Handwriting pressure in kindergarten?
Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 1:58 am
This is a bit of a rant, so please excuse the length of this post. I'm just frustrated.
My daughter just started public kindergarten three weeks ago. There has been a lot of focus on handwriting.
When she started school she could write her first name. Basic printing. Nothing fancy.
The second day of school the teachers told me that she wasn't doing it right and she had to do it with the D'Nealian alphabet. I thought they meant she needed to work on it over the next couple months, to transition to D'Nealian.
The third day, they provided me with a homework paper that she needed to complete, writing her name in the approved manner. They showed me a paper where she had written the first letter of her name and said that that took her 30 minutes sitting one-on-one with one of the teachers. So basically, she just flat refused to do it.
On the morning of the fourth day (she's in the PM class) my daughter burst into tears while I was trying to get her to write her name the way they wanted her too. And my daughter is a happy, confident, rough and tumble little girl. She doesn't just burst into tears. Ever.
Needless to say, I'm not too happy about any of this.
I looked into homeschooling several years ago, but decided against it when we moved to this area, which has highly rated public schools. But now I get what they mean by highly rated. Ratings as in testing. Ah. I get it now.
Apparently, with the initial assessment the child is supposed to write their name and the handwriting reveals something or other, and they can either check or not check a box on a form somewhere. Hmph..
Then, they started in on her not paying attention and being distracted. Gee I wonder why... A month ago she had a mom that was so proud of her for writing her name, and now she's being told she's not even doing it right. Hmm...
Before, I was looking at homeschool in order to provide a richer academic environment for my child. Now, I'm looking into it so that she can get out of the pressure cooker.
I did some research into the current state of kindergarten and found that the pressure on these young kids (and the teachers) now is unreal. There is so much focus on testing that the pressure has gotten pushed down the line until kindergarten is the new first grade.
I read an article that said that kindergarten teachers are really having a tough time. Not only are they teaching kids of various levels of ability, skills and behavior, but they are expected to produce readers and writers so that the first grade teachers can hit the ground running in order to prepare the kids for the formal testing in second grade.
So it's not just my daughter's school or my daughter's teachers. It's a nationwide trend.
Another thing that I've found shocking is that it's now considered perfectly normal for several kids in a class to repeat kindergarten because they're not quite prepared for first grade.
I'm also really irritated that so much focus is put on a specific style of handwriting. Not only at this age, but at all. I believe that she needs to write legibly, which she was. Other than that, give me a break. If I remember right, teachers stopped caring at all how you formed your letters, as long as they were legible, in the 3rd or 4th grade.
Do homeschooling kindergarten curriculums have this much focus on perfecting handwriting?
Nancy
My daughter just started public kindergarten three weeks ago. There has been a lot of focus on handwriting.
When she started school she could write her first name. Basic printing. Nothing fancy.
The second day of school the teachers told me that she wasn't doing it right and she had to do it with the D'Nealian alphabet. I thought they meant she needed to work on it over the next couple months, to transition to D'Nealian.
The third day, they provided me with a homework paper that she needed to complete, writing her name in the approved manner. They showed me a paper where she had written the first letter of her name and said that that took her 30 minutes sitting one-on-one with one of the teachers. So basically, she just flat refused to do it.
On the morning of the fourth day (she's in the PM class) my daughter burst into tears while I was trying to get her to write her name the way they wanted her too. And my daughter is a happy, confident, rough and tumble little girl. She doesn't just burst into tears. Ever.
Needless to say, I'm not too happy about any of this.
I looked into homeschooling several years ago, but decided against it when we moved to this area, which has highly rated public schools. But now I get what they mean by highly rated. Ratings as in testing. Ah. I get it now.
Apparently, with the initial assessment the child is supposed to write their name and the handwriting reveals something or other, and they can either check or not check a box on a form somewhere. Hmph..
Then, they started in on her not paying attention and being distracted. Gee I wonder why... A month ago she had a mom that was so proud of her for writing her name, and now she's being told she's not even doing it right. Hmm...
Before, I was looking at homeschool in order to provide a richer academic environment for my child. Now, I'm looking into it so that she can get out of the pressure cooker.
I did some research into the current state of kindergarten and found that the pressure on these young kids (and the teachers) now is unreal. There is so much focus on testing that the pressure has gotten pushed down the line until kindergarten is the new first grade.
I read an article that said that kindergarten teachers are really having a tough time. Not only are they teaching kids of various levels of ability, skills and behavior, but they are expected to produce readers and writers so that the first grade teachers can hit the ground running in order to prepare the kids for the formal testing in second grade.
So it's not just my daughter's school or my daughter's teachers. It's a nationwide trend.
Another thing that I've found shocking is that it's now considered perfectly normal for several kids in a class to repeat kindergarten because they're not quite prepared for first grade.
I'm also really irritated that so much focus is put on a specific style of handwriting. Not only at this age, but at all. I believe that she needs to write legibly, which she was. Other than that, give me a break. If I remember right, teachers stopped caring at all how you formed your letters, as long as they were legible, in the 3rd or 4th grade.
Do homeschooling kindergarten curriculums have this much focus on perfecting handwriting?
Nancy