How do I handle this?? - Mckaylee's report card

mckayleesmom wrote: She got her report card today and I have to admit I'm so disapointed. I feel like crying. For the most part she got satisfactory in everything.

On Social developement, Work Habits, Character identification, Basic shapes, object counting, number sequence, directional words, patterns, data collection an Number counting and identifying by sight she did satisfactory ( which is the highest) on most and fine on the rest.

This is why I'm upset....We practice her words at home all the time and she gets them all right for the most part..except when she starts goofing around and I have to get on her about paying attention. I have told her teacher that she pretends to not know things when she does..I don't know why she does it, but it ticks me off. Of course that is what she did during testing so she got horrible scores on her sight words.

Last night I even went over all the alphabet and spring. sight words with her and she got them right. I even added her Winter ones so we can start practicing those.


Her teacher remarked that she has adjusted to kindy. I just love her sweet personality and she gets long well with hr classmates. Please help Mckaylee learn the alphabet letters she does not recognizeand a few of the fall sight words.

Mckaylee also needs help with her fin motor skills. I'm going to try some different size pencil grips with her.

I already knew the motor skill part and part of the problem is that she still switches hands when she writes and we have had alot of trouble getting her to grip the pencil or crayon properly.

I'm just annoyed...Why does she do this?

mckayleesmom replied: Oh..and a couple weeks back I talked to her teacher and she said that she was having problems with her numbers and putting them in order...But she said her sight words she was doing good on.

I handed Mckaylee her flashcards and told her to go into her room and put them in order....She did it perfectly....

Just like when she starts goofing around..I threaten to take something away and all he sudden she magically knows them all.

jem0622 replied: I have a special pencil grip for Gabe. It is a huge help. I bought it at a local Home & School store.

Are you being asked to practice with her at home? The only thing that Gabe (in kindy) does is read an early reader book before bed. We do no other work with him.

CantWait replied: Honestly Bri, it's Kindergarten What her marks say now aren't going to reflect her report cards when it comes time for college and unniversity. Now having said that, I know it's easier to say to think.

Anthony is the same way, at home he will do everything with me, and school he goofs off, plays around, and won't do the same level of work as if he were with me.

How old is Mckaylee now, 5 or 6?

mckayleesmom replied:
She's 5...I tried to find her a pencil grip today. I did find some, but I doubt they will work. I was looking for the kind that look like a triangle..kwim?

The way they grade Kindy is pretty relaxed. They have to know 10 sight words and 10 numbers and their ABC's for fall....Then they need to know 10 more sight words and recognize 1-20 by sight and put in order by winter and 10 more words and 1-30 by the end of school.

I'm just afraid that she is going to pull this the whole time and they will want her to repeat.

I do practice with her at least twice a week because they have a homework sheet that we get that has a MON-FRI and a choice of things to do...We do alot of them too.

I'm just worried.

msoulz replied: If she does do that for the entire year then she may not be mature enough and should repeat. I don't see anything wrong with that. Whatever is best for her education. Now I say this because my son did repeat and it was the best thing for him. He was just too immature to apply himself. He's now in 4th grade and doing very well.

jcc64 replied: All of her "problems" are developmentally appropriate, Brianne. I wouldn't put too much pressure on her, or she's likely to shut down or give up. Kids don't have the words to express frustration the way adults do, so they just act silly when they feel overwhelmed. Corey is in 1st grade, and she still "plays dumb" in school occasionally- pretends she doesn't know something with the teacher that she mastered long ago at home. Idk what that's all about, but it's typical early childhood behavior. Stop with the flashcards. Don't worry about the pencil grip. Just calmly and casually work on the few items the teacher mentioned on the report card and let her be. Seriously, don't turn learning into a chore. You'll regret it later on.
The work of kindergarten is learning how to socialize appropriately. The rest will come when she's ready, trust me.

mckayleesmom replied:
The flashcards were given to me from the school. We are suppose to practice with them. I don't push it...Even her teacher says that if they just don't feel up to it...drop it. We usually go through her flashcards 2 times and then we are done with it. Then we move on to her homework sheet and we get to pick what we want to do...so that is fun for her. We only work on homework for an hour and a half or so....Usually not that long, but sometimes she wants to do more then one homework thing....They are mostly fun things anyways...Make hot chocolate with an adult...Count the windows in your house...etc.

I don't let her know I'm disapointed....I just told her what a great job she did and MS. C gave us a list of things that we can work on together.

Her teacher reccomended the grip thing because she has trouble holding pens and pencils...

I guess disapointed isn't the right word...I'm more frustrated..because I know she can do it.

CantWait replied:
I'm having some of the same issues with Anthony right now, he's also 5. And after my meeting with the teacher a couple weeks ago, as of right now, they want him to repeat next year. They say most 5 year olds, especially if they haven't been in a structured Pre-K class the year before are not ready for sit down style of learning. I'm in the same boat, on the fence about it.

lisar replied: Lexi does the same thing sometimes. She will ask me how to add 2 numbers together. It drives me nuts. I really have no advice I just wanted to offer

Hillbilly Housewife replied: She seems right on track from what I know about the US school system. It's not that big a deal..

Something that helped Emilie master her letters (she'll be 5 at the end of December) is making her sign her name when she does a drawing... and she does TONS of those.

(((I don't believe in sight words. It's just memorization. It does not help kids make the connections needed to read, it doesn't stimulate them nearly as much as sounding out the letters and syllables, and increases their chances of making mistakes in the words as they write them later on, because it's a different learning process... they register the word as written correctly if all the letters are there, even if they're not necessarily in the right order.)))

TheOaf66 replied: Tanner still has that problem...he knows the stuff and is smart but he gets distracted and starts goofing off and he slips and acts like he doesn't know what is goin on anymore.

lisar replied:
I agree with Rocky here. I think they should be taught how to spell the word not just recognize them like they teach them here. When Lexi started 1st grade they actually started teaching them the actual spelling which I was happy about. It makes much more sense that way. However Duval county Public school system sucks. I have Lexi in a Grade A school luckily.

boyohboyohboy replied:
I totally agree, in kindergarden it is more important that the kids learn to sit and listen and do what tasks they need to do....the work will come..
it just might be a maturity thing and the teachers know that..and holding her back isnt a bad thing, there are many kids that dont even start until they are 6yrs..but alot can change from month to month..they are just done with the first marking period..she might get the hang of it yet...
and maybe she wants that attention, we really used the reward system with caleb and once we found something he really wanted he started to behave much better in school...

its hard not to want our kids to be their best, and show people what we already know they know..but she is just finding her own way right now, she will get the hang of it.

mckayleesmom replied:
I thought the same thing Rocky...so I make her sound them out too. She has already mastered her name along time ago and right now she is working on our last name.

When she gets gets to a certain word...Say for instance THE...and she will say HE...I will tell her to go back and remember what sound a T and H make.

She was also acting up on the bus out of boredom...so I bought her a notebook and each day she would practice a word or 2 and practice writing them on the way home....which also kept her out of trouble.

moped replied:
Rocky, what do you know about the CDN vs US school system? Is CDN tougher or US? I am jsut now wondering how Jack will make out next year........

BAC'sMom replied: I would not worry about it at this point. She's young and she has plenty of time. Like someone else mentioned no need in putting extra pressure on her. With that being said I suggest you try other ways to teach her...magnetic letters, you can have her spell out her letters. Try a dry-ease board, help her write out her letters with bright colored markers. Heck you can use colored sand or even shaving cream as a new teaching medium. The typical attention span for a child her age is 15 minutes, so if you are going over that you need to cut back. The rule is 3-5 minutes per year of the child.

Hillbilly Housewife replied:
From what I've read both here and independantly, the school system in the US does not require nearly as much effort from the parents and children as they do here in Ottawa. I can't speak for Alberta, since it's provincially regulated within the federal system... but I'm sure Jack will be fine.

jcc64 replied: An hour and a half for homework, Brianne? That is wayyyyy too much for kindergarten, even if it is just counting windows and whatnot. If it feels like fun and she's into it (and you have the time, it's all good, but otherwise, that's over the top)
The recommendation is 10 minutes per grade. My dd is in 1st grade- she therefore should not be doing more than 10 minutes. 2nd grade, twenty minutes, etc.... Even my ds' 8th grade math teacher asks parents to sign off on homework that hasn't been completed after 30 minutes of good effort. Kids need a chance to catch their breath at the end of the day, just like us.

MommyToAshley replied:
I agree... it all seems developmentally age appropriate. It's their way of dealing with things. And, 1-1/2 hours of homework IS way too much. Ashley only has 20 minutes of homework a night and she is in 1st grade. We always try to make homework fun. For example, with flash cards, you can make two of the same flash cards and play a game of memory (saying the name of the word when the card is flipped over). To practice spelling words, we make up silly songs or march as we spell them out.

I think Jeanne is right though, it's a big adjustment to go to Kindergarten. It's best not to put too much pressure on them so young.

MommyToAshley replied:
There are some words that just can't be sounded out... those have to be memorized. I think the approach to reading needs to be a combination of phonics and sight words. Although Ashley was already reading before she went to kindergarten, her kindergarten class introduced a few sight words each week but mostly focused on phonics. She didn't get spelling tests until this year in first grade. I think it's a great approach to reading and I don't think you can teach reading based solely on phonics. I read in a teaching journal somewhere that only about 50% of the words in the English language actually follow phonics rules.

mckayleesmom replied:
I don't make her do an hour and a half...Usually she wants to do the stuff on her homework list..and it's not everyday. Most of the stuff on her list is all fun stuff...Do 10 jumping jacks, help mommy with dinner..Stuff like that. I don't make her sit for an hour and a half at one time and usually she is the one following me around to do it.. Does that make more sense?

ALso..she is usually following me around with a pen and paper 24/7 asking me about certain words and stuff...So I really don't force her. Like I said...Usually I go through her flashcards 2 times and would be happy with just 1 homework thing a night, but its more her then me wanting to do them.

Mckaylee loves crafts and games so that is why she does more on the list..Plus it's getting cold out now and she would rather be doing something inside.

I didn't mean to make it sound like I make her...Sorry for the confusion.

Hillbilly Housewife replied:
We'll have to agree to disagree... I don't believe in them for learning to read. Once the basics are down.. then perhaps, because of all the phonetic exceptions... but learning to read? no way!!

MommyToAshley replied:
There's probably more than one way to learn to read. I think the system Ashley's school uses is awesome after experiencing it... it only strengthened her reading skills. But, I respect your right to disagree and teach your children the way you best see fit. However, I am just curious, when your kids are reading and they come to common words in books that can't be sounded out... what do you do?

Hillbilly Housewife replied: Could you give me an example of words that can't be sounded out?

jcc64 replied: Oh god, there are so many, Rocky, English is an atrocious language to rely solely on phonetics. "the" is a perfect example. the 'e' at the end doesn't sound anything like an e, it sounds like 'uh'. How would a kid be able to phonetically work that out? 'what' is another one- phonetically, it sounds like wut, not hat with a 'w' in front, as it is spelled. I could go on and on, but I think memorizing certain words that do not follow any logical phonetic patterns is a pretty inescapable part of learning to read standard English.

Sam & Abby's Mom replied:
I totally agree with this statement. The English language is full of exceptions. Alot of it really is pure memorization.

My3LilMonkeys replied: The best example of how English ignores phonetics that I can think of is the 'ough' words:

rough
cough
through
dough

mckayleesmom replied: I agree that some can be very tricky....I feel like I am completely confusing her when I explain this to her..when certain words don't make the sounds that she has learned they make.

Hillbilly Housewife replied:
I see what you mean - I still maintain that memorizing the words rather than sounding them out doesn't really help. I know that when Zach reads, when he comes on a word that doesn't follow the rules, he's able to properly say the word after having read the context. He says what as what and not wat, because he knows the word sound by the spoken language. He'll try to sound it out, and know what the word is. Not by memorization though.

In a sentence with the word Rough - it's also used in context... The table's surface is Rough.. when 2 vowels are walking, the first one does the talking... so it's not oooo, it's uh... so he's say R-uh.. g.. and then he knows it's r-uh-f. Maybe my kid's just wierd...

For the word "the", I can back down and say that ok, the kid has to memorize that it is Th-uh and not Th-eh... but not by recognizing it on a flash card. Having to try to sound it out in a sentence, and reading the word and making the connection to pronounce it like you do when you speak, to me, is still more important. Mainly because when you see the word, that you've memorized on a flash card, your brain will not necessarily pick up that it is not spelled correctly if there is ever a typo, due to your brain recognizing the letter group as a whole, and not in the individual order in which they are placed, like your brain does when you sound them out. That's why 50% of the population does not read phonetically.. and also why 50% of the people make horrendous mistakes when spelling simple words, consistently.

((ETA - think of There, their, they're... your you're... soooo many people make mistakes because they spell it the way it sounds.. but you have to take the word in context.. and it's the context that defines how you use it, and spell it.. you do not learn this through flash cards, because it's just the word.. not the context. You completely miss the context when you memorize a word through sight words. As for the ough words... show me a 4 5 6 year old learning to read who has words like that in the "beginning to read" books, as opposed to the very basic vocabulary in books meant for those readers.))

ps - I want to make sure you all know it's for learning to read that I think like this, not reading in general. Just learning.

jcc64 replied: So what you're talking about is is the whole language method of reading, where kids figure out words by the context in which they're placed, i.e., the rest of the sentence, correspondence to a picture, etc...That method was pretty popular when my now 16 yo was learning to read, and early childhood literacy studies went back and forth about the efficacy of whole language. After awhile, I think they settled on a combination theory, some phonics, some whole language. My daughter has a whole list of "strategies" to use when she comes to an unfamiliar word,some are whole language, some are phonics: different strategies work in different situations, depending on the word itself.
As for your "rough" analogy. If a child used the first vowel does the talking trick, he would be pronouncing the 'o' as in octopus, or 'o' as in oatmeal. The sound is actually a short 'u' sound. And then there's the rest of the word: gh to a beginning reader would be guh, not 'f'. There's no way a kid could sound that word out with any sort of logic.
This stuff fascinates me b/c I'm studying to b/c an English teacher.

Hillbilly Housewife replied:
Yes. I'm not knocking sight words as a whole... just for first learning to read. Sight words are used in functional reading.. once reading is pretty well established with the phonemic awareness and comprehension of the vocabulary read.

You first need to make the letter-sound correspondence. Flash cards can help with this, as it's really just identifying the phonetic sound of letters at a fast pace.. then phoneme blending, which is putting the sounds of the letters you learned in the correspondence together, to form short words... usually the CVC words... dddd-ooooo-ggggg and followed by phoneme segmentation.. using bigger easy word, such as bbbaaa-nnnaaa-nnnaaa, and switching out phonemes either at the beginning or the end.. baaa-naa-nooo, baaa-naa-taaa etc... which is still a method used in testing children. "Take the word Bat, and replace the B sound with a M sound, what do you get?" That's cognitive, not memorization.

Only after these steps have been sufficiently practiced should sight words be introduced.. sight words do comprise of between 50 and 70% of the words we use on a daily basis... BUT - sight words is only for functional reading. it does not teach the comprehension of what is read... and is most often used to replace phonic decoding.

As for pronounciation, as you know, there are different accents all over the world.. the jokes about canadians saying aboot.. it's not really true, we say it like Ab-ow-t. yes, gh would be guh to a begining reader.. but like I said, show me a beginner reader learning those words without having first mastered basic cvc comprehension.

it also fascinates me, as I was aiming to continue to pursue language studies, as I speak English and French fluently, I am pretty darn good in German and Spanish, can understand a lot of Portuguese, Italian and Abenaki, and I'd like to work internationally some day as a French or English as a second language teacher. I have a few friends in japan right now doing just that, and it's in my plans for the future.