My kids experienced this, as well. They would get points off because they knew how to do math … they didn’t show whatever Rube-Goldberg-like series of unnecessary steps that the teacher wanted them to go through.
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I love the way you put that!
The first time I realized we were in real trouble was when going over homework and the problem was marked wrong. Simple word problems. How hard could it be?
“Jane has 10 marbles and gave her brother some. How many does she have left?”
D answered seven and it was marked wrong…(supposedly the answer was 5)
How did she get her answer? Jane only gave him 3 marbles and still has seven.
Obviously “some” is not a quantity so she created one.
As I sat there going through the book that wasn’t the only vague question. There were many. I could not believe this was her text. Who the heck wrote that thing?
She did learn math–through work books and flash cards at home.
I recall that they were not being taught the algorithms. They were supposed to invent it themselves, and all methods were considered equally valid. So doing multiplication by prolonged, methodical, slow addition was considered just fine.
An overview of some different math programs.
I’ve read that it’s not always easy to get straight answers from school districts as to what system they use.
I don’t know how so many of you have the memory to know how you learned reading/math or even the names of the programs your kids have. I have no idea! The method didn’t matter so much to me as long as they DID learn.
You learn to read until about 4th grade. 4th grade on, you read to learn. If you don’t have decent expressive and receptive language skills and reading skills/comprehension, it is very easy to fall behind the pack here and keep up with The Joneses - or the CC kids, lol.
How nice when a child starts “reading” under age 5. But it isn’t necessarily a full road to success nor should it be considered a roadblock if they aren’t reading at K age.
What program the school uses matters, but what matters just as much is what is happening at home. Are there books/reading materials around - and do kids have access to them (I have known parents who put the books up high so the kids can’t “ruin” them 
Do the adults read themselves? Does read aloud time happen at least several times a week? The exposure kids have at home before formal school and during formal school will also set the tone for learning - even if it’s just that parents are more tuned in to see interest, progress in learning.
And there lies much of the problem. The foundation at home. Disadvantaged families often have less reading material, more chaos at home, less literate parents, less knowledgeable parents, less access (car or otherwise) to get to a library or $ to use at a bookstore. Not always but OFTEN. Because poverty is more than $$ - it’s lack of resources at hand and resources to secure.
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I learned to read using phonics. My younger D learned to read using phonics, but phonics simply doesn’t work for everyone. My older child is dyslexic. (But was never diagnosed as dyslexic by the school. She didn’t get a formal diagnosis until she was an adult.) She was taught phonics in elementary school, but it just didn’t work for her. She finally taught herself to read by learning to recognize word shapes. To this day she she cannot “sound out” (use phonics to decode) an unfamiliar word. She can make a guess at how it’s supposed to sound–which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.
She talks about calling for specialist consult in the middle of the night when she was medical resident and there was a word in the patient’s chart that she literally could not say. She recognized the word, knew what it meant. She could define it and understood the consequences it held for the patient, but she could not say because she didn’t know what it was supposed to sound like. She said she must have sounded like an idiot when talking to the attending because she talked all around the word without actually saying it.
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Agree with 99 percent of this except the “You learn to read until about 4th grade” which I would change to “almost all ….” As one person above said there are unicorns who really master reading much earlier.
As far how I remember when I learned to read, the day I realized I could read was one of the most transformative moments of my life. This was sometime in first grade before my birthday so September. I had on a Little Kiddles necklace that had the doll in the perfume bottle. And I distinctly recall my teacher making me hand it over because we weren’t supposed to bring toys to school. And I went to her desk and as she was telling me I could have it back at the end of the day, I realized I could read the cover of her Time magazine. It had the words” parking” “ gas” “ bar” on it as well as the word Los Angeles where we’d gone on vacation that previous summer. And the word “condemned” which I didn’t know what it meant. And I asked my parents that night.
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D is 2 years younger than S and struggled with math because she wasn’t taught it well. I finally sent her to a private summer school to take math and they had excellent math teachers and the light clicked on. She was finally allowed to progress and have a different math book than the one she had already had 2 years in a row (where she had received “Bs”.
One day in 2nd grade, she came home with a math problem that required algebra to solve. It was very long and involved and took S (who was excellent at math and 2 years older) a solid hour to solve. I went in the next day and asked the teacher how the kids were supposed to solve it and she just shrugged and said it was just for extra credit.
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I helped out one day a week in one DCs 1-2 grade split class. That teacher had some wonderful approaches:
A major one came from their first experience with a split level class. Their principal counseled them that the situation wasn’t really all that different: Aren’t all classes filled with students at different levels and with different learning needs?
Friday mornings were catchup time. One phrase that was used frequently was “Joe” will you please help “Jim” by explaining how X works. I know you can explain it from your place in a way that will be easier for them to understand. And this helped both Joe and Jim!
My involvement with the class was a craft project on Friday mornings. Time with me was the reward for completing in class work for the week. Everyone had time with me, but class work came first.
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This quote might be a bit misunderstood. It might be better phrased as “The focus is learning to read until the 4th grade, when it switches to reading to learn.”
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I think that’s accurate. Our state, and I would imagine many others, have literacy testing in 3rd grade to make sure the kids are meeting that benchmarks that by 4th grade they are fluent readers who are reading to learn.
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We remember because our kids were not learning. And what should have been taught in school turned into confusion and tears for our kids and frustration as a parent. Then to add insult to injury if you taught your kids how to get the correct answer using traditional methods they would be marked wrong even if they had the right answer. It tends to stick with you.
Let’s add the not being able to read to word problems (vague ones poorly worded) to math. Now a kid can neither read nor do math even if they may be good at it.
True. But the very reason I taught my kid reading was to avoid the schooling that he’d run into. It was done as a preventative measure.
You can have it all happening at home and still not realize how backward the school system is to which you’ve entrusted your child. Especially as a first time parent. Unless you know and research the methods they use you won’t know. The system must be good so the failure automatically lies with your kid (NOT!)
Yep. The ones who need to rely on the system hurt the most. Making not only an income gap wider but a huge learning gap. Those who can afford it (and realize what’s happening) hire tutors, do self teaching, put their kids in private schools without those failed programs.
A good example is one of the parents from the podcast who talked about the “great school district” they moved into. When her kid had trouble reading she discovered belatedly that the reason it was “great” was that nearly all parents hired tutors.
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I will heartily disagree. My kid was in a 1-2 class and I missed the memo along the line that most (more seasoned parents) yanked their kids out. It wasn’t until a couple years later I realized the gaps in my child’s learning. Played a lot of catch up. Mostly all fundamentals and general knowledge you’d gain in first grade. I’ve kicked myself hard to this day for allowing that.
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My youngest went from Nate the Great! He was 8 and we were beginning to wonder if it was ever going to click.
My oldest taught himself to read. Words were a secret code he was determined to crack. Our school did a variety of approaches for reading.
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I remember the ITA reading method mentioned upthread because it was a big deal (and actually kindof nice for me) to be the “ITA group” hanging together with same teacher and classroom for two years. I do remember many things though from elementary school… K thru 6 and I remember every teach name and can picture the classroom location (especially fun 5th and 6th, in the basement dungeon classrooms).
My parents had mixed feelings. Twas great that I became an avid reader (though not the case for my sister - we both were exposed to many books around the house, but my parents encouraged self exploration more than reading to us). Not so great that they couldn’t read anything I wrote… the combo of extras special characters and my horrific handwriting made it a challenge.
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I think we’ve all had “light bulb” moments when learning reading or math. But “light bulb” is not a teaching method which some of these programs aspire to. I think working at a problem creates the light bulb moment.
But I understand…
My dad taught me Algebra. Oh lord. I clearly remember him being SO FRUSTRATED with me going over a problem that he had to go have a rant in the kitchen (not quietly) to himself while I sat there lamely with my textbook with just “no clue”. All these numbers and equations on the page. I was very upset. And then “magically” it came to me. He was ranting, I was sitting there with the book in my hand and looking at what we’d been working on and all of a sudden… It all made sense. I could do it all. So I do know about “light bulb” moments.
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They quit teaching cursive and now there is a whole “handwriting” thread on Reddit where people ask about their handwriting skills as they practice as adults. Not to mention the “what does this say?” threads where cursive is used. Considering that a lot of history was written in cursive this is not a good trend.
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I’m so sad for you that that was your child’s experience. One of my children almost ended up with a teacher in a split class who, at back to school night (while the school was figuring out how to manage the additional students) said to the classroom of parents, while almost literally wringing their hands, “I’m not sure how I’m going to make this work. One class level is almost too much for me …” ( or some such nonsense!). My student ended up in the non-split level class…
The teacher I wrote about earlier had figured it out, and really made it work,
I have not heard of split class (per google means 2 grades?) around here. But I did have a smile remembering how sometimes teachers in different grades would pair up for certain activities - example, older kids reading with younger ones. Imagine our surprise when our daughter went off to CO School of Mines and her assigned mentor for freshman orientation had been her “3rd grade pal” back in 1st grade.
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D was in 2nd grade in a split 1/2 class. S was in a 1/2 split both years. The class was team-taught, and the teachers were wonderful (except for the issue with the one teacher not allowing kids to read books if they couldn’t define the hardest words in the book out of context).
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