Kindergarten, the New First Grade?

Yep, kindergarten is the new 1st grade. Just wait until you get into Common Core and dealing with homework each night (and that does happen in kindergarten, so don't be shocked).

School administrators have completely sucked the joy out of learning in kindergarten now.

You are right. Kinder is the new 1st grade. While it was a month or so before actually writing sentences, esp with only half day kinder, she was expected to do them. She was also expected to read a page in an easy read book by the end of 4 months. Last year in 1st grade, the teacher told me that the books that are now 1st grade level were 2nd and beginning 3rd the year before. This is all from Common Core. She starts school next week and I am kind of afraid to see what they will expect.

My son was in kindergarten last year and I'm a teacher. Yes, kinder is more academic then it used to be. It isn't learning a letter a week anymore. They are expected to be reading very simple books by the end of the year. They will be expected to write sentences, but that is an end of the year expectation. More than likely at this point the teacher will be writing sentence stems on the board for kids to copy and fill in one word. "I brought a _________. I got it from_______." There will be a lot of modeling and support throughout the year.

In regards to some of the comments about Common Core. Common Core does not equal homework. Individual districts/schools/teachers make the decisions about homework. My kids and I are both in Common Core schools. Our state standards were one of the models for the Common Core so the standards were not totally new to our district. My kindergarten son was expected to read, work on letter sounds, or work on sight words for 30 minutes every night. About three or four times during the year he had other homework. Bring 100 things for the 100th day of school. Fill out an all about me poster the week he was student of the week. And once or twice he had a sight word worksheet that took less than 5 minutes to complete.

My second grade daughter was expected to read for 30 minutes every night. About 2-3 nights a week (and not every week) she had math homework. It never took more than 15, maybe 20 minutes to do.

I know that not every teacher would agree with me on this, but I think Common Core has made me a better teacher. Yes, it is more work for me, but my teaching is so much better now. My students no longer do meaningless worksheets. There is more purpose in my teaching. There is a more distinct end goal for my students and I feel more prepared to get to those goals. I sincerely feel like I failed some of the students that I had before Common Core. If you look at the Common Core in its purest form, it looks very different from what some states and districts have turned it into. And the changes have not necessarily been positive. That's the fault of the state/district. Not the Common Core.

There is no doubt that the standards have shifted. Yes, K is the new first grade. In fact, I reviewed my husband's 1 grade memory book the year I home schooled my Kindergartner and I can tell you without a doubt that the 1st grade of the 70's and 80's is now taught in K.

Are we reading into this correctly that your daughter is starting K or did you skip K to start school in 1st grade? Three sentences would be an end of the year K task and perhaps a beginning of the year 1st grade task.
That said, no teacher would expect a K student to write 3 sentences.

Please contact the teacher for clarification.

(FYI, the first week my 1 grader came home with homework that spelled out writing in paragraphs and recapping a whole story. I was aghast and horrified as we did the homework. Turns out the teacher sent something home without clarifying the task and thats not what we were supposed to do. We were only supposed to draw the pictures at home and they were going to recap the story in paragraphs in class, working on the same sheet the whole week. I forced her to do the assigment the teacher meant for the first week in one evening. I made my 6 year old to spend 1.25 hours on it. She cried. I had homeschooled K. I thought we were behind (we were not). I'm so mad at myself for doing that to my daughter. Your daughter's teacher may have sent something home that was misleading. The point being you need to communicate with the teacher. Don't make the mistake I made and work hard with your child to finish the assignment only forcing her to feel frustrated. Protect your child. Your main goal in these early years it to instill a love of learning and that means working within her level, not muddling through overly difficult assignments. As a mother who has made these mistakes and learned from them, don't force your child to work through this assignment. )

Kids come into K with a very WIDE range of abilities. Some can read and write but can't pump their legs on a swing. Some can barely write but have wonderful math/memory skills. Some can draw wonderful pictures but can't stand in line. Some can talk to adults and behave perfectly but don't know how to be a good friend to kids their own age.
It's all. over. the. place.
Public school expectations kind of suck, but hopefully you have a teacher that understands and is able to engage your son at whatever level he is currently at.
And you never know, my son was WAY less "advanced" than my daughters at that age and he turned out to be by far the better student in the long run.
signed,
two in college, one in high school

So I had my little one's old kindergarten journal out just by chance today as we're clearing out old stuff.

I had a look at her first journal entries so I could let you know.

It's mostly drawings at that point, and then she had three lines to fill in, but for her, it was mostly just letters. It makes no sense. And it's all one big line (no spaces).

So the teacher wrote underneath what she was trying to convey in the picture and words.

By the end of the year it was better - could spot the odd word and spacing. But it was all written like how it sounds. So the teacher still had these little explanations underneath. We were actually told look at the picture and ask about it. Because it's doubtful we could read what was printed.

Hope that helps :)

My son completed K a year ago and I used to help out in his classroom. I now work in a nearby school and also work with K students. While a few may be ready to do this, the majority of them are not and simply need to work on mastering the letters of the alphabet and letter sounds. Letter sounds are so important because it's how they learn to read. By Jan./Feb., the kids were writing sentences. You really see the growth once they get to first grade. The K teachers I have worked with would not expect the students to come in being able to write sentences, I was told that they should know the letters of their name and the numbers 1-10. My other 5 year old son is very bright but is not interested in learning letter sounds right now, he starts K in a week, I'm not the least bit worried...I have no doubt he'll pick it up once he's with his new classroom. My other son was the same way and can read wonderfully now, he's still not crazy about writing but can do it.

This has been the practice in California. The state has changed the b-day cutoff of age 5 by Dec 2nd to 5 by Sept 2nd because the requirements have gone up.

The TK program should be more what Kindergarten was 15+ years ago. Many kids including my daughter did a 'kindergarten' program before entering the public schools kindergarten. These programs are what Kinder used to be (play based and such). I wanted to give my child that extra year before entering this desk job of Kindergarten.

I am surprised they are having the kids write 3 sentences the first week of Kindergarten. I recall a friend telling me her daughter was marked down for not using the correct punctuation, spacing between words in Kinder, but I think that was around Nov or Dec for the parent/teacher conference. Maybe your child's teacher wants a baseline for the states requirement later in the year. Yes, 3 sentences for Kinder kids is a requirement. They need to use capital letters correctly, have words spaced apart correctly "I see Mary at the park." Not "icee mArY a T P rc" Most kids are not expected to get it perfect.

I am an elementary teacher with a kindergartner. Wow! That is a lot. She's assuming they know their letters, how to write, how to spell words, and form sentences (does she want a capital letter and punctuation, too?). Yes, your child will do stuff in K that was previously taught in 1st, but she needs to teach letter sounds, long and short vowel sounds, CVC words (consonant vowel consonant--like map, hat, sit), etc. I remember my older two writing a paragraph in K--topic sentence with three detail sentences, but it was near the end of the year. Good Luck!

I really wish we could kick politicians out of education.

Kids need to play to cultivate the necessary imagination and creativity to even become decent writers. Writing is so much more than stringing words together: it's creating a world, a picture, with an inviting rhythm that brings the reader along.

I wish we'd save writing for 9 year olds. Evidence shows kids needs to play.

This is just so wrong. It's all backwards, and wrong.

Yeah, that does sound pretty advanced to me- my son was in preschool for 2 years prior and I was amazed at all he learned - writing all his letters and numbers, the beginnings of reading, what sounds all the letters make - all stuff I didn't learn till kindergarten. But he would have been lost if asked to write three sentences the first week of kindergarten.

IMHO, that is way to advanced for the first week of Kindergarten. My GD would have been lost - she never attended preschool and could only write her name when she entered kindergarten. If your son does not know how to write all of his letters, and I assume he doesn't know how to spell 3 sentences worth of words, how does she expect this to get done? I would just ask her that in those terms. Is this done in the classroom or at home? If at home, perhaps she wants the student to come up with the sentences and the parent to write them?

My kid could read and write before she started kindergarten. I don't think it's too much.

Kinder IS harder than it used to be, but then again, so is first grade. I agree with Erica about Common Core, but as a parent, I absolutely HATED 100 Day mess. If it hadn't been for not wanting to be a bad example for my kids, I would have just said no to it and let the teacher be mad.

I wouldn't do sentences for the first time. I'd wait for clarification. I wouldn't help your child either. I'd let the teacher assess him as he is. Then she knows what she has to work on with him.

you're absolutely right. and it'll keep progressing so long as people keep pushing to start academics earlier and earlier.
i don't agree that working with a child on some things prior to kindergarten is 'homeschooling'. i hope that all parents of toddlers and very young kids work with them on some degree of reading and counting. prior to kindergarten i don't think kids should be in any sort of structured curriculum, so 'homeschooling' isn't appropriate.
at the beginning of the year i'm betting teacher isn't expecting fluent beautifully phrased sentences. don't jump to conclusions. a good kindergarten knows that she, more than any other grade teacher, is going to be dealing with a vast spectrum of 'readiness' and will be prepared to spend the year evening everyone out.
i'm so glad your son is enjoying school! that's awesome. he'll be fine.
khairete
S.

Yes, that's a bit advanced. Just help him write the sentences. He will get practice describing his show and tell and writing his letters, even if he can't read what he wrote. No worries.

School is competitive these days.

Given that, I taught my daughter to read. She went into kindergarten reading chapter books and could do "kid" writing. Basically just writing the sounds of he words she heard.

Check out the book "How to Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons". It took 15 minutes a day and by around day 60 my daughter could read all easy readers in the library.

I would assume this is a GOAL to be reached by all at the end of the year.

That sounds like too much.
Some number/letter/color recognition I'd expect but most 5 yr olds don't have the manual dexterity to write much of anything.
By 2nd grade they have it down pretty good.

I'd ask the teacher how she does it! Then when she says what? Ask her how she teacher kids who can only write their name to write sentences about something because you have no idea how that's done.

Obviously this is something she needed to clarify. I would simply send it back without being done or with me doing the writing. She might not have any idea how it should have been worded.

It looks daunting. However the first show and tell probably won't really happen for a month. by then they will have very easy site words. Kindergarten is a lot more advanced than it used to be. But in the olden days (read when I myself was in kindergarten in 1967) it was really only about 2 hours and 15 minutes long and pretty much you played, had snack, potty time and circle time. learned colors and numbers and shapes. Most kids now have been in preschool. for upwards of 3 years in some cases and kindergarten is all day long. lots more going on. the 3 sentences at that level will go like this
Joe is my frog.
He is green.
He hops. They don't expect paragraph worthy stuff for the first time out. just more getting them in the motions of writing, capitalizing, punctuation etc.

It depends on what she expects form those sentences and when. I can tell you that in my DD's school (public) the children's writing was very rough to start and some kids only dictated for a while. If she wants them to write, then I would expect her to teach them to write. What are her sentence structure expectations? "This is my dog. My dog is brown. He barks." That kind of thing? If you find that your child struggles with her expectations, arrange a meeting. If she expects them to write well from Day 1, I think she's reaching. Find out what the real deal is. My DD went to K not reading (unlike some of her peers) and not really writing and she wasn't considered behind.

ETA: Dictating is different than writing and give Common Core a chance. IMO, the implementation varies from school to school. My DD is above grade level so far, including math. She's had HW nightly, but one reading or writing thing and one page of math has not been onerous at all.

Please do not see K as any failure on your part because you homeschooled him for preK. If that is part of your anxiety, leave it behind. I'm sure he'll be fine.

We wonder why kids are so screwed up these days. Starts with K. That's insane. I would not be happy. Actually I would be furious. This the first week. Next week comes scientific theory? Poor kids.