, this is what is happening to my dad. He escaped from the 2nd WW, was a child who travelled all over, from Italy  to Morocco, back to Italy, from Italy to Israel, then to Brazil, Uruguay and finally entered illegally into Argentina where he has lived ever since. Never afraid of anything and now terrified and angry... Difficult year for the Kamhi family!

Meeting with the school principal

Last Friday, I had a frank conversation with my daughter's school principal. After she and the other teachers told me that eventually H. would catch up, I frankly asked her how a child could catch up if instruction is in piecemail fashion, and all kids do is worksheets and not motivating work like the other kinds in the classroom. I told them, very nicely, that I felt that was being done to the kids in the RR is exactly what is often done with ESL students. I said that as a parent, I am concerned because there is a difference between "modified instruction" and "watered down" instruction. And I felt that what my daughter is getting is the latter. We had a good talk, though the keep insisting that kids eventually catch up. My feeling is that probably  the ones who catch up are those who don't have a significant problem. The others are lost in the stats....

Standards: Guiding light, but used poorly

Hannah is now finishing first grade. She is a great reader, though she wants to read about the topics she likes: Animals and princesses. Last summer, with her kindergarten teacher, we spent a lot of time helping her learn how to read by reading fun, interesting materials + learning how to decode. Now, my focus is to get her to improve her vocabulary and sentence length. So I am doing a lot of expansions, I expand on what she says + then I ask her to the complete sentence and repeat! Yes, I have her do this so that she produces the complete sentence. We do this as a game. I think it's working.

At the same time, it is clear that kids with special needs are quite similar to ESL students, in the sense that they need accommodation. Now, accommodation is very different from watering down expectations. I do not want the curriculum to be dumbed down. I want it to be modified so that she can access the curriculum. I am hoping to make my expectations clear to the school when I meet with the

principal and teachers of Friday.

Teaching children how to read

I am witnessing the failure of reading that is decontextualized. So much emphasis is placed on teaching kids how to decode, but they, or at least Hannah, does not have a clue what she is reading. Instead, when I ask her to read from a book that has context and she likes, she attempts to make meaning from the text. So why this emphasis on decoding and measuring kids ability to read from reading decontextualized text?

This week

Hannah has been reading and writing every day this week. She is much more confident, but she has trouble pronouncing words in which there does not seem to be a clear pattern, from her perspective though what has been working is using reading strategies. For example, she had difficulty reading The and all words starting with the, like them, there then so I taught her how to read the and then add the other syllables. The other strategy is pronouncing /u/ when there are two o's in a word, like room, pool, root, moon, etc. these two strategies are working but I have to build on them....

Reading in English

Hannah is beginning to read. She is in the process of developing automaticity. But she has trouble remembering some of the sight words she is supposed to remember by now. I keep questioning whether this is the effect of having to work with two languages or whether she has a learning problem. Those little books that have a lot of sight words repeated allow her to repeat the words, but she is simply repeating and does not retain the info. This is because she looks at the pictures and she relies on her background knowledge. What seems to be helping is having her read a book she really likes, like Pinkilicious. This book has a lot of the sight words she is supposed to know. But at the same time, it has content! And she is more interestered an invested in reading this book than in reading those little books that only provide repetition.

I need to have Hannah develop reading confidence, which is what she lacks. As a parent, it is very difficult to see your child struggling and you are telling her. Yes! You see! You can read! This is great! If anyone can give me suggestions on how to help her develop confidence, I would really appreciate it!