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Thought provoking article that stresses even more that developmentally Kindergarteners are not ready for the curriculum that they face.

Kerry, thanks for sharing this. This article was well worth reading. It makes me sad to think of what we are continuing to do to young kids, and scared for their future. Just thinking back to when I was in kindergarten, I remember lots of time to explore and play in different stations, including building and dress up stations. We did plenty of learning through play, and still all learned to read and make it through school. I'm in the middle school and don't always know exactly what's going on in the lower elementary schools, but it does seem like things are continually being pushed to younger and younger ages. The math that the sixth graders are doing now is similar to what I did in 8th grade algebra. Many of them are not developmentally ready for it, and then feel like failures if they can't get it. At an even younger level, I'm seeing it with my nephew who's 3 1/2 and in preschool. His teacher told my sister-in-law that he's behind because he can't write his name yet. Now she's concerned about it of course, but I'm thinking that's a little premature. And the last thing he needs at this age is someone trying to force him to write his name - he'll already be on a track to hating school..... I'm going to share this article with her. Also, when they talked about learning to read, I loved the quote about kids who learned to read later showed better understanding because they had had time to develop more language at an earlier age.Thanks for sharing.

Another great post - I agree with so much of what this article states, and I hear so many other educators and parents expressing concern about the trend that has been developing in all elementary grades, but especially kindergarten. The question is, if we all agree that it's not working, how do we change it?

Interesting read on how Kindergarten is the new first grade. I know that in my 18 years teaching that I have seen this shift. Things that I used in my first grade classroom are now being used in Kindergarten.

Thanks for sharing Kerry! I was actually just having this conversation with a colleague at lunch today following our curriculum and instruction meeting. We were reviewing the DIBBLES scores and discussing the kids that were in the yellow and discussing how we can get these "struggling" students to green. The piece that was not noted or discussed was that most of these kids were in the red at the beginning of the year. Of course we need to talk about how to continue to support all students, but I feel like we are focusing only on getting them to the green and not taking the time to recognize how successful and how much progress they have made this far. Some of these kids knew 4 letters and no sounds at the beginning of the year and now can name all the letters and their sounds, but are having trouble with newly introduced skills like blending and segmenting words. That is a lot of progress in just one area, never mind their progress in other areas. I don't know that I have personally progressed that much in any are of my life in the last year, never mind the last five months. On the other hand there are definitely kids in my class that are ready to or are reading and need to be pushed and challenged. My concern isn't that the standards are unrealistic, it's that it is unrealistic of us to expect that all kids will meet them at the same time and if they don't meet them in our set time frame we consider them to be a struggling student. As a result we push them harder and make them do more work with a skill that they might just not be ready for.

I think this is an important read about a local school system and early childhood assessments.

Thank you for sharing this, Janet. I also think it's an important read for everyone. While I'm in the middle school, it does often seem that expectations are moving to lower and lower ages. What our students are doing in math this year is what I remember struggling with in 8th grade. Many are successful, but others may not be developmentally ready for it. It's worth noting that as things have changed over the years, schools have felt more and more of a need to focus on mental health - are we pushing these kids too far, beginning in early childhood? I even see it in the demands of preschool with my three year old nephew. He was already marked as "behind" on a few skills. Really? I'm not sure that I'd agree, and not just because he's my nephew. I do think it's important to have high expectations for all students, but we also need to make sure that they're realistic, and in process, that we're not losing sight of the children in front of us, and their immediate needs.

I found this article while searching the "community" tool in Diigo. It's a great companion to Kerry's top 3 apps she can't live without.

Thanks for sharing, Robyn! What a great and simple way to differentiate instruction! In class last Monday, I was thinking of ways to use audio QR codes as a way to share student work...this article gave me a ton of new ideas on how to integrate QR codes into my instruction!

Love these ideas. Jan and I talked about using QR codes for a project with third grade and this gives us some great information. Thanks for sharing!