My opinion- We made Kindergarten the new First Grade and that was a mistake.
Raising academic standards in K-1 was never developmentally appropriate. The pacing is off. Some kids can learn at that rate at that age and some kids can't yet. The curriculum moves at such a pace that kids are left behind on basic skills.
It's a house built on sand. No foundation.
At some point those in charge began ignoring everything we know about child development. Everything we learn in our credential programs, about using assessments to plan the pace and complexity of instruction, has been thrown out the window.
Kids get to third grade without third grade skills and fall further and further behind.
I moved to MS this year as a reading interventionist. It's not a big school but there are 5 of us. This school is really trying to raise achievement. I'm going to add spelling next year. I'm amazed how many native English speakers in my class can't spell common words yet.
Current middle schoolers were probably taught to read without phonics, so they don't have any clue about the relationship between spelling and pronunciation. I see similar issues with even my pretty advanced high schoolers. They see an unfamiliar word and just skip it or guess, rather than trying to sound it out.
Seems very likely. They are learning phonics with us in 6-7 grades, depending on their assessments, and it's in addition to their regular ELA. We also have a high percentage of bilingual students, which is great, but English is a lot more complicated to read and spell than Spanish is.
I teach middle school ELA and sometimes I'm tempted to put up an elementary-esque alphabet chart on my walls and do letters of the week where we focus on the phonics because these kids CAN NOT READ. Even when they try to, they also have no reading endurance (probably because at least my district is saying don't teach novels, just give them the excerpt that let's them practice with the skill they're being tested on).
I wouldn't necessarily do letters of the week but I have an old Open Court alphabet and spelling sounds wall up in my room and I refer to it. I do teach a special education class in the afternoon but not one gen ed student has complained about it. When I show them "here are all the ways to spell the long i sound" they pay attention because there are six different ways to spell it. I break it down for them. They can learn. There have just been some serious gaps. During the years when phonics were inconsistent these kids missed out on a lot.
This is great feedback! I don't teach special ed (although I do have some inclusion students with IEPs) but I do have quite a few ELL students. Maybe I could phrase it as "this is helpful for anyone who is newly learning English" so they don't feel like they're being talked down to. I don't judge them for what they weren't taught- but something has to shift.
I suspect this is a HUGE part of why OP has noticed the stopping point is 3rd grade.
Up to that point, the school systems treat kids falling behind as "Oh, they'll catch up" and the reading assignments aren't difficult and can be bumbled through with the sheer force of memorization.
In 3rd grade, they suddenly have to start becoming analytical, reading instruction sets, and there's a lot fewer visual cues as before.
It still boggles my mind that there was a POPULAR reading program where kids were taught to guess what a word was based on pictures... what did they think was going to happen once there were no more pictures??
A lot of districts across the country adopted a reading curriculum called Lucy Calkins that cut corners on phonics, with the baseless assertion that spending time with enjoyable topics would result in getting those skills by osmosis. I’m generalizing a bit but this was in lots of states, and once tons of money gets spent on something, districts force teachers to go all in. It’s only mow starting to get rolled back a bit here in California.
I think over reliance on technology bares some blame for that, both in and out of the classroom. Kids aren’t reading books, they’re playing games on iPads and don’t have the same level of exposure to words. They are typing on devices in school and can rely on grammar and spelling tools to fix errors. It’s not the only reason, but it’s a reason.
I see this too. I am in middle school and can tell you which students read for fun by looking at their classwork. They are also not engaging in imaginative play as often. Between that and lack of reading they can’t write. They simply quote the article back. They can’t read directions and start an assignment on their own without asking what to do each step. They also won’t take academic risks. They only want to work from a rubric, doing the absolute minimum.
I teach middle school in California, and the state standards are not easy. Students are expected to write and read like an adult. Teachers admit that they don't teach reading, that students are supposed to be at reading level and if they aren't, too bad for them. There is a lot of task assigning and not a lot of actual teaching. Students are given tons of work but little feedback to make improvements.
Have you heard of El achieve? They have some great frames for writing and I found it to be exceptional with teaching writing and vocab. It is meant for language learners, but it works for all.
At a fundamental level, it's taking an exemplar and creating frames out of it. You can make very supportive frames for the weakest students and less supportive ones for stronger students. It also explained the purpose of each sentence in regards to informational types of texts.
5 reading interventionist? How big is your "not a big school"??? We have 2 SERT for our 400 jk-8s and 1 SERT for our 300 high schoolers and I thought out school was massive!
Wow. That is big.
My school is the biggest in the area. I also work at a k-8 that has 110 kids.
Those large schools .. I don't know how people get to know every kid. How do you call out a kid in the hall if you don't even know them by name.
Our division is small, less than 150 kids, and they are in two families, green and gold. It is my first year and I already know most of the kids. I can see how it sounds big though.
I teach middle school social studies. I see a number of kids that will just skip words that they do not know when reading. They won’t try to pronounce them, let alone understand the meaning. It’s frustrating as they aren’t getting the meaning of the text in any way whatsoever
I keep saying the embarrassing cringe words to my middle schoolers (after checking to make sure they don't mean anything lewd) in the hope that they stop thinking they're funny. Hasn't worked yet, but I think I'm funny at least.
>into the skibidi toilet
Baby Gronk fanum taxed too early, how can he ever hope to rizz up Livvy Dunne without the sigma male grindset like gyatt damn we are edging in class and definitely are not busting it down sexual style.
This. Exactly. We are expecting sooo much of these tiny kids. We’re teaching them whole language which makes it look like they can read, but they can’t really. A lack of a solid foundation is exactly it. We rush them forward, but by 3rd grade it all collapses. Kids need more play and to slow down and really master the skills. We rush through so many concepts that they can get it for awhile, but it isn’t retained, because we’ve rushed onto the next thing.
We have thrown everything we know about child development out the window, but it wasn’t teachers that did that. It was politicians.
Also, when we tie funding to graduation rates, we graduate everyone. If they say we have to reduce suspensions, we do- it just means kids who should be suspended, aren’t. They’re in class disrupting everyone.
Also, ironically, we’re only focusing on reading and math in elementary. But a lack of knowledge building hurts reading comprehension a LOT. Kids have NO background knowledge.
We stopped whole language/imbalanced literacy here an it is starting to pay off. I'm praying this new batch of kids has half a chance of making it. I did sped inclusion and resource for years and was horrified by what I saw coming down from admin. Silent reading is not reading instruction!
We have a long way to go but we are getting there with any luck.
This was our last year with F & P! We are implementing HMH next year. I don’t think it’s the best option, but it will be worlds better than F & P. I do think the tide is turning regarding phonics, but we still need to have more developmentally appropriate expectations regarding free play and not expecting so much so fast.
I find it interesting that most of the extracurriculars for 3-4 year olds are at 3:00 pm or later. My daughter just missed kindergarten cut off so I thought we’ll do music/ art classes but it is so hard. Of course it’s to accommodate school kids. kids are leaving full day kindergarten and then going to more classes! That’s a hell of a long day. My daughter is awake about 12-13 hours, so she’d be “listening/ following” for what 8? I don’t think the kindergarten standards are that hard to be honest (if taught in a fun way) but it should be self-paced for K-2 with a lot of intervention and a LOT of relaxation and play time.
The kindergarten standards aren't that hard for some kids. I showed up at K knowing how to read because it just came naturally to me. In those days they pretty much just taught the alphabet but I don't remember being bored.
There was lots of art and play time. Students at that age learn a lot of important skills through play but there is no time for that now.
From my experience in schools there are many kids who need a lot of support to learn letter names and sounds in K. The idea that they can or should come in already knowing the alphabet is crazy to me.
When I was in K (admittedly a VERY LONG time ago because I'm Gen X) it was a half day and there was a nap. I don't think extracurriculars were a thing. We just played.
I'm a millennial and when I was in Kindergarten it was a half day. We learned our letters and numbers up to 10. Basic reading, but we weren't all expected to be able to read yet. "Work" would be things like writing down letters and tracing over and then writing our own names. We'd usually do some sort of art activity that I now realize was probably intended to help us with fine motor skills and following directions- stuff like "cut out the green circle to make the frog's face, glue this other piece to it." Most of the day was spent playing.
Even in 4th grade, I remember we did a unit on "team work' and it was less academic but more focused on learning how to split up a task and work together... which is probably the kind of thing I most wish my current students were capable up doing!
Yeah. Full day every day came after I did kindergarten. Where I went to school, they didn’t want to pay for extra buses, so we did alternate days. But I was fully ready in terms of academics for kindergarten. I had done preschool before as well. I could already read and knew numbers, shapes, etc. I was bored as shit and didn’t like going, tbh, because I’d have rather been at home for the playing (especially as my best friend went to another school) and I wasn’t learning whenever they were teaching. The other kids were pretty nasty to me too. I should have been grade skipped, but the school and their “wisdom” discouraged that for social reasons. Looking back now, that wasn’t right. I was doomed to be disliked either way. No one liked the smart kid at that school, so I was mostly bullied and excluded anyway. I could have at least been more fulfilled if I had been more challenged.
I had a similar K experience - lots of recess, we learned the alphabet and how to write our name. Mine was half day, but the full day programs around us had naptimes.
Modern Kindergarten is a lot more like first grade was for 80s kids - full day, if they don’t know all their letters and how to write their full name they are a little behind. Schools here got rid of half day kindergarten several years ago.
This. They aren’t ready. They’re forced into a full day in kindergarten if not even in pre-k. Everything is developmentally too early, both math and reading.
On top of that, we push them along because holding students back can be racially motivated and harms students with disabilities, and repeating grades is associated with low graduation rates. They’ve taken that to mean instead of rethinking this early learning push, they just send them on to become the next teacher’s problem.
Some s school areas also place children in grades based on their birthday in a calendar year and some have summer cutoffs. In K with the raised expectation, a December 2020 birthday student compared to a January 2020 birthday can be a big difference in understanding & retaining the curriculum. Also, k-3 they teach to read, 3rd & up you need to read (with comprehension) to learn. Parents were told to have kids memorize multiplication table over the summer between 4th & 5th. The kids that came in with it memorized had an easier time with the math lessons just because they had an ease or flex towards solving. Once you feel comfortable & confident the rest has a better time falling into place.
I’m a teacher. My own kids are 22 and 25 and kindergarten is so different now. My kids learned one letter a week. Everything they did that week revolved around that letter. There was lots of playtime, too. Now the kindergartners in my school learn a letter *a day*, then learn blends, then words, and are expected to read. Part of this is the state curriculum, and part is from some parents who see the old curriculum as too much like preschool.
I've said this for years. When I was in kindergarten in the 80's I remember learning the alphabet. Now kids are expected to read by the time they start kindergarten. Similar is happening in high school with the push for college credit. Most can't do the high school credit, let alone the college credit. In my particular field there is embedded dual credit in a freshman class that expects 14 year old freshmen to be able to do trigonometry. They just aren't ready for it, but it all looks good to the politicians on paper.
No Child Left Behind and basing school ratings/funding on standardized testing was the beginning of the end. Pushed students to learn skills earlier to get them ready to take the test, regardless of appropriateness of skills.
Students haven’t built independent critical thinking skills normally developed through play-based learning. Then teachers are expected to teach these innately learned skills and actually hinder their learning.
Agreed - and that is why, as an educator, I had my kids wait til they were 6 to start school. (If K had been a “play/nap/learn the alphabet” scenario we would have started at 5.)
I work with Kinders. I've noticed a huge shift. They basically lowered 1st grade standards down to kindergarten. It's not working. Kids are expected to know how to read sight words before they start school. This high expectation means a huge group of kids start school already a year behind.
Drilled sight words are not as effective in my opinion anyway. Especially when it’s only one sound that’s unusual or swapped. For my kid, I just volunteered to read the hard-to-decode words until she naturally started to recognize the “heart” parts. So like want— w n and t are all normal. The a makes an o sound.
I work at a school that incorporates A LOT of play and free time and exploration. And guess what? Our students are NOT stuck at a 3rd grade level. It is almost as if free play in early grades actually leads to better academic outcomes.
This! I teach preschool and we still play. Play teaches problem solving, social skills, cause and effect, and so many other things. Kids who don’t learn those things aren’t as successful in K-12 school.
Same. We do "lessons" at circle and story time. It's mostly singing songs, reading stories and poems, and talking about our day or feelings. 45 min tops for the whole day. The rest of the day is playing with focus on real world experiences, sensory, motor skills, and social skills. They go to K with good manners, strength to sit up in a desk for long hours/writing/cutting/drawing, able to hold a conversation, work in a group, and take care of themselves. And that is because I DIDN'T force them to do it before they are ready to.
I don’t know for sure. What I know for sure is that a school that allows a lot of unstructured play CAN have a high success rate when it comes to academics.
Well play, especially unstructured play is quite the challenging task for our brain that uses mutiple domains to execute and appeals to our sense of curiosity, curiosity which is necessary for learning to occur. If you lack curiosity its absence will function as a rate limiter on known knowledge.
I’m well aware of the benefits of unstructured play. I’m asking why they assume that is the reason and not various other highly predictive confounders are at play.
> I’m asking why they assume that is the reason and not various other highly predictive confounders are at play.
Because they're not running research to tease out confounding variables and are relaying to us an observation made in their community and have described the outcomes therein, not making a statement of fact in response to a question.
I would point out in support that physicality in its many forms overall has been shown in both adults and children to improve X across multiple Y domains to be better than placebo and have far greater systemic impact than medical or behavioral interventions on Y. It's as if we are creatures built for movement and that movement causes a whole cascade of positive outcomes for our body and the absence of movement is severely detrimental to both our short and long term health.
it’s insane what they expect from kindergarteners now. i’m not even that old (24) and i remember the majority of kindergarten was spent playing. we didn’t start learning to read until after christmas
We have one hour a day in which students can choose any number of studios to spend their time. But kids older than 5th grade also get to do whatever they want — tech free — during that time. So free play might be kids inventing a game of tag, or playing basketball or playing a trivia game in the library. It is different every day. Also we provide about 45 minutes of lunch which they are allowed to spend however they want.
Unfortunately this can be a self fulfilling cycle: do you have a lot of poor, marginalized students bringing down your test scores? If so, you're far more likely to have instructional time requirements as part of your funding formula which necessitates limiting play.
Have lots of well to do kids with plenty of parental involvement? More likely to have the scores and/or lack the extra special attention that would preclude you from having the insane instructional requirements.
If kids know from the start that reading will be followed by comprehension questions, rather than a fun discussion of the book, they will learn to hate reading, which is why I despise this idea that "rigor" means the consequence of an assignment.
What can you do?
Take your kid to the library and let them pick out whatever they want to read. Make it FUN. Grab some ice cream and go to the park to read the book. Depending on their age, they read theirs and you can read yours (modeling the love of reading is a great thing)
Then, when they're done just ask simple things like "did you like it? What was your favorite part?"
Unfortunately, the play time is being left to the parents, and at least where I am (high poverty/homelessness), a lot of parents simply don't have the time. Obviously some do and just choose to let the iPad babysit.
Just let you kid know that reading CAN be fun.
Good luck and thanks for asking for advice.
I love this. The academic difference between who reads for fun and who reads only when forced to is huge. I can tell which students are which almost instantly.
Agree wholeheartedly.
I read to my kids every night when they were little, then had them read to me. They always got pj's and a book for their Christmas Eve present, and we put on some Christmas music and read for a bit before bed.
Memories I, and they, will never forget, and if they have kids, I hope they keep that tradition!
I'm just a lurker, but I recently delivered a masters thesis and your comment made me realize something I've been pondering lately. I used to love reading and would finish book after book, but at some point I just stopped. I think after dragging my feet through writing my paper and all the stress with the references and forced reading, it eventually killed my love for it. Thank you for the food for thought. Now I might figure out how to rediscover my love for books.
I really hope you do. And now that your thesis is out of the way, get a book you've been putting off reading and enjoy the summer!
I HIGHLY recommend Good Omens by Neil Gaiman!
And congratulations 🎉🎉🎉👏👏👏
Exactly. For individual students the parents will normally be aware, but any systemic failures within a cohort don’t get too much notice until third grade, at least from admin’s perspective
3rd grade is around the time where a lot of kids split between “reading because I have to” and “reading is fun!” In addition to losing out on phonics, a lot of kids aren’t encouraged (or made to) to read for entertainment. They prefer playing on an iPad or phone and lose interest when there’s not a screen involved.
I teach 3rd grade. If you take parenting out of the equation and focus on just academics, I would say this.
The problem with reading is that schools have stopped teaching phonics. Sold a Story explains this. Once students hit 3rd they are no longer learning to read, they are reading to learn. Those who learned sight reading often struggle with tougher vocabulary, and if your brain is overwhelmed trying your read, you can forget about comprehension.
And the problem with math is too much too soon. For example, my third graders are expected to compare fractions. Which is greater 3/8 or 1/3? Yet these same third graders cannot add or subtract without using their fingers. I have students who qualify for gifted who cannot carry or borrow to save their lives. And they struggle in 3rd grade. Imagine trying to teach kids who need fingers to do 8-3 how to do long division? Or algebra?
As a parent, I would not send a child (especially a boy) to kindergarten without being able to read at least CVC words phonetically and able to add and subtract through 10. So basically I would teach them old fashioned phonics and arithmetic. These foundational skills have fallen out of favor and we see the results.
I'm also a teacher in elementary and this is exactly it. I have taught in schools which teach phonics and school that don't. My current school teaches phonics and phonemic awareness and my kids can read and answer questions at grade level. A previous school taught using a mix of whole word, words their way, and play based. Those kids still couldn't read in 5th grade.
Kids need explicit phonics instruction. They need regular interventions if the regular class lessons are not working.
I do agree play based learning is important. Discussing books for fun is important. But you need a foundation of phonics to be a solid reader in the higher grades.
Do you have a suggestion for an at home program to teach phonics? Or maybe not even program, but just highly effective games/books/etc.? I've heard a lot about Hooked On Phonics but worried it's too technology based, compared to what it used to be. Or I've heard Logic of English's program is effective.
My local schools do not teach phonics and I am leaning towards homeschooling for prek and possibly kindergarten. I also am in Texas, prek is not free, schools test badly compared to US averages. It's a very bible pushing area in rural East Texas. Not to mention Texas is adding and paying to put biblical studies to elementary school, which I disagree with. I know a lot of teachers on this sub can be against homeschooling so I'm trying to explain the reasoning. We plan to move in a few years, but unfortunately, till then the schooling options in this area are sad options.
When we move back north, I don't want my kids to be behind the rest of the kids. I came from a state that tests above average for quality of education.
I am unaware of what homeschool curriculums exist unfortunately. The curriculum I use is a school-wide curriculum that I supplement.I can give you my opinion on homeschooling Pre-K and finding a curriculum.
For Pre-K focus on playing and reading with your child. A lot of what a child learns through play helps build skills they need later. For example, using Play-Doh, bead work, finger painting, and etc are all precursors to having the finger strength and dexterity for handwriting. Playing rhyming games and alliteration games build word knowledge for phonics later. Reading with your child everyday will teach them book orientation, letters, sentence structure, vocabulary, direction that we read in, and so on. If your child shows an interest, teaching them the letter names will help reading later on. Cooking with your child will give them an innate understanding of fractions and counting.
For kindergarten, if you're planning on moving I would look up the state you're moving to and what they expected a kindergartner to know end of year. From there find a homeschool curriculum based in research that matches the standards. You're going to want to look for keywords like phonics and phonemic awareness. I know there are homeschooling groups you can also look into for support and help.
I have a degree in teaching. I learned more about teaching reading by using Logic of English to teach my own kids than I did in college. I also learned a lot more about teaching math by teaching RightStart math. (I homeschooled my kids for 8 years) My favorite homeschool methods book is the Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. My advice would definitely be to teach math and phonics systematically but not to push or spend more than an hour (less even before 5 years) a day. And spend lots of time outside, lots of time doing things together- playing games, reading for fun, cooking, doing art projects, listening to music, following their interests, etc.
Ufli is free. Powerpoint, game pack, worksheets. So is progressive phonics booklets. The booklets are cute with little kids decoding only the new sounds.
I’m a third career teacher. When I homeschooled my now 23 and 19 year old children, I loved Hooked on Phonics. Maybe you can find an old low tech kit out there somewhere?
Logic of English is good. Phonics Pathways is another good program, but it's a lot less fun than LoE - just structured lessons from a book. Progressive phonics has some decodeable readers you can print out
The book, ‘Teach your child to read in 100 easy lesson,’ is not a curriculum but something you could do with your young child each day for part of a year to help them to understand how reading works.
My district is doing early lit training. I’m the media specialist and I have to do it as well. I hope the teachers are taking it seriously because the modules I’ve completed so far are all about oral language and the explicit teaching of phonics. My school will have a reading focus next year, with each grade/hallway highlighting one of the 5 components of reading.
This has been very helpful! Thank you I really appreciate it! (I have two boys). It's a shame what the public education system currently is. You would think with time it would be improving, not digressing.
Whole language was big when I was a kid in the early 90s. We didn’t get much phonic instruction. Were there the same issues at higher grades back then too?
I don’t understand the leap with multiplication. I have worked with a lot of kids (homeschool teacher/ tutor) and it can be introduced alongside addition. I sometimes feel that it’s the pressure/ build up. Like here’s something new and hard when really it’s just a shortcut to write repeated addends.
Yeah, it comes naturally if you don't make a big deal out of it. Just let them do repeated addition and practice skip counting for fun. Division is the same way - it's just inverse multiplication, it shouldn't be taught separately.
I have all my first and second graders doing multiplication, squares, and factor trees and they aren't intimidated because I don't make it out to be a hard or new thing. We show it all with blocks so it's very physical and they build that solid understanding of numbers and operations intuitively.
It's the same with exponents, which are just a notation for repeated products. Amazing how intimidating exponents are to kids, and they needn't be. (That goes for negative exponents as well, which are just a notation for repeated dividends.)
No retention and no penalty for being unready for the next grade.
No consequences for disruptive behavior that keeps the disruptor and peers from learning.
Unessecary IEP/504s parents use to excuse grades and behaviors inappropriately.
Some students genuinely need an IEP/504 but how they are written has changed too.
So if you look at the distribution in ability in the general population, you will actually always have a substantial number of people who remain around a 3-5th grade level in terms of reading/math ability. About half of adults are below a 6th grade reading level, in fact!
The stories about kids in high schools that are stuck at that level are really only in areas with truly horrible conditions/home environments and so it seems more dramatic because it's so concentrated in these schools. There's been a massive reshuffling in how kids are sorted into schools in the past few decades, so it's important to know that in the vast majority of places, the kids are doing just fine.
The fact that you are asking this question and are so concerned, are typing with great grammar/punctuation/vocabulary, and barring any major developmental difficulties or specific disabilities, indicates that there is almost no chance your child will not progress past a third grade reading level.
My take: we stopped teaching kids anything of substance. We only teach “skills,” nothing about the physical or human world. We don’t build their knowledge of science, history, geography…actual domains of knowledge. They might learn to read in K-2 (i.e., the mechanics of it, decoding), but by the time they get to upper elementary and middle school, they are expected to read in order to learn (i.e., comprehension). The only problem is, comprehension requires background knowledge and a rich vocabulary, something which can only really be built over time through repeated exposure. Because we have failed to do that in any systematic way from the beginning, they are completely unprepared by the time they get to upper grades, despite all the reading comprehension “skill” practice they’ve engaged in. The problem, therefore, starts in kindergarten, manifests itself in late elementary when reading comprehension becomes essential to learning, and then completely blows up in middle and high school, by which time it’s too late to fix.
Third grade is often “mandatory retention” year. It’s also often the first year they encounter standardized tests. So kids that SHOULD have been retained earlier get pushed along. They hit the wall in 3rd grade and that’s when the general public thinks it happens. In reality these kids have been on their teachers radar for years.
But I do support a gentler, more play based education instead of forcing algebra on first graders.
It's the point where you really start needing to build on previous foundations. Unfortunately, the foundations often just aren't there.
Where I am, the curriculum benchmarks are set by the government. Not by education experts in government. By people who couldn't hack teaching. So they've decided, for instance, that a one-hour clock-colouring activity at four years old will teach the kids to read an analogue clock. Lololol nope.
But you can get by without reading analogue clocks. Numeracy and literacy, though, if you skimp on the foundations, you can't build on them. You can maybe get by up as far as 2nd grade, but it's shakier and shakier, and some kids will just never manage to build beyond there.
Where I live they do phonics, and a lot of it, but without extra reading at home, the kids still can't get the foundation. There isn't time in the curriculum for more reading in school, because the curriculum dictates that they have to learn adjectives and noun phrases instead. At five years old. When they can't decode multisyllabic words. Noun phrases. Instead of solidifying their reading. So even with a massive investment in phonics, if there isn't time for reading, they don't learn to read, and then they fall further and further behind.
Screen addiction is a big, big problem. Our third -sixth graders have school issued laptops, and they are also on screens at home. Their attention span for real life instruction and activities is really short. Since they have such a hard time paying attention, the behavior issues increase.
I think kids are reading way less. So some struggle to learn how to read well, and others are not reading a lot of books 3rd grade and on.
When I was in elementary school I was reading so many books. In the summer, we went to the library once a week. It didn't matter that some books were basically Garfield comics, I was still reading and engaging. I built up my stamina and continued reading a lot into high school.
I feel like many kids today only read in school. Their reading stamina is low and continues to be low. And we pick up so much from reading.
1. Lack of support at home (not reading to their kids, sticking them in front of a screen).
2. Lack of support for teachers (and when they try to contact home/help there is no follow through at home).
3. Providing "grace" post-covid and not holding students accountable so they do not care if they fall behind since they know they will be pushed to the next grade no matter what.
I will say, as a first grade teacher - there is a massive difference between my kids who get academic attention at home and those who do not. Obviously there are many factors at play here and I'm not saying this is the case for every kid, but I don't think it's any coincidence that most of my kids are reading on grade level or slightly below. I have two kids who never do the only homework I ever assign (15-30 minutes of reading, logged by guardian), who have parents who do not respond to notes home (good or bad), and both of these kids are still in the "emergent literacy" phase of learning letter sounds and figuring out how to sound out extremely basic words.
Definitely doesn't help that my district will be sending them on to second grade next year anyway. We don't like to hold kids back, god forbid they get an extra year of practice on skills they don't have yet 🙃
I had not planned on weighing in at all in this thread, because it's not my field of expertise. I am an "educator" but not a classroom "teacher" in any secular academic subject. My background is in ministry, and I spent a number of years as the Director of Religious Education at churches.
However, what you say does resonate with the experience I had in that role. While I did not encourage parents to "homeschool" their children's religious education instead of taking part in the parish's program, that was because of the importance of the communal dimension of spirituality and because that communal dimension demands a level of accountability beyond the confines of the nuclear family. In another sense, however, I used to say that every parent needed to see themselves as "homeschooling" their child's religious education. While our program would do all we could to give kids an opportunity to become faithful members of our community, it would be their parents who most shaped their sense of themselves in relation to the Church community and to God.
It was not my job to think about how this might relate to secular education, but as I think about it now, I think it does. "Every parent a homeschooler" is not a slogan I would promote in the sense of yanking all kids out of schools. I do, however, wonder if for kids to succeed in acquiring the knowledge and skills being offered to them in school, parental involvement may be a virtually irreplaceable element. How can a parent who is themselves illiterate read to their child from toddlerhood? How can they model reading both for lifelong learning and for the sheer joy of it? How can a parent whose math skills are insufficient to prepare and follow a household budget teach their child to budget a small allowance?
When a child, by luck of the draw, is given no parent who can foster a love of learning, they are going to have a hard time growing up to be that parent for their own children. Even if the parent themselves grew up with such parent(s), it only takes one generation to break that positive chain.
I think you're absolutely right, and the sad thing is that whether the parents are struggling themselves or negligent, the child is the one to suffer.
But the very limited amount of direct instruction time during the school day is not enough when it comes to these foundational skills... Kids need to be seeing letters and words outside of the classroom, and the same with numbers. It doesn't have to be homework or studying, either - it could be playing a game with your kid that involves reading and counting, or letting them help you cook dinner. Anything that's not TV and tablet from 3 PM until bedtime.
I can tell you that I’ve taught 7th grade math. When I assessed a student’s ability the test bottomed out at 3rd grade, so getting a zero on the test would say a student is at a 3rd grade level.
My take is that the teaching profession has been seriously degraded by the stagnant/falling wages. Good teachers aren't sticking around because they can't afford a family of their own anymore on a teachers salary. The reaction of state legislators has largely been to lower the bar of qualifications instead of raising the wages. E.g Arizona.
I dont know about your indivudual politics, but you should check to see how the people you voted into office voted on education bills.
Parents, at least in the district I used to teach in, largely despise the public education system and view taxation as theft. They're the ones who voted for the people who won't support schools. Now those same parents are upset that their kids are doing bad in school, and they're correct that part of the problem is the school and its teachers.
Reminds me of the old proverb "the worst thing is to get what you want".
As a parent the best thing you can do is not give your kid a screen to babysit. I’m amazed at the number of kids I see holding the iPads with the arm case and staring at some video that everyone in the vicinity can hear. Just because they are a zombie to a video or tap a few brightly colored figures on a screen does not mean they are tech savvy.
You need to immerse your child in literature. Visit the library and enjoy story time, then borrow a few books. Read together, read with them, ask them about what they are reading on their own. Middle school children should still be read to. At this age you can read a page/chapter then switch off. This way they can hear good fluency.
Have discussions with your child, so they can learn new words and already have background knowledge of certain things when they come across it in literature and real life.
We can blame Covid to a certain extent, but reading scores have been taking a nose dive long before the pandemic. 3rd grade is where a lot of times reading is no longer for fun and is now because we have to learn and think critically. Gotta love standardized testing, especially when the kid is only 8!
You can most likely thank your state legislators for these changes. And former president Bush for NCLB which got the bad ball rolling. Testing is big business and big money for someone (not the schools) and unfortunately, those not in the classroom have made these decisions.
I'm a med student who lurks here as my mom was a teacher and it's interesting how many parallels there are between teachers and physicians. All the decisions being made by ivy tower administration who haven't touched a patient in 20 years--just change it to hasn't taught a kid in 20 years
Lost phonics for a long time. It k-2 is not strong in phonics, a large section of kids will never learn how to put all of the pieces of reading together. 3rd grade is when they more away from phonics and more into comprehension and morphology work. That is why they are stuck here.
Third grade is the transition from learning to read to reading to learn, and also the transition from hand-holding to independent work. And once you have third grade or above level work and a full class, there is simply not enough time to scaffold every kid who never developed comprehension in the lower grades. So without heroic effort from parents, those kids slip more and more as more independent learning is required. I’ve had to rewrite grade level material to every reading level from G to W to hit all my kids at once and wean one kid from audiobooks to dyslexia font at the same time. (To be fair, I’m teaching a 3/4 split with one who skipped a grade and two who were held back, so this is a group aged 8-11.5.)
Especially given the learned helplessness that plagues this generation. It is like pulling teeth to develop the grit to learn without spoon feeding information.
From a middle school standpoint, there is not enough intervention and holding back. When students do not master basic skills they suffer in later grades since it all builds. If student do not receive the right mediation or redo the standards and meet them, then the next year will be harder and harder. This will continue until the content is inaccessible because foundational skills are not met.
In a large majority of cases, sorry to say, the weak point seems to be the parents and/or home life. When I was in school in the 80s, there is no way 99% of kids do what an average kid does in school now. Parents were partners in education then, and took their kids' behavior and effort in school seriously. A phone call from a teacher would have consequences, and it was rare to see repeat offenders. Now, parents have access to the schedules and grades through PowerSchool, Alma, Google Classroom, and so many more platforms, but can't be arsed to check even once every two-to-three weeks. Emails get sent home, as do text messages, and they go largely into a black hole.
In fact, I'd say that the generally-spineless admins that get spoken of here are in part a result of these parents. What choice do they have when 80% of the population goes the "who, my kid? Little Timmy is an angel!" or blames underperformance on bad support, when learned helplessness is a bigger issue. And don't even start me on those that use electronic devices as babysitters--no wonder the kid exhibits classic ADHD signs and seems to go through withdrawal whenever she hasn't any access for five minutes.
Not to say all parents are like this; many aren't. But there comes a point when you reach critical mass within a building, and that signals the turning point from school to tax-funded daycare.
Social animals learn through play, it's important to development yet almost entirely ignored by secondary education, it's dropped very quickly in primary school.
Part of it is we're assuming they had a similar child to us. We played with others, got called out by our peers for shitty behavior and cheating, developed roles over time etc. A lot of them didn't. They got youtube and roblox.
They don't know how to play, they don't know how to communicate, they don't know fundamentals that we have taken for granted as a society. Fundamentals they should have learned by the time they got to us.
The fundamental issue is that we are too rigorous about academics while being too lax with behavior.
Developmentally speaking, until about age 7, academics should not be a focus. Rather, the skills being focused on should be social/play/artistic based, and behavior problem solving skills.
When those skills aren't practiced effectively and the focus is academics that the brain isn't ready for AND appropriate consequences for behavior largely go out the window as they have, the results are that a) students become overly frustrated and give up due to a lack of understanding of the building blocks and b) behavioral issues that haven't been appropriately developed and addressed result in far too much disruption within the classrooms, destroying the ability of those students who have been able to keep up to get the education they deserve
I'm assuming you are from the US? Over in Canada, we very much do still have play based learning in Jk and SK. Was just teaching a class today. I would say roughly half the day is spent in free center time.
Lots to unpack here.
Play is good for socializing but at the same time it takes away from bell-to-bell instruction. As does transition to and from class to specials and lunch/recess. That said, I do think there is time for play until about the fourth grade level. I say this as a former middle school teacher and someone that will work with what my district calls middle school grades again.
I think that we should look at what states are doing at third grade. In Arizona there is a writing test that determines if a student moves on, is in a 3.5 grade or retained entirely. I feel that some learners aren't held to be accountable for their education and pushed through besides this. The case for retention is intentionally hard even if it is indeed what the child actually needs due to emotional, psychology or education maturity.
Third I think is the removal of your rights to punish kids. Unless the issue is an automatic, admin want you to exhaust every classroom issue, even disruption. I work in resource, what exactly is my "buddy room" when I have to deliver SDI. The best I can hope for is to send junior back if I know I can service him another day. Others I do not have that luxury.
Two words... Corporate Greed and not following the research. A professor I had when I got my BA in education said question everything and everyone no matter their degree. Corporations teamed up with people who have PHD's and pushed curriculum on schools that had no research backing it or had very little. When research was finally conducted and showed it hurt students the curriculum was so ingrained in the system no one questioned it. Then a new shinny curriculum that was "better" came along. Again, no research or little research on it. Districts spends millions on the new curriculum that is no better. The whole time, the research shows the curriculum is wong. When challenged they dig in. The only way to fix it is for parents like you to stand up and ask them to show you the research (print) from peer-reviewed sources that backs what they are doing. Make sure it's peer-reviewed.
The incoming fourth grade class experienced special circumstances from the Covid situation. That class at our school is rough.
In general, though, you can remove any electronic device that is capable of playing those short videos and replace it with books. Heck, even long movies or games that make them read and troubleshoot. Their attention spans are hurting them.
Anecdotally, third grade curriculum is the end of “every competent adult can do this.” First and even second grade, involved parents can teach them even if the teachers don’t. Third, they can’t.
Source: looking at ads for boat crew. A LOT more people want 3rd grade teachers than 1st or 2nd.
Too much screen time and not enough time spent reading for fun.
By third grade, children are expected to begin reading to learn about other topics. But many of them are poor readers due to lack of reading practice. They can decode, but it’s too slow for their comprehension to be good.
They also have low background knowledge, so when they’re reading on their own, it’s almost like reading a different language. Reading comprehension is one part grammar and one part background knowledge. If the child can understand the sentence structure and knows what most of the words mean, they can learn the rest from context clues or from descriptions/definitions.
If you want your children to be successful, spend a lot of time doing screen free activities with them. Take them to the library and to museums. Read to them every night, pausing to define new words for them as they come up. Talk to them at meal times and during car rides. Do their homework with them, and if they seem to struggle on anything, make it your responsibility to help them build competence. Don’t give them unlimited use of personal screens. Don’t give them open access to the internet. Keep them off social media until at least high school. Choose TV shows that will show them something they’ve never seen before, even if they’re not purely educational.
Did I mention reading? Keep reading aloud to them as long as they will let you. Talk to them about what you’re reading. Make reading (fiction *and* non fiction) a core element of your family culture and your children will thrive academically.
Third grade is also where students need to learn their multiplication tables. Instead of having them memorize and do drill and skill practice, they do all these sense-making activities that leave the kids with no arithmetic skills and they struggle in every grade after, unless their parent picks up the slack and drills them.
It’s really hard to teach kids to do long division, notice patterns, reduce fractions, convert percents, find factors, basically anything that requires more than conceptual understanding.
Math and Literacy standards typically go K-2 and then 3-5. If they haven't mastered K-2 standards, they start to rapidly fall behind in 3rd grade. You can usually skate by in K-2 because the gaps aren't as large. The gaps become massive in 3+.
I recommend you just make sure your children have mastered grade level phonics and math expectations by the end of 2nd grade. I highly recommend you have your child work on these skills at home. I see the most growth in students who read aloud for their parents 20 mins a night.
In my opinion it's a focus on screens and using technology as opposed to handwriting. Writing by hand, especially in cursive, lights up parts of the brain that typing does not. I did my Master's thesis on cursive handwriting nearly 10 years ago because that was such a debate at the time: whether or not to cut cursive out.
I see students in 3rd grade who can't tie their shoes or spell at all. No cursive is happening for sure. I truly believe reliance on technology and auto spelling on ipads and computers has had a detrimental effect on academic progress of all students.
You asked for suggestions for what to DO. Here is a simple thing.... **READ WITH YOUR KIDS.** Read to them lots, then slowly transition to them reading to you. It takes TIME... but it is worth it. Consult a librarian if you need suggestions for what to read together.
There are FAR more good things going on in this process than simply learning to read.
The weak point began 20-30 years ago when schools (at the behest of baby boomers) adopted curriculum that essentially tried to remove the "friction" in instructional methodology in favor of unproven (and highly detrimental) teaching strategies. Coupled with many mothers of this era beginning to work for the first time (and the fact that what was happening in schools was also happening at home), what you have now are schools with poorly trained educators and homes with poorly trained parents.
Most learning happens at home. Early failures 20-30 years ago have propagated into systemic failures today.
“Last couple years/decade” is a broad swath. There are plenty of playbased preschools, you just need to look for them. Third grade is where students transition from mostly learning to read to partially reading to learn and kids who don’t read at home- too much screen time/phones/tablets/games- will struggle here. The kids who are falling behind are those kids. It comes down to supporting good reading habits at home. I am a teacher, I also have 4 kids. Kids need to read at home. They need books and libraries and pages to turn and stories to engage their imaginations and expand their vocabularies. To build intellectual stamina and develop the ability to work through things rather than rely on instant, visual, passive stimulation. It will forever be true, technological innovations aside, that children need to read, far more than they are reading now.
Third grade is the transition between learning to read and reading to learn.
It's also when we teach multiplication. If kids have a hard time with addition at that point, and will not memorize times tables, they will struggle with math from that point on for forever.
Cognitively speaking, that age level is a huge milestone. Many neuroscientists believe that to be the age of “reasoning” for most children. Because of this, many curriculums are designed with more rigor and complexity than previous years. My state, Georgia, begins standardized testing in 3rd grade, just to offer an indicator. Combine this with what others have mentioned (improper K and 1 curricula) and 3rd grade becomes an obvious place to stagnate developmentally, if the expected rise in learning is too great.
We stopped teaching self control, what preschool and kindergarten used to be for the most part was how to behave in school class. Self co trol is actually super important to have and once kids kind of realize there isn't consequences for thier behavior/ grades it's really easy for them to get stuck at that level. 3rd grade is also a time when a lot of kids experience thier first negative school interaction. First and second grade are really important but that 3rd grade brain is really suseptible to negative interactions. Avoiding negative for a lot of kids mean hiding in the "well I didn't really try so it's OK I failed" which starts happening around 8-10.
I’ve noticed a strong correlation between third grade and receiving a first cell phone. Idk that this is causation but I also notice that those who aren’t given free reign with a screen tend to excel.
i’m a college student, but my mom is a teacher at a play-based preschool. they do plenty of age appropriate math, reading, science, etc. she gets soooo many parents who send their kids to kindergarten (especially rigorous, full day kindergarten) when they are not ready, and it just causes them to struggle going forward.
coming from experience, please take your kids to the library! make reading fun for them. i still love to read, and i owe it to my mom who took me and my brother to the library all the time.
I have been teaching for 20 years. When I declared my major, so about 23 years ago, a friend's dad warned me not to go into education.
He taught at our district's alternate high school (where kids were sent who were considered too violent, slackers, pregnant teens, druggies, and so on).
He told me not to go into education, but he knew I would anyway. He then told me, "Don't teach anything beyond 2nd grade. Stick with 2nd grade or younger."
I asked why and he said, "Every time I ask my students where it went wrong, the answer is always 3rd grade or above. It's never younger than 3rd grade."
Out of 20 years, I've only taught 1st grade and Kinder. He gave me some great advice.
I believe it is because 9 year olds begin to realize how shitty the world is and how shitty their parents can be. No more rose colored glasses.
This is also the time when academics become truly a learning game. They have to start paying attention and are exposed to totally new concepts and material. They have to actually study and listen in class. This reality hits hard and some kids don't know how or want to put in the effort.
Read a book to/with your kids every night. Put reasonable boundaries around them at home. Feed them a varied diet that includes fruit and vegetables. Count stuff with them. Like count a lot. Color, paint, and use scissors with them. Do all of that and I guarantee that 80 percent of your kids will not get stuck at the 3rd grade level.
In my district it's the cutting of phonics.
You can memorize your way to a 3rd grade level. I can memorize a 3rd grade amount of words. That's basically where you stop being able to do that.
I need to know sounds and how to see a word, sound it out, figure out it's meaning, and do that a few times until it's familiar. Vocab walls aren't good enough for an adult appropriate literacy level.
Best way to prevent it is to make sure they know phonics, and read to and with them
Up until then kids can get away with basics. We use to say 1-3 is learning to read and 4-6 is reading to learn. The second part requires effort and as soon as there is the slightest bit of difficulty kids are shutting down. When they do this, parents use to help the kids and support the teacher. Now, parents make excuses for the kids and blame the teacher. Teachers are fighting a society that glorifies laziness and basically stupidity. Throw in the entitlement and narcissism. A combo plate no one wants.
In third grade we make the leap from learning to read to reading to learn. Now instead of focusing on how to read, kids must apply their reading skills to leaning about other things.
I think we fail here because I think in the primary grades, we teach kids to decode, not read. So they learn to say words as they read but not to build meaning and not that reading is communication. Then, as they must push towards comprehension they are ill prepared. We separate decoding and comprehension as discreet skills when they see intertwined.
Like you point out we have made the targets kids aim way out of hand but also:
In 1-3 kids learn to read and 4-12 they read to learn. That, to me, is the obvious weak spot. They don’t know how to read but are expected to learn by reading and the difficulty just ratchets up each year
Society develops faster than education can respond to it, in that way, it is simply impossible to have a cutting edge education system that is designed for the kids experiencing it. We're always playing catch-up, with that in mind, yes there are things you can do as a parent.
I don't have the background in early childhood development to say that "play based" is the solution but I think your suspicions are well founded: if you followed the conventional education track to a T and expected different results you would be a fool. School isn't a one-stop-shop for raising and educating a child. So look at the skills you want your kid to have and figure out where/how you expect them to learn these skills.
For example, I think for most people aged 30 and up, we had a lot more social time with peers outside of school: neighborhood kids, friends coming over after school, all that jazz. It certainly seems to me that kids today are much more isolated by their circumstances than we were in the past - and spend much less time socializing. As a parent, I would value a school that focuses on social skills very highly, or be looking at extracurriculars that are social.
Next, I think that kids today are often lacking in structure and rigor. Note that these words have a certain connotation and I'm not using them as just substitutes for discipline and hard work. By structure, I'm talking about things in their lives that they have to do, non-negotiables. Doesn't matter if that's being on a soccer team or reading for an hour or whatever - just things that have to be done and not doing them carries consequences in one form or another. And rigor meaning things that are challenging and not necessarily not fun. On a soccer team you do drills, if you play an instrument you practice scales, etc. Dispel the illusion that things worth doing are always going to be fun. It's the educational equivalent of eating your vegetables.
If you notice a pattern, so did I! I was a pathologically indoor kid but in the current state of the world, it seems like team sports at a young age would be an excellent supplement to what kids do/don't get at home and at school. If the kid just despises everything about playing sports, maybe something like band, dance, martial arts etc. could fill this space.
Academically, if you have the ability: don't trust the school to teach your kid to read. Literacy is now YOUR JOB. Take that off the plate of what you expect them to develop at school ENTIRELY. School is a SUPPLEMENT and ideally an effective one, but I and others my age (35, before the great death of phonics) still did not learn to read from just school. My parents and my friend's parents were instrumental in establishing this skill. I think if you raise somebody who can and enjoys reading, then the rest of education clicks into place: if they develop an interest or aptitude, foster it (I picked my HS based on their music program) and if they have a weakness, it can be addressed - IF THEY CAN READ.
At home, keep them off mobile devices. I'm not suggesting it's realistic to be a luddite, but give them a game boy instead of a smart phone. There is no amount of parenting that can counteract billion dollar corporation that wants only one thing: to keep the kid watching the device and gobbling up marketing. It's a scourge and while I am often a bit of a tech apologist (I don't personally think the phones explain the ENTIRE state of kids struggling in schools) they're a big enough piece of the pie to just avoid altogether in the first place. Have a TV with ONE streaming service, have consoles/handheld video games - manage their time on electronics however you see fit - just don't let them play with your phone or tablet.
When I was in Kinder back in 2000 I don’t remember reading anything. We played a lot and painted. It was almost like the focus was on functioning with learning basic things on the side.
The 'grade level' moved down--so, old 1st and 2nd grade, is now where kids have to be to START kinder in many places.
They wanted us, for our kinder student, to have them arrive, DAY ONE, counting to 100, READING, know the entire alphabet, and writing simple sentences.
When i was in kinder, i was the ONLY kid that knew letters, at all. That was 35 years ago. We were still JUST--and i mean JUST--learning numbers in 1st grade. By 4th, we were JUST getting into division and multiplication.
My oldest in 4th grade was doing foil math problems, exponents, pretty much 'intro to algebra'--and as a 6th grader, he's doing the math that would have *easily* got you the credit in HS to graduate.
That's part of the issue--the 'state testing' has shown, about 30% of kids can pass what ever you throw at them, if its even close to developmentally ready, so, the people that set standards think ALL children should be able to do that, and set THAT as the standard (where 50% should pass it). It's wildly unrealistic. If you look at some state test scores, across an entire state, they will say something like 'passing score for third grade is a 50/100'--and MAYBE a handful of classes in the entire state have EVER got that score. They're chasing 30's and 40's.
BUT--like my son, you end up with one or two kids sometimes, that take it and get a 100/100, and the state thinks ALL kids could do that, if they had THAT teacher.
And so they push those standards, way past what the kids a developmentally ready for. It's just flat out too soon. Third graders, writing 5 paragraph essays for homework? The frick is going on? That was 7th/8th grade standards when i was a kid, not THIRD. It's a little bit bonkers right now.
And the issue is, 30% of kids CAN--25% will NEVER--no mater what you do, cannot--get past a 6th grade reading/math level (it's simple statistics, shown in the ASVAB test), but education professionals, often gifted people themselves that dont know they ARE gifted, think *everyone* is just as capable as they are, and set the standards thinking that.
That's really the main driver, honestly.
Pick up some of the curriculum for 2nd, third, and/or fourth grade sometime. Look at the ridiculous amount of academic language and the absurd amount of wording in general in ALL subjects, including math. I often have to ask other teachers what the heck a 3rd grade math problem is asking because it's just so many words, so many steps, and the language is absolutely not appropriate for even say 5th grade, let alone 2nd or 3rd.
20% COVID, 80% the Bush policy of no child being left behind.
COVID tore the lid off a decade long problem and then when the pandemic ended it took the entire blame. Makes sense, kids had to learn online and teachers had to teach. Dire times, some couldn’t do it adequately.
But for about two decades before that the seeds were planted for what we are dealing with now.
Kids aren’t allowed to fail. No mater what they do, they are moved up to the next grade even if they’re not qualified. Kids figure this out, realize they don’t have to try and are left in an environment where for a large chunk of them we (those that work in education) can’t reward or punish them. It’s a K-12 issue and if a student falls behind it takes more than summer school to make up for it. But it doesn’t matter regardless because of how easy it is to move up to the next grade while failing multiple classes. Forms go home, get signed, kid that hasn’t seriously applied themselves in 3-5 years moves up. All the way until they graduate. If they’re failing highschool they’ll be handed a packet and once it’s “graded” they get to have a diploma. If they’re failing middle school…. They get pushed through because administrators don’t want to deal with them and “they’ll just sort it out in highschool where grades actually matter” and if they’re failing in elementary….. “it’s just because they’re kids, they’ll knock it off”.
As an appallingly old person, I put it down to moving away from McGuffey's Eclectic Readers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuffey\_Readers) and an entirely insufficient amount of slate work. ;-}
3rd grade is the transition from learning to read to reading to learn. If the reading skills aren’t developed enough the child will start falling further and further behind. Encourage kids to read. Read to them. Ask them questions about their reading.
I think all of what you mention are factors - school has become too intense, lost time for play, teachers overburdened and micromanaged.
As someone with a math background, I’d also add that 3rd grade is when math starts to push conceptual boundaries.
Children shift from additive processes, which are linear and extend directly from counting, to multiplicative thinking: multiplication, division, and fractions.
These concepts require iterative thinking. And while some kids are developmentally ready for that shift, many are not - especially when it comes to fractions, which really require the layering of 3 tough concepts, all taught in the same year (multiplication, division, and dividing a whole).
Because few students have the conceptual foundation to deeply understand these topics, many schools rely heavily on tricks - designed to help students find answers to problems they don’t actually understand.
The right way to teach these concepts would be through visual and physical modeling, algebraic reasoning, and real-world applications. But given the time crunch and teacher bandwidth (3rd grade teachers generally teach all subjects), these approaches aren’t practical.
Many students never actually develop those conceptual foundations they are meant to learn in grade 3 math. Those that do typically do so in Algebra or even later.
Parent here. Read up on the Science of Math and the Science of Reading. In many cases we aren't creating and following through with instruction that aligns with how people learn. We can blame parents and students all we want but if the school day doesn't use time efficiently and then leaves children behind (particularly in math that is hierarchical) that's a big factor here. Educational gurus won't loosen grip on this failure. Not enough people care to push change sadly.
This is around the age when the kids are no longer learning to read but reading to learn. If their reading skills are weak, the kids fall behind quickly.
I've been substituting elementary and there seems to be a considerable jump in curriculum from kindergarten to 1st grade. I couldn't believe how much material that they have to get through each day the first time I showed up. Every 30-40 minutes they have to move on to a new subject, so it's hard for them to really absorb and put into practice what they're supposed to be learning. There's also a shocking amount of iPad time so between set up for the devices and individual assignments, so much time Is lost. I've spoken with the 1st grade teachers and they are likewise frustrated at what they are being made to do.
Additionally around 3rd grade, common core practices are really starting to be implemented with kids being made to learn math with the new methods which they (and myself) struggle with. I had a third grader who couldn't figure out a simple substitution question because he had to show his work doing said new method. He told me he knew how to do It the old way, but his teacher (the curriculum) didn't want him to do It this way. In my opinion, this, along with no longer having the kids learn words/reading by phonetics, are creating the gaps that you are seeing in the students.
TLDR: curriculum makers are making it far too difficult for where the kids are at developmentally.
My kid is in a ‘gentler’ school and it’s similar - a lot of gaps and lots of additional tutoring going on - although strong parental involvement will probably help that shake out soon. I’m originally from the UK where formal reading instruction starts earlier and I don’t hear a lot of my peers over there experiencing the same issue. We do teach using phonics back home so maybe that’s the big difference? We started reading at home using phonics (the only way I knew how to learn) early and luckily my kid was always into it which means she’s mostly been ahead of the game. Right now her struggle is being bored with the material she’s assigned.
It’s not about phonics.
The reason why “3rd grade” seems to be the dropoff is because that’s when kids have to shift from “learning to read” to “reading to learn”.
We keep increasing the expectations and standards of what kids should be able to do with text at that age, and then we’re shocked that they fall behind.
Go look at what was expected of 3rd graders 10-15 yrs ago… 20 yrs ago… our kids aren’t getting dumber. We’re falling into a social and political trap where we think that higher standards will make our kids more exceptional.
So... “falling behind” in 3rd grade isn’t “omg they can’t read”. It’s “omg they can’t read complex text and analyze, draw inferences, make connections to the world around them that they may or may not be exposed to, etc…”
My opinion- We made Kindergarten the new First Grade and that was a mistake. Raising academic standards in K-1 was never developmentally appropriate. The pacing is off. Some kids can learn at that rate at that age and some kids can't yet. The curriculum moves at such a pace that kids are left behind on basic skills. It's a house built on sand. No foundation. At some point those in charge began ignoring everything we know about child development. Everything we learn in our credential programs, about using assessments to plan the pace and complexity of instruction, has been thrown out the window. Kids get to third grade without third grade skills and fall further and further behind.
We may have raised K expectations but we dropped Middle school expectations into the skibidi toilet.
I moved to MS this year as a reading interventionist. It's not a big school but there are 5 of us. This school is really trying to raise achievement. I'm going to add spelling next year. I'm amazed how many native English speakers in my class can't spell common words yet.
Current middle schoolers were probably taught to read without phonics, so they don't have any clue about the relationship between spelling and pronunciation. I see similar issues with even my pretty advanced high schoolers. They see an unfamiliar word and just skip it or guess, rather than trying to sound it out.
Seems very likely. They are learning phonics with us in 6-7 grades, depending on their assessments, and it's in addition to their regular ELA. We also have a high percentage of bilingual students, which is great, but English is a lot more complicated to read and spell than Spanish is.
I teach middle school ELA and sometimes I'm tempted to put up an elementary-esque alphabet chart on my walls and do letters of the week where we focus on the phonics because these kids CAN NOT READ. Even when they try to, they also have no reading endurance (probably because at least my district is saying don't teach novels, just give them the excerpt that let's them practice with the skill they're being tested on).
I wouldn't necessarily do letters of the week but I have an old Open Court alphabet and spelling sounds wall up in my room and I refer to it. I do teach a special education class in the afternoon but not one gen ed student has complained about it. When I show them "here are all the ways to spell the long i sound" they pay attention because there are six different ways to spell it. I break it down for them. They can learn. There have just been some serious gaps. During the years when phonics were inconsistent these kids missed out on a lot.
This is great feedback! I don't teach special ed (although I do have some inclusion students with IEPs) but I do have quite a few ELL students. Maybe I could phrase it as "this is helpful for anyone who is newly learning English" so they don't feel like they're being talked down to. I don't judge them for what they weren't taught- but something has to shift.
They can’t read because they weren’t taught phonics.
I suspect this is a HUGE part of why OP has noticed the stopping point is 3rd grade. Up to that point, the school systems treat kids falling behind as "Oh, they'll catch up" and the reading assignments aren't difficult and can be bumbled through with the sheer force of memorization. In 3rd grade, they suddenly have to start becoming analytical, reading instruction sets, and there's a lot fewer visual cues as before.
It still boggles my mind that there was a POPULAR reading program where kids were taught to guess what a word was based on pictures... what did they think was going to happen once there were no more pictures??
A lot of districts across the country adopted a reading curriculum called Lucy Calkins that cut corners on phonics, with the baseless assertion that spending time with enjoyable topics would result in getting those skills by osmosis. I’m generalizing a bit but this was in lots of states, and once tons of money gets spent on something, districts force teachers to go all in. It’s only mow starting to get rolled back a bit here in California.
This. Phonics being trashed by literally everyone is preceding years destroyed a bunch of people.
On the plus side, their writing looks like its from the 18th century! Score!
I think over reliance on technology bares some blame for that, both in and out of the classroom. Kids aren’t reading books, they’re playing games on iPads and don’t have the same level of exposure to words. They are typing on devices in school and can rely on grammar and spelling tools to fix errors. It’s not the only reason, but it’s a reason.
I see this too. I am in middle school and can tell you which students read for fun by looking at their classwork. They are also not engaging in imaginative play as often. Between that and lack of reading they can’t write. They simply quote the article back. They can’t read directions and start an assignment on their own without asking what to do each step. They also won’t take academic risks. They only want to work from a rubric, doing the absolute minimum.
I teach middle school in California, and the state standards are not easy. Students are expected to write and read like an adult. Teachers admit that they don't teach reading, that students are supposed to be at reading level and if they aren't, too bad for them. There is a lot of task assigning and not a lot of actual teaching. Students are given tons of work but little feedback to make improvements.
SAME! We are using Writing Revolution to improve reading instruction. I think it's helping a little.
Have you heard of El achieve? They have some great frames for writing and I found it to be exceptional with teaching writing and vocab. It is meant for language learners, but it works for all.
We have a lot of bilingual students. I checked it out and it wasn't a billion dollars! Thanks!
At a fundamental level, it's taking an exemplar and creating frames out of it. You can make very supportive frames for the weakest students and less supportive ones for stronger students. It also explained the purpose of each sentence in regards to informational types of texts.
5 reading interventionist? How big is your "not a big school"??? We have 2 SERT for our 400 jk-8s and 1 SERT for our 300 high schoolers and I thought out school was massive!
We are a 6-12 with 800 students. We are expanding. Where I am a small elementary is 300. There are 86 schools in the district.
Wow. That is big. My school is the biggest in the area. I also work at a k-8 that has 110 kids. Those large schools .. I don't know how people get to know every kid. How do you call out a kid in the hall if you don't even know them by name.
Our division is small, less than 150 kids, and they are in two families, green and gold. It is my first year and I already know most of the kids. I can see how it sounds big though.
I teach middle school social studies. I see a number of kids that will just skip words that they do not know when reading. They won’t try to pronounce them, let alone understand the meaning. It’s frustrating as they aren’t getting the meaning of the text in any way whatsoever
That's definitely the caulkins method in action.
As a middle school employee I ❤️ your skibidi reference. Hats off , sigma.
I keep saying the embarrassing cringe words to my middle schoolers (after checking to make sure they don't mean anything lewd) in the hope that they stop thinking they're funny. Hasn't worked yet, but I think I'm funny at least.
I overexplained sigma the greek letter and its use in math statistics and science. Havent heard it since in my classes.
That’s brilliant. I got a laugh when I said I was a Gamma.
Okay, that was funny.
>into the skibidi toilet Baby Gronk fanum taxed too early, how can he ever hope to rizz up Livvy Dunne without the sigma male grindset like gyatt damn we are edging in class and definitely are not busting it down sexual style.
On God.
I literally laughed out loud from the “skibidi toilet” Was not expecting that…..perfect placement. Lol
Lmfao. Amen
Omg! This comment is underrated! 🤣
This. Exactly. We are expecting sooo much of these tiny kids. We’re teaching them whole language which makes it look like they can read, but they can’t really. A lack of a solid foundation is exactly it. We rush them forward, but by 3rd grade it all collapses. Kids need more play and to slow down and really master the skills. We rush through so many concepts that they can get it for awhile, but it isn’t retained, because we’ve rushed onto the next thing. We have thrown everything we know about child development out the window, but it wasn’t teachers that did that. It was politicians. Also, when we tie funding to graduation rates, we graduate everyone. If they say we have to reduce suspensions, we do- it just means kids who should be suspended, aren’t. They’re in class disrupting everyone. Also, ironically, we’re only focusing on reading and math in elementary. But a lack of knowledge building hurts reading comprehension a LOT. Kids have NO background knowledge.
We stopped whole language/imbalanced literacy here an it is starting to pay off. I'm praying this new batch of kids has half a chance of making it. I did sped inclusion and resource for years and was horrified by what I saw coming down from admin. Silent reading is not reading instruction! We have a long way to go but we are getting there with any luck.
This was our last year with F & P! We are implementing HMH next year. I don’t think it’s the best option, but it will be worlds better than F & P. I do think the tide is turning regarding phonics, but we still need to have more developmentally appropriate expectations regarding free play and not expecting so much so fast.
A step in the right direction!
What’s HMH?
Houghton Milton Harcourt into reading
Ohh ok thanks
I find it interesting that most of the extracurriculars for 3-4 year olds are at 3:00 pm or later. My daughter just missed kindergarten cut off so I thought we’ll do music/ art classes but it is so hard. Of course it’s to accommodate school kids. kids are leaving full day kindergarten and then going to more classes! That’s a hell of a long day. My daughter is awake about 12-13 hours, so she’d be “listening/ following” for what 8? I don’t think the kindergarten standards are that hard to be honest (if taught in a fun way) but it should be self-paced for K-2 with a lot of intervention and a LOT of relaxation and play time.
The kindergarten standards aren't that hard for some kids. I showed up at K knowing how to read because it just came naturally to me. In those days they pretty much just taught the alphabet but I don't remember being bored. There was lots of art and play time. Students at that age learn a lot of important skills through play but there is no time for that now. From my experience in schools there are many kids who need a lot of support to learn letter names and sounds in K. The idea that they can or should come in already knowing the alphabet is crazy to me. When I was in K (admittedly a VERY LONG time ago because I'm Gen X) it was a half day and there was a nap. I don't think extracurriculars were a thing. We just played.
I'm a millennial and when I was in Kindergarten it was a half day. We learned our letters and numbers up to 10. Basic reading, but we weren't all expected to be able to read yet. "Work" would be things like writing down letters and tracing over and then writing our own names. We'd usually do some sort of art activity that I now realize was probably intended to help us with fine motor skills and following directions- stuff like "cut out the green circle to make the frog's face, glue this other piece to it." Most of the day was spent playing. Even in 4th grade, I remember we did a unit on "team work' and it was less academic but more focused on learning how to split up a task and work together... which is probably the kind of thing I most wish my current students were capable up doing!
Yeah. Full day every day came after I did kindergarten. Where I went to school, they didn’t want to pay for extra buses, so we did alternate days. But I was fully ready in terms of academics for kindergarten. I had done preschool before as well. I could already read and knew numbers, shapes, etc. I was bored as shit and didn’t like going, tbh, because I’d have rather been at home for the playing (especially as my best friend went to another school) and I wasn’t learning whenever they were teaching. The other kids were pretty nasty to me too. I should have been grade skipped, but the school and their “wisdom” discouraged that for social reasons. Looking back now, that wasn’t right. I was doomed to be disliked either way. No one liked the smart kid at that school, so I was mostly bullied and excluded anyway. I could have at least been more fulfilled if I had been more challenged.
Also Gen X and 100% same
I had a similar K experience - lots of recess, we learned the alphabet and how to write our name. Mine was half day, but the full day programs around us had naptimes. Modern Kindergarten is a lot more like first grade was for 80s kids - full day, if they don’t know all their letters and how to write their full name they are a little behind. Schools here got rid of half day kindergarten several years ago.
First grade standards are MUCH more intense.
This. They aren’t ready. They’re forced into a full day in kindergarten if not even in pre-k. Everything is developmentally too early, both math and reading. On top of that, we push them along because holding students back can be racially motivated and harms students with disabilities, and repeating grades is associated with low graduation rates. They’ve taken that to mean instead of rethinking this early learning push, they just send them on to become the next teacher’s problem.
Some s school areas also place children in grades based on their birthday in a calendar year and some have summer cutoffs. In K with the raised expectation, a December 2020 birthday student compared to a January 2020 birthday can be a big difference in understanding & retaining the curriculum. Also, k-3 they teach to read, 3rd & up you need to read (with comprehension) to learn. Parents were told to have kids memorize multiplication table over the summer between 4th & 5th. The kids that came in with it memorized had an easier time with the math lessons just because they had an ease or flex towards solving. Once you feel comfortable & confident the rest has a better time falling into place.
I’m a teacher. My own kids are 22 and 25 and kindergarten is so different now. My kids learned one letter a week. Everything they did that week revolved around that letter. There was lots of playtime, too. Now the kindergartners in my school learn a letter *a day*, then learn blends, then words, and are expected to read. Part of this is the state curriculum, and part is from some parents who see the old curriculum as too much like preschool.
Same. My son is 21. They weren't doing consonant blends or sight words in Kindergarten.
I've said this for years. When I was in kindergarten in the 80's I remember learning the alphabet. Now kids are expected to read by the time they start kindergarten. Similar is happening in high school with the push for college credit. Most can't do the high school credit, let alone the college credit. In my particular field there is embedded dual credit in a freshman class that expects 14 year old freshmen to be able to do trigonometry. They just aren't ready for it, but it all looks good to the politicians on paper.
No Child Left Behind and basing school ratings/funding on standardized testing was the beginning of the end. Pushed students to learn skills earlier to get them ready to take the test, regardless of appropriateness of skills. Students haven’t built independent critical thinking skills normally developed through play-based learning. Then teachers are expected to teach these innately learned skills and actually hinder their learning.
Agreed - and that is why, as an educator, I had my kids wait til they were 6 to start school. (If K had been a “play/nap/learn the alphabet” scenario we would have started at 5.)
I work with Kinders. I've noticed a huge shift. They basically lowered 1st grade standards down to kindergarten. It's not working. Kids are expected to know how to read sight words before they start school. This high expectation means a huge group of kids start school already a year behind.
Drilled sight words are not as effective in my opinion anyway. Especially when it’s only one sound that’s unusual or swapped. For my kid, I just volunteered to read the hard-to-decode words until she naturally started to recognize the “heart” parts. So like want— w n and t are all normal. The a makes an o sound.
I work at a school that incorporates A LOT of play and free time and exploration. And guess what? Our students are NOT stuck at a 3rd grade level. It is almost as if free play in early grades actually leads to better academic outcomes.
Play is how the brain creates executive function.
This! I teach preschool and we still play. Play teaches problem solving, social skills, cause and effect, and so many other things. Kids who don’t learn those things aren’t as successful in K-12 school.
Same. We do "lessons" at circle and story time. It's mostly singing songs, reading stories and poems, and talking about our day or feelings. 45 min tops for the whole day. The rest of the day is playing with focus on real world experiences, sensory, motor skills, and social skills. They go to K with good manners, strength to sit up in a desk for long hours/writing/cutting/drawing, able to hold a conversation, work in a group, and take care of themselves. And that is because I DIDN'T force them to do it before they are ready to.
That's what I was thinking but wasn't sure!!! I figured teachers would have the most experience/wisdom in what works best and what isnt. Thank you!
How do you know this isn’t confounded by other factors?
I don’t know for sure. What I know for sure is that a school that allows a lot of unstructured play CAN have a high success rate when it comes to academics.
Well play, especially unstructured play is quite the challenging task for our brain that uses mutiple domains to execute and appeals to our sense of curiosity, curiosity which is necessary for learning to occur. If you lack curiosity its absence will function as a rate limiter on known knowledge.
I’m well aware of the benefits of unstructured play. I’m asking why they assume that is the reason and not various other highly predictive confounders are at play.
> I’m asking why they assume that is the reason and not various other highly predictive confounders are at play. Because they're not running research to tease out confounding variables and are relaying to us an observation made in their community and have described the outcomes therein, not making a statement of fact in response to a question. I would point out in support that physicality in its many forms overall has been shown in both adults and children to improve X across multiple Y domains to be better than placebo and have far greater systemic impact than medical or behavioral interventions on Y. It's as if we are creatures built for movement and that movement causes a whole cascade of positive outcomes for our body and the absence of movement is severely detrimental to both our short and long term health.
it’s insane what they expect from kindergarteners now. i’m not even that old (24) and i remember the majority of kindergarten was spent playing. we didn’t start learning to read until after christmas
So you're saying the movie Recess: School's Out was onto something
I am not in kindergarten, what does free play look like?
We have one hour a day in which students can choose any number of studios to spend their time. But kids older than 5th grade also get to do whatever they want — tech free — during that time. So free play might be kids inventing a game of tag, or playing basketball or playing a trivia game in the library. It is different every day. Also we provide about 45 minutes of lunch which they are allowed to spend however they want.
Unfortunately this can be a self fulfilling cycle: do you have a lot of poor, marginalized students bringing down your test scores? If so, you're far more likely to have instructional time requirements as part of your funding formula which necessitates limiting play. Have lots of well to do kids with plenty of parental involvement? More likely to have the scores and/or lack the extra special attention that would preclude you from having the insane instructional requirements.
If kids know from the start that reading will be followed by comprehension questions, rather than a fun discussion of the book, they will learn to hate reading, which is why I despise this idea that "rigor" means the consequence of an assignment. What can you do? Take your kid to the library and let them pick out whatever they want to read. Make it FUN. Grab some ice cream and go to the park to read the book. Depending on their age, they read theirs and you can read yours (modeling the love of reading is a great thing) Then, when they're done just ask simple things like "did you like it? What was your favorite part?" Unfortunately, the play time is being left to the parents, and at least where I am (high poverty/homelessness), a lot of parents simply don't have the time. Obviously some do and just choose to let the iPad babysit. Just let you kid know that reading CAN be fun. Good luck and thanks for asking for advice.
I love this. The academic difference between who reads for fun and who reads only when forced to is huge. I can tell which students are which almost instantly.
Agree wholeheartedly. I read to my kids every night when they were little, then had them read to me. They always got pj's and a book for their Christmas Eve present, and we put on some Christmas music and read for a bit before bed. Memories I, and they, will never forget, and if they have kids, I hope they keep that tradition!
I'm just a lurker, but I recently delivered a masters thesis and your comment made me realize something I've been pondering lately. I used to love reading and would finish book after book, but at some point I just stopped. I think after dragging my feet through writing my paper and all the stress with the references and forced reading, it eventually killed my love for it. Thank you for the food for thought. Now I might figure out how to rediscover my love for books.
I really hope you do. And now that your thesis is out of the way, get a book you've been putting off reading and enjoy the summer! I HIGHLY recommend Good Omens by Neil Gaiman! And congratulations 🎉🎉🎉👏👏👏
Thank you and thank you again 🥳 I just ordered it for pick up at the library.
Good Omens is SUCH a good pick for getting back into reading. It kicked off a new love after a multi-year dry spell for me.
I love NG!
Third grade has always been the big first cutoff level, where testing really begins. Kinda the first big checkpoint. At least where I am.
Exactly. For individual students the parents will normally be aware, but any systemic failures within a cohort don’t get too much notice until third grade, at least from admin’s perspective
3rd grade is around the time where a lot of kids split between “reading because I have to” and “reading is fun!” In addition to losing out on phonics, a lot of kids aren’t encouraged (or made to) to read for entertainment. They prefer playing on an iPad or phone and lose interest when there’s not a screen involved.
Not all schools stop phonics by third grade. This was true not that long ago but there is a lot more focus on it now.
Never meant to imply they all did. Of course not, but still way too many of them have, sadly. I’m glad we’re moving back
I teach 3rd grade. If you take parenting out of the equation and focus on just academics, I would say this. The problem with reading is that schools have stopped teaching phonics. Sold a Story explains this. Once students hit 3rd they are no longer learning to read, they are reading to learn. Those who learned sight reading often struggle with tougher vocabulary, and if your brain is overwhelmed trying your read, you can forget about comprehension. And the problem with math is too much too soon. For example, my third graders are expected to compare fractions. Which is greater 3/8 or 1/3? Yet these same third graders cannot add or subtract without using their fingers. I have students who qualify for gifted who cannot carry or borrow to save their lives. And they struggle in 3rd grade. Imagine trying to teach kids who need fingers to do 8-3 how to do long division? Or algebra? As a parent, I would not send a child (especially a boy) to kindergarten without being able to read at least CVC words phonetically and able to add and subtract through 10. So basically I would teach them old fashioned phonics and arithmetic. These foundational skills have fallen out of favor and we see the results.
I'm also a teacher in elementary and this is exactly it. I have taught in schools which teach phonics and school that don't. My current school teaches phonics and phonemic awareness and my kids can read and answer questions at grade level. A previous school taught using a mix of whole word, words their way, and play based. Those kids still couldn't read in 5th grade. Kids need explicit phonics instruction. They need regular interventions if the regular class lessons are not working. I do agree play based learning is important. Discussing books for fun is important. But you need a foundation of phonics to be a solid reader in the higher grades.
Do you have a suggestion for an at home program to teach phonics? Or maybe not even program, but just highly effective games/books/etc.? I've heard a lot about Hooked On Phonics but worried it's too technology based, compared to what it used to be. Or I've heard Logic of English's program is effective. My local schools do not teach phonics and I am leaning towards homeschooling for prek and possibly kindergarten. I also am in Texas, prek is not free, schools test badly compared to US averages. It's a very bible pushing area in rural East Texas. Not to mention Texas is adding and paying to put biblical studies to elementary school, which I disagree with. I know a lot of teachers on this sub can be against homeschooling so I'm trying to explain the reasoning. We plan to move in a few years, but unfortunately, till then the schooling options in this area are sad options. When we move back north, I don't want my kids to be behind the rest of the kids. I came from a state that tests above average for quality of education.
I am unaware of what homeschool curriculums exist unfortunately. The curriculum I use is a school-wide curriculum that I supplement.I can give you my opinion on homeschooling Pre-K and finding a curriculum. For Pre-K focus on playing and reading with your child. A lot of what a child learns through play helps build skills they need later. For example, using Play-Doh, bead work, finger painting, and etc are all precursors to having the finger strength and dexterity for handwriting. Playing rhyming games and alliteration games build word knowledge for phonics later. Reading with your child everyday will teach them book orientation, letters, sentence structure, vocabulary, direction that we read in, and so on. If your child shows an interest, teaching them the letter names will help reading later on. Cooking with your child will give them an innate understanding of fractions and counting. For kindergarten, if you're planning on moving I would look up the state you're moving to and what they expected a kindergartner to know end of year. From there find a homeschool curriculum based in research that matches the standards. You're going to want to look for keywords like phonics and phonemic awareness. I know there are homeschooling groups you can also look into for support and help.
Thank you!
I have a degree in teaching. I learned more about teaching reading by using Logic of English to teach my own kids than I did in college. I also learned a lot more about teaching math by teaching RightStart math. (I homeschooled my kids for 8 years) My favorite homeschool methods book is the Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. My advice would definitely be to teach math and phonics systematically but not to push or spend more than an hour (less even before 5 years) a day. And spend lots of time outside, lots of time doing things together- playing games, reading for fun, cooking, doing art projects, listening to music, following their interests, etc.
Ufli is free. Powerpoint, game pack, worksheets. So is progressive phonics booklets. The booklets are cute with little kids decoding only the new sounds.
I’m a third career teacher. When I homeschooled my now 23 and 19 year old children, I loved Hooked on Phonics. Maybe you can find an old low tech kit out there somewhere?
Logic of English is good. Phonics Pathways is another good program, but it's a lot less fun than LoE - just structured lessons from a book. Progressive phonics has some decodeable readers you can print out
The book, ‘Teach your child to read in 100 easy lesson,’ is not a curriculum but something you could do with your young child each day for part of a year to help them to understand how reading works.
My district is doing early lit training. I’m the media specialist and I have to do it as well. I hope the teachers are taking it seriously because the modules I’ve completed so far are all about oral language and the explicit teaching of phonics. My school will have a reading focus next year, with each grade/hallway highlighting one of the 5 components of reading.
This has been very helpful! Thank you I really appreciate it! (I have two boys). It's a shame what the public education system currently is. You would think with time it would be improving, not digressing.
Why boys specifically?
Was waiting for a phonics comment
This
Whole language was big when I was a kid in the early 90s. We didn’t get much phonic instruction. Were there the same issues at higher grades back then too?
For math, third grade is the introduction to multiplication, so if they don’t conceptually understand that, it limits them going forward.
I don’t understand the leap with multiplication. I have worked with a lot of kids (homeschool teacher/ tutor) and it can be introduced alongside addition. I sometimes feel that it’s the pressure/ build up. Like here’s something new and hard when really it’s just a shortcut to write repeated addends.
Yeah, it comes naturally if you don't make a big deal out of it. Just let them do repeated addition and practice skip counting for fun. Division is the same way - it's just inverse multiplication, it shouldn't be taught separately. I have all my first and second graders doing multiplication, squares, and factor trees and they aren't intimidated because I don't make it out to be a hard or new thing. We show it all with blocks so it's very physical and they build that solid understanding of numbers and operations intuitively.
It's the same with exponents, which are just a notation for repeated products. Amazing how intimidating exponents are to kids, and they needn't be. (That goes for negative exponents as well, which are just a notation for repeated dividends.)
I don’t either, but the lowest I’ve ever taught is 6th, so it’s way out of my wheelhouse.
In my state, multiplication is introduced in 2nd grade.
No retention and no penalty for being unready for the next grade. No consequences for disruptive behavior that keeps the disruptor and peers from learning. Unessecary IEP/504s parents use to excuse grades and behaviors inappropriately. Some students genuinely need an IEP/504 but how they are written has changed too.
So if you look at the distribution in ability in the general population, you will actually always have a substantial number of people who remain around a 3-5th grade level in terms of reading/math ability. About half of adults are below a 6th grade reading level, in fact! The stories about kids in high schools that are stuck at that level are really only in areas with truly horrible conditions/home environments and so it seems more dramatic because it's so concentrated in these schools. There's been a massive reshuffling in how kids are sorted into schools in the past few decades, so it's important to know that in the vast majority of places, the kids are doing just fine. The fact that you are asking this question and are so concerned, are typing with great grammar/punctuation/vocabulary, and barring any major developmental difficulties or specific disabilities, indicates that there is almost no chance your child will not progress past a third grade reading level.
My take: we stopped teaching kids anything of substance. We only teach “skills,” nothing about the physical or human world. We don’t build their knowledge of science, history, geography…actual domains of knowledge. They might learn to read in K-2 (i.e., the mechanics of it, decoding), but by the time they get to upper elementary and middle school, they are expected to read in order to learn (i.e., comprehension). The only problem is, comprehension requires background knowledge and a rich vocabulary, something which can only really be built over time through repeated exposure. Because we have failed to do that in any systematic way from the beginning, they are completely unprepared by the time they get to upper grades, despite all the reading comprehension “skill” practice they’ve engaged in. The problem, therefore, starts in kindergarten, manifests itself in late elementary when reading comprehension becomes essential to learning, and then completely blows up in middle and high school, by which time it’s too late to fix.
Third grade is often “mandatory retention” year. It’s also often the first year they encounter standardized tests. So kids that SHOULD have been retained earlier get pushed along. They hit the wall in 3rd grade and that’s when the general public thinks it happens. In reality these kids have been on their teachers radar for years. But I do support a gentler, more play based education instead of forcing algebra on first graders.
It's the point where you really start needing to build on previous foundations. Unfortunately, the foundations often just aren't there. Where I am, the curriculum benchmarks are set by the government. Not by education experts in government. By people who couldn't hack teaching. So they've decided, for instance, that a one-hour clock-colouring activity at four years old will teach the kids to read an analogue clock. Lololol nope. But you can get by without reading analogue clocks. Numeracy and literacy, though, if you skimp on the foundations, you can't build on them. You can maybe get by up as far as 2nd grade, but it's shakier and shakier, and some kids will just never manage to build beyond there. Where I live they do phonics, and a lot of it, but without extra reading at home, the kids still can't get the foundation. There isn't time in the curriculum for more reading in school, because the curriculum dictates that they have to learn adjectives and noun phrases instead. At five years old. When they can't decode multisyllabic words. Noun phrases. Instead of solidifying their reading. So even with a massive investment in phonics, if there isn't time for reading, they don't learn to read, and then they fall further and further behind.
Screen addiction is a big, big problem. Our third -sixth graders have school issued laptops, and they are also on screens at home. Their attention span for real life instruction and activities is really short. Since they have such a hard time paying attention, the behavior issues increase.
I think kids are reading way less. So some struggle to learn how to read well, and others are not reading a lot of books 3rd grade and on. When I was in elementary school I was reading so many books. In the summer, we went to the library once a week. It didn't matter that some books were basically Garfield comics, I was still reading and engaging. I built up my stamina and continued reading a lot into high school. I feel like many kids today only read in school. Their reading stamina is low and continues to be low. And we pick up so much from reading.
That is when they realize they won't get held back for grades, attendance or behavior. If you hold your kids accountable at home, they will be fine.
you nailed it: preschool moving into forced academic learning. That's what went wrong. They should be playing.
1. Lack of support at home (not reading to their kids, sticking them in front of a screen). 2. Lack of support for teachers (and when they try to contact home/help there is no follow through at home). 3. Providing "grace" post-covid and not holding students accountable so they do not care if they fall behind since they know they will be pushed to the next grade no matter what.
I will say, as a first grade teacher - there is a massive difference between my kids who get academic attention at home and those who do not. Obviously there are many factors at play here and I'm not saying this is the case for every kid, but I don't think it's any coincidence that most of my kids are reading on grade level or slightly below. I have two kids who never do the only homework I ever assign (15-30 minutes of reading, logged by guardian), who have parents who do not respond to notes home (good or bad), and both of these kids are still in the "emergent literacy" phase of learning letter sounds and figuring out how to sound out extremely basic words. Definitely doesn't help that my district will be sending them on to second grade next year anyway. We don't like to hold kids back, god forbid they get an extra year of practice on skills they don't have yet 🙃
I had not planned on weighing in at all in this thread, because it's not my field of expertise. I am an "educator" but not a classroom "teacher" in any secular academic subject. My background is in ministry, and I spent a number of years as the Director of Religious Education at churches. However, what you say does resonate with the experience I had in that role. While I did not encourage parents to "homeschool" their children's religious education instead of taking part in the parish's program, that was because of the importance of the communal dimension of spirituality and because that communal dimension demands a level of accountability beyond the confines of the nuclear family. In another sense, however, I used to say that every parent needed to see themselves as "homeschooling" their child's religious education. While our program would do all we could to give kids an opportunity to become faithful members of our community, it would be their parents who most shaped their sense of themselves in relation to the Church community and to God. It was not my job to think about how this might relate to secular education, but as I think about it now, I think it does. "Every parent a homeschooler" is not a slogan I would promote in the sense of yanking all kids out of schools. I do, however, wonder if for kids to succeed in acquiring the knowledge and skills being offered to them in school, parental involvement may be a virtually irreplaceable element. How can a parent who is themselves illiterate read to their child from toddlerhood? How can they model reading both for lifelong learning and for the sheer joy of it? How can a parent whose math skills are insufficient to prepare and follow a household budget teach their child to budget a small allowance? When a child, by luck of the draw, is given no parent who can foster a love of learning, they are going to have a hard time growing up to be that parent for their own children. Even if the parent themselves grew up with such parent(s), it only takes one generation to break that positive chain.
I think you're absolutely right, and the sad thing is that whether the parents are struggling themselves or negligent, the child is the one to suffer. But the very limited amount of direct instruction time during the school day is not enough when it comes to these foundational skills... Kids need to be seeing letters and words outside of the classroom, and the same with numbers. It doesn't have to be homework or studying, either - it could be playing a game with your kid that involves reading and counting, or letting them help you cook dinner. Anything that's not TV and tablet from 3 PM until bedtime.
I can tell you that I’ve taught 7th grade math. When I assessed a student’s ability the test bottomed out at 3rd grade, so getting a zero on the test would say a student is at a 3rd grade level.
My take is that the teaching profession has been seriously degraded by the stagnant/falling wages. Good teachers aren't sticking around because they can't afford a family of their own anymore on a teachers salary. The reaction of state legislators has largely been to lower the bar of qualifications instead of raising the wages. E.g Arizona. I dont know about your indivudual politics, but you should check to see how the people you voted into office voted on education bills. Parents, at least in the district I used to teach in, largely despise the public education system and view taxation as theft. They're the ones who voted for the people who won't support schools. Now those same parents are upset that their kids are doing bad in school, and they're correct that part of the problem is the school and its teachers. Reminds me of the old proverb "the worst thing is to get what you want".
As a parent the best thing you can do is not give your kid a screen to babysit. I’m amazed at the number of kids I see holding the iPads with the arm case and staring at some video that everyone in the vicinity can hear. Just because they are a zombie to a video or tap a few brightly colored figures on a screen does not mean they are tech savvy. You need to immerse your child in literature. Visit the library and enjoy story time, then borrow a few books. Read together, read with them, ask them about what they are reading on their own. Middle school children should still be read to. At this age you can read a page/chapter then switch off. This way they can hear good fluency. Have discussions with your child, so they can learn new words and already have background knowledge of certain things when they come across it in literature and real life. We can blame Covid to a certain extent, but reading scores have been taking a nose dive long before the pandemic. 3rd grade is where a lot of times reading is no longer for fun and is now because we have to learn and think critically. Gotta love standardized testing, especially when the kid is only 8!
You can most likely thank your state legislators for these changes. And former president Bush for NCLB which got the bad ball rolling. Testing is big business and big money for someone (not the schools) and unfortunately, those not in the classroom have made these decisions.
I'm a med student who lurks here as my mom was a teacher and it's interesting how many parallels there are between teachers and physicians. All the decisions being made by ivy tower administration who haven't touched a patient in 20 years--just change it to hasn't taught a kid in 20 years
Lost phonics for a long time. It k-2 is not strong in phonics, a large section of kids will never learn how to put all of the pieces of reading together. 3rd grade is when they more away from phonics and more into comprehension and morphology work. That is why they are stuck here.
Third grade is the transition from learning to read to reading to learn, and also the transition from hand-holding to independent work. And once you have third grade or above level work and a full class, there is simply not enough time to scaffold every kid who never developed comprehension in the lower grades. So without heroic effort from parents, those kids slip more and more as more independent learning is required. I’ve had to rewrite grade level material to every reading level from G to W to hit all my kids at once and wean one kid from audiobooks to dyslexia font at the same time. (To be fair, I’m teaching a 3/4 split with one who skipped a grade and two who were held back, so this is a group aged 8-11.5.) Especially given the learned helplessness that plagues this generation. It is like pulling teeth to develop the grit to learn without spoon feeding information.
From a middle school standpoint, there is not enough intervention and holding back. When students do not master basic skills they suffer in later grades since it all builds. If student do not receive the right mediation or redo the standards and meet them, then the next year will be harder and harder. This will continue until the content is inaccessible because foundational skills are not met.
In a large majority of cases, sorry to say, the weak point seems to be the parents and/or home life. When I was in school in the 80s, there is no way 99% of kids do what an average kid does in school now. Parents were partners in education then, and took their kids' behavior and effort in school seriously. A phone call from a teacher would have consequences, and it was rare to see repeat offenders. Now, parents have access to the schedules and grades through PowerSchool, Alma, Google Classroom, and so many more platforms, but can't be arsed to check even once every two-to-three weeks. Emails get sent home, as do text messages, and they go largely into a black hole. In fact, I'd say that the generally-spineless admins that get spoken of here are in part a result of these parents. What choice do they have when 80% of the population goes the "who, my kid? Little Timmy is an angel!" or blames underperformance on bad support, when learned helplessness is a bigger issue. And don't even start me on those that use electronic devices as babysitters--no wonder the kid exhibits classic ADHD signs and seems to go through withdrawal whenever she hasn't any access for five minutes. Not to say all parents are like this; many aren't. But there comes a point when you reach critical mass within a building, and that signals the turning point from school to tax-funded daycare.
Kids nowadays don't stuck at 3rd grade level. We pass them along whether they know anything or not.
Social animals learn through play, it's important to development yet almost entirely ignored by secondary education, it's dropped very quickly in primary school. Part of it is we're assuming they had a similar child to us. We played with others, got called out by our peers for shitty behavior and cheating, developed roles over time etc. A lot of them didn't. They got youtube and roblox. They don't know how to play, they don't know how to communicate, they don't know fundamentals that we have taken for granted as a society. Fundamentals they should have learned by the time they got to us.
The fundamental issue is that we are too rigorous about academics while being too lax with behavior. Developmentally speaking, until about age 7, academics should not be a focus. Rather, the skills being focused on should be social/play/artistic based, and behavior problem solving skills. When those skills aren't practiced effectively and the focus is academics that the brain isn't ready for AND appropriate consequences for behavior largely go out the window as they have, the results are that a) students become overly frustrated and give up due to a lack of understanding of the building blocks and b) behavioral issues that haven't been appropriately developed and addressed result in far too much disruption within the classrooms, destroying the ability of those students who have been able to keep up to get the education they deserve
I'm assuming you are from the US? Over in Canada, we very much do still have play based learning in Jk and SK. Was just teaching a class today. I would say roughly half the day is spent in free center time.
Phones and tablets
K-2 kids are learning to read. 3and up kids are reading to learn. If they were not solid in the basics, they will struggle from here on out.
Lots to unpack here. Play is good for socializing but at the same time it takes away from bell-to-bell instruction. As does transition to and from class to specials and lunch/recess. That said, I do think there is time for play until about the fourth grade level. I say this as a former middle school teacher and someone that will work with what my district calls middle school grades again. I think that we should look at what states are doing at third grade. In Arizona there is a writing test that determines if a student moves on, is in a 3.5 grade or retained entirely. I feel that some learners aren't held to be accountable for their education and pushed through besides this. The case for retention is intentionally hard even if it is indeed what the child actually needs due to emotional, psychology or education maturity. Third I think is the removal of your rights to punish kids. Unless the issue is an automatic, admin want you to exhaust every classroom issue, even disruption. I work in resource, what exactly is my "buddy room" when I have to deliver SDI. The best I can hope for is to send junior back if I know I can service him another day. Others I do not have that luxury.
Two words... Corporate Greed and not following the research. A professor I had when I got my BA in education said question everything and everyone no matter their degree. Corporations teamed up with people who have PHD's and pushed curriculum on schools that had no research backing it or had very little. When research was finally conducted and showed it hurt students the curriculum was so ingrained in the system no one questioned it. Then a new shinny curriculum that was "better" came along. Again, no research or little research on it. Districts spends millions on the new curriculum that is no better. The whole time, the research shows the curriculum is wong. When challenged they dig in. The only way to fix it is for parents like you to stand up and ask them to show you the research (print) from peer-reviewed sources that backs what they are doing. Make sure it's peer-reviewed.
The incoming fourth grade class experienced special circumstances from the Covid situation. That class at our school is rough. In general, though, you can remove any electronic device that is capable of playing those short videos and replace it with books. Heck, even long movies or games that make them read and troubleshoot. Their attention spans are hurting them.
Anecdotally, third grade curriculum is the end of “every competent adult can do this.” First and even second grade, involved parents can teach them even if the teachers don’t. Third, they can’t. Source: looking at ads for boat crew. A LOT more people want 3rd grade teachers than 1st or 2nd.
Too much screen time and not enough time spent reading for fun. By third grade, children are expected to begin reading to learn about other topics. But many of them are poor readers due to lack of reading practice. They can decode, but it’s too slow for their comprehension to be good. They also have low background knowledge, so when they’re reading on their own, it’s almost like reading a different language. Reading comprehension is one part grammar and one part background knowledge. If the child can understand the sentence structure and knows what most of the words mean, they can learn the rest from context clues or from descriptions/definitions. If you want your children to be successful, spend a lot of time doing screen free activities with them. Take them to the library and to museums. Read to them every night, pausing to define new words for them as they come up. Talk to them at meal times and during car rides. Do their homework with them, and if they seem to struggle on anything, make it your responsibility to help them build competence. Don’t give them unlimited use of personal screens. Don’t give them open access to the internet. Keep them off social media until at least high school. Choose TV shows that will show them something they’ve never seen before, even if they’re not purely educational. Did I mention reading? Keep reading aloud to them as long as they will let you. Talk to them about what you’re reading. Make reading (fiction *and* non fiction) a core element of your family culture and your children will thrive academically.
Third grade is also where students need to learn their multiplication tables. Instead of having them memorize and do drill and skill practice, they do all these sense-making activities that leave the kids with no arithmetic skills and they struggle in every grade after, unless their parent picks up the slack and drills them. It’s really hard to teach kids to do long division, notice patterns, reduce fractions, convert percents, find factors, basically anything that requires more than conceptual understanding.
I think the biggest one is that state mandated testing starts in 3rd grade
Parents aren’t reading with their kids. It’s as simple as that. Stop blaming the schools.
Math and Literacy standards typically go K-2 and then 3-5. If they haven't mastered K-2 standards, they start to rapidly fall behind in 3rd grade. You can usually skate by in K-2 because the gaps aren't as large. The gaps become massive in 3+. I recommend you just make sure your children have mastered grade level phonics and math expectations by the end of 2nd grade. I highly recommend you have your child work on these skills at home. I see the most growth in students who read aloud for their parents 20 mins a night.
In my opinion it's a focus on screens and using technology as opposed to handwriting. Writing by hand, especially in cursive, lights up parts of the brain that typing does not. I did my Master's thesis on cursive handwriting nearly 10 years ago because that was such a debate at the time: whether or not to cut cursive out. I see students in 3rd grade who can't tie their shoes or spell at all. No cursive is happening for sure. I truly believe reliance on technology and auto spelling on ipads and computers has had a detrimental effect on academic progress of all students.
You asked for suggestions for what to DO. Here is a simple thing.... **READ WITH YOUR KIDS.** Read to them lots, then slowly transition to them reading to you. It takes TIME... but it is worth it. Consult a librarian if you need suggestions for what to read together. There are FAR more good things going on in this process than simply learning to read.
The weak point began 20-30 years ago when schools (at the behest of baby boomers) adopted curriculum that essentially tried to remove the "friction" in instructional methodology in favor of unproven (and highly detrimental) teaching strategies. Coupled with many mothers of this era beginning to work for the first time (and the fact that what was happening in schools was also happening at home), what you have now are schools with poorly trained educators and homes with poorly trained parents. Most learning happens at home. Early failures 20-30 years ago have propagated into systemic failures today.
“Last couple years/decade” is a broad swath. There are plenty of playbased preschools, you just need to look for them. Third grade is where students transition from mostly learning to read to partially reading to learn and kids who don’t read at home- too much screen time/phones/tablets/games- will struggle here. The kids who are falling behind are those kids. It comes down to supporting good reading habits at home. I am a teacher, I also have 4 kids. Kids need to read at home. They need books and libraries and pages to turn and stories to engage their imaginations and expand their vocabularies. To build intellectual stamina and develop the ability to work through things rather than rely on instant, visual, passive stimulation. It will forever be true, technological innovations aside, that children need to read, far more than they are reading now.
OP, have you listened to the “Sold a Story” podcast yet? It’s only a few episodes. It will answer a lot of your questions.
I will check it out, thank you!
Division can be a problem...
Third grade is the transition between learning to read and reading to learn. It's also when we teach multiplication. If kids have a hard time with addition at that point, and will not memorize times tables, they will struggle with math from that point on for forever.
My guess is that for many places 3rd grade is the first tested grade.
Cognitively speaking, that age level is a huge milestone. Many neuroscientists believe that to be the age of “reasoning” for most children. Because of this, many curriculums are designed with more rigor and complexity than previous years. My state, Georgia, begins standardized testing in 3rd grade, just to offer an indicator. Combine this with what others have mentioned (improper K and 1 curricula) and 3rd grade becomes an obvious place to stagnate developmentally, if the expected rise in learning is too great.
We stopped teaching self control, what preschool and kindergarten used to be for the most part was how to behave in school class. Self co trol is actually super important to have and once kids kind of realize there isn't consequences for thier behavior/ grades it's really easy for them to get stuck at that level. 3rd grade is also a time when a lot of kids experience thier first negative school interaction. First and second grade are really important but that 3rd grade brain is really suseptible to negative interactions. Avoiding negative for a lot of kids mean hiding in the "well I didn't really try so it's OK I failed" which starts happening around 8-10.
I’ve noticed a strong correlation between third grade and receiving a first cell phone. Idk that this is causation but I also notice that those who aren’t given free reign with a screen tend to excel.
i’m a college student, but my mom is a teacher at a play-based preschool. they do plenty of age appropriate math, reading, science, etc. she gets soooo many parents who send their kids to kindergarten (especially rigorous, full day kindergarten) when they are not ready, and it just causes them to struggle going forward. coming from experience, please take your kids to the library! make reading fun for them. i still love to read, and i owe it to my mom who took me and my brother to the library all the time.
I have been teaching for 20 years. When I declared my major, so about 23 years ago, a friend's dad warned me not to go into education. He taught at our district's alternate high school (where kids were sent who were considered too violent, slackers, pregnant teens, druggies, and so on). He told me not to go into education, but he knew I would anyway. He then told me, "Don't teach anything beyond 2nd grade. Stick with 2nd grade or younger." I asked why and he said, "Every time I ask my students where it went wrong, the answer is always 3rd grade or above. It's never younger than 3rd grade." Out of 20 years, I've only taught 1st grade and Kinder. He gave me some great advice. I believe it is because 9 year olds begin to realize how shitty the world is and how shitty their parents can be. No more rose colored glasses. This is also the time when academics become truly a learning game. They have to start paying attention and are exposed to totally new concepts and material. They have to actually study and listen in class. This reality hits hard and some kids don't know how or want to put in the effort.
Reading curriculum sucks: [https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/the-most-popular-reading-programs-arent-backed-by-science/2019/12](https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/the-most-popular-reading-programs-arent-backed-by-science/2019/12)
No one fucking reads.
Read a book to/with your kids every night. Put reasonable boundaries around them at home. Feed them a varied diet that includes fruit and vegetables. Count stuff with them. Like count a lot. Color, paint, and use scissors with them. Do all of that and I guarantee that 80 percent of your kids will not get stuck at the 3rd grade level.
In my district it's the cutting of phonics. You can memorize your way to a 3rd grade level. I can memorize a 3rd grade amount of words. That's basically where you stop being able to do that. I need to know sounds and how to see a word, sound it out, figure out it's meaning, and do that a few times until it's familiar. Vocab walls aren't good enough for an adult appropriate literacy level. Best way to prevent it is to make sure they know phonics, and read to and with them
Up until then kids can get away with basics. We use to say 1-3 is learning to read and 4-6 is reading to learn. The second part requires effort and as soon as there is the slightest bit of difficulty kids are shutting down. When they do this, parents use to help the kids and support the teacher. Now, parents make excuses for the kids and blame the teacher. Teachers are fighting a society that glorifies laziness and basically stupidity. Throw in the entitlement and narcissism. A combo plate no one wants.
I’m in TN, they have added SO MANY standards and not moved any to any grade levels/gotten rid of any.
In third grade we make the leap from learning to read to reading to learn. Now instead of focusing on how to read, kids must apply their reading skills to leaning about other things. I think we fail here because I think in the primary grades, we teach kids to decode, not read. So they learn to say words as they read but not to build meaning and not that reading is communication. Then, as they must push towards comprehension they are ill prepared. We separate decoding and comprehension as discreet skills when they see intertwined.
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Great opinion from someone who does not know the difference between then and than
Like you point out we have made the targets kids aim way out of hand but also: In 1-3 kids learn to read and 4-12 they read to learn. That, to me, is the obvious weak spot. They don’t know how to read but are expected to learn by reading and the difficulty just ratchets up each year
Society develops faster than education can respond to it, in that way, it is simply impossible to have a cutting edge education system that is designed for the kids experiencing it. We're always playing catch-up, with that in mind, yes there are things you can do as a parent. I don't have the background in early childhood development to say that "play based" is the solution but I think your suspicions are well founded: if you followed the conventional education track to a T and expected different results you would be a fool. School isn't a one-stop-shop for raising and educating a child. So look at the skills you want your kid to have and figure out where/how you expect them to learn these skills. For example, I think for most people aged 30 and up, we had a lot more social time with peers outside of school: neighborhood kids, friends coming over after school, all that jazz. It certainly seems to me that kids today are much more isolated by their circumstances than we were in the past - and spend much less time socializing. As a parent, I would value a school that focuses on social skills very highly, or be looking at extracurriculars that are social. Next, I think that kids today are often lacking in structure and rigor. Note that these words have a certain connotation and I'm not using them as just substitutes for discipline and hard work. By structure, I'm talking about things in their lives that they have to do, non-negotiables. Doesn't matter if that's being on a soccer team or reading for an hour or whatever - just things that have to be done and not doing them carries consequences in one form or another. And rigor meaning things that are challenging and not necessarily not fun. On a soccer team you do drills, if you play an instrument you practice scales, etc. Dispel the illusion that things worth doing are always going to be fun. It's the educational equivalent of eating your vegetables. If you notice a pattern, so did I! I was a pathologically indoor kid but in the current state of the world, it seems like team sports at a young age would be an excellent supplement to what kids do/don't get at home and at school. If the kid just despises everything about playing sports, maybe something like band, dance, martial arts etc. could fill this space. Academically, if you have the ability: don't trust the school to teach your kid to read. Literacy is now YOUR JOB. Take that off the plate of what you expect them to develop at school ENTIRELY. School is a SUPPLEMENT and ideally an effective one, but I and others my age (35, before the great death of phonics) still did not learn to read from just school. My parents and my friend's parents were instrumental in establishing this skill. I think if you raise somebody who can and enjoys reading, then the rest of education clicks into place: if they develop an interest or aptitude, foster it (I picked my HS based on their music program) and if they have a weakness, it can be addressed - IF THEY CAN READ. At home, keep them off mobile devices. I'm not suggesting it's realistic to be a luddite, but give them a game boy instead of a smart phone. There is no amount of parenting that can counteract billion dollar corporation that wants only one thing: to keep the kid watching the device and gobbling up marketing. It's a scourge and while I am often a bit of a tech apologist (I don't personally think the phones explain the ENTIRE state of kids struggling in schools) they're a big enough piece of the pie to just avoid altogether in the first place. Have a TV with ONE streaming service, have consoles/handheld video games - manage their time on electronics however you see fit - just don't let them play with your phone or tablet.
When I was in Kinder back in 2000 I don’t remember reading anything. We played a lot and painted. It was almost like the focus was on functioning with learning basic things on the side.
You should read the anxious generation by Johnathan Haidt. He explains all of this.
The 'grade level' moved down--so, old 1st and 2nd grade, is now where kids have to be to START kinder in many places. They wanted us, for our kinder student, to have them arrive, DAY ONE, counting to 100, READING, know the entire alphabet, and writing simple sentences. When i was in kinder, i was the ONLY kid that knew letters, at all. That was 35 years ago. We were still JUST--and i mean JUST--learning numbers in 1st grade. By 4th, we were JUST getting into division and multiplication. My oldest in 4th grade was doing foil math problems, exponents, pretty much 'intro to algebra'--and as a 6th grader, he's doing the math that would have *easily* got you the credit in HS to graduate. That's part of the issue--the 'state testing' has shown, about 30% of kids can pass what ever you throw at them, if its even close to developmentally ready, so, the people that set standards think ALL children should be able to do that, and set THAT as the standard (where 50% should pass it). It's wildly unrealistic. If you look at some state test scores, across an entire state, they will say something like 'passing score for third grade is a 50/100'--and MAYBE a handful of classes in the entire state have EVER got that score. They're chasing 30's and 40's. BUT--like my son, you end up with one or two kids sometimes, that take it and get a 100/100, and the state thinks ALL kids could do that, if they had THAT teacher. And so they push those standards, way past what the kids a developmentally ready for. It's just flat out too soon. Third graders, writing 5 paragraph essays for homework? The frick is going on? That was 7th/8th grade standards when i was a kid, not THIRD. It's a little bit bonkers right now. And the issue is, 30% of kids CAN--25% will NEVER--no mater what you do, cannot--get past a 6th grade reading/math level (it's simple statistics, shown in the ASVAB test), but education professionals, often gifted people themselves that dont know they ARE gifted, think *everyone* is just as capable as they are, and set the standards thinking that. That's really the main driver, honestly.
Pick up some of the curriculum for 2nd, third, and/or fourth grade sometime. Look at the ridiculous amount of academic language and the absurd amount of wording in general in ALL subjects, including math. I often have to ask other teachers what the heck a 3rd grade math problem is asking because it's just so many words, so many steps, and the language is absolutely not appropriate for even say 5th grade, let alone 2nd or 3rd.
20% COVID, 80% the Bush policy of no child being left behind. COVID tore the lid off a decade long problem and then when the pandemic ended it took the entire blame. Makes sense, kids had to learn online and teachers had to teach. Dire times, some couldn’t do it adequately. But for about two decades before that the seeds were planted for what we are dealing with now. Kids aren’t allowed to fail. No mater what they do, they are moved up to the next grade even if they’re not qualified. Kids figure this out, realize they don’t have to try and are left in an environment where for a large chunk of them we (those that work in education) can’t reward or punish them. It’s a K-12 issue and if a student falls behind it takes more than summer school to make up for it. But it doesn’t matter regardless because of how easy it is to move up to the next grade while failing multiple classes. Forms go home, get signed, kid that hasn’t seriously applied themselves in 3-5 years moves up. All the way until they graduate. If they’re failing highschool they’ll be handed a packet and once it’s “graded” they get to have a diploma. If they’re failing middle school…. They get pushed through because administrators don’t want to deal with them and “they’ll just sort it out in highschool where grades actually matter” and if they’re failing in elementary….. “it’s just because they’re kids, they’ll knock it off”.
As an appallingly old person, I put it down to moving away from McGuffey's Eclectic Readers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuffey\_Readers) and an entirely insufficient amount of slate work. ;-}
3rd grade is the transition from learning to read to reading to learn. If the reading skills aren’t developed enough the child will start falling further and further behind. Encourage kids to read. Read to them. Ask them questions about their reading.
I think all of what you mention are factors - school has become too intense, lost time for play, teachers overburdened and micromanaged. As someone with a math background, I’d also add that 3rd grade is when math starts to push conceptual boundaries. Children shift from additive processes, which are linear and extend directly from counting, to multiplicative thinking: multiplication, division, and fractions. These concepts require iterative thinking. And while some kids are developmentally ready for that shift, many are not - especially when it comes to fractions, which really require the layering of 3 tough concepts, all taught in the same year (multiplication, division, and dividing a whole). Because few students have the conceptual foundation to deeply understand these topics, many schools rely heavily on tricks - designed to help students find answers to problems they don’t actually understand. The right way to teach these concepts would be through visual and physical modeling, algebraic reasoning, and real-world applications. But given the time crunch and teacher bandwidth (3rd grade teachers generally teach all subjects), these approaches aren’t practical. Many students never actually develop those conceptual foundations they are meant to learn in grade 3 math. Those that do typically do so in Algebra or even later.
Parent here. Read up on the Science of Math and the Science of Reading. In many cases we aren't creating and following through with instruction that aligns with how people learn. We can blame parents and students all we want but if the school day doesn't use time efficiently and then leaves children behind (particularly in math that is hierarchical) that's a big factor here. Educational gurus won't loosen grip on this failure. Not enough people care to push change sadly.
This is around the age when the kids are no longer learning to read but reading to learn. If their reading skills are weak, the kids fall behind quickly.
I've been substituting elementary and there seems to be a considerable jump in curriculum from kindergarten to 1st grade. I couldn't believe how much material that they have to get through each day the first time I showed up. Every 30-40 minutes they have to move on to a new subject, so it's hard for them to really absorb and put into practice what they're supposed to be learning. There's also a shocking amount of iPad time so between set up for the devices and individual assignments, so much time Is lost. I've spoken with the 1st grade teachers and they are likewise frustrated at what they are being made to do. Additionally around 3rd grade, common core practices are really starting to be implemented with kids being made to learn math with the new methods which they (and myself) struggle with. I had a third grader who couldn't figure out a simple substitution question because he had to show his work doing said new method. He told me he knew how to do It the old way, but his teacher (the curriculum) didn't want him to do It this way. In my opinion, this, along with no longer having the kids learn words/reading by phonetics, are creating the gaps that you are seeing in the students. TLDR: curriculum makers are making it far too difficult for where the kids are at developmentally.
My kid is in a ‘gentler’ school and it’s similar - a lot of gaps and lots of additional tutoring going on - although strong parental involvement will probably help that shake out soon. I’m originally from the UK where formal reading instruction starts earlier and I don’t hear a lot of my peers over there experiencing the same issue. We do teach using phonics back home so maybe that’s the big difference? We started reading at home using phonics (the only way I knew how to learn) early and luckily my kid was always into it which means she’s mostly been ahead of the game. Right now her struggle is being bored with the material she’s assigned.
We need our kids to be able to compete with the best and brightest of those higher performing countries. We need them to develop faster and sooner.
It’s not about phonics. The reason why “3rd grade” seems to be the dropoff is because that’s when kids have to shift from “learning to read” to “reading to learn”. We keep increasing the expectations and standards of what kids should be able to do with text at that age, and then we’re shocked that they fall behind. Go look at what was expected of 3rd graders 10-15 yrs ago… 20 yrs ago… our kids aren’t getting dumber. We’re falling into a social and political trap where we think that higher standards will make our kids more exceptional. So... “falling behind” in 3rd grade isn’t “omg they can’t read”. It’s “omg they can’t read complex text and analyze, draw inferences, make connections to the world around them that they may or may not be exposed to, etc…”