When RJ came home with his first homework packet last week, I got inspiration to start critiquing it. I'm not naming his school or his teacher, but I am presenting his homework here for you to see. As the nature of homework is to have the children turn in a tangible product, I understand that pencil and paper activities are necessary. I also realize that pencil and paper activities do have some value considering the goal of developing good penmanship in Kindergarten. However, I also know that there are ways of achieving these goals without utilizing a litany of rote practice worksheets (which our recycling bin will quickly fill up with). My biggest criticism, which is as much for the district, who chooses the curriculum standards and system, as it is for the teacher herself, is that these worksheets lacked any context for the children. They're boring. I've been out of kindergarten for a long time and while it would've taken me about 30 seconds to finish some of these, I wouldn't want to spend even that much time doing them. I can't imagine how one would convince an unwilling child to do these sheets without some sort of major coercion (which would be bad, because coercion doesn't lead to a love of learning!)
So, as a resource to kindergarten teachers everywhere, I am examining RJ's homework and explaining why it is problematic and then, where possible, providing easy ways to improve the assignments.
The first page in RJ's homework was the Mary Had a Little Lamb Matching Page.
The first thing that came to my mind as I saw this was, "wow. lame". This wasn't because recognizing similarities and differences aren't important, but rather because it was too easy and lacked any sort of real context to make it interesting.
This really lacked any sort of real-world importance. Why did they need to be matched up? Where would we have to do this in real life?
Having a real-world example would not only enable children to use their observation skills to recognize minute differences between objects and match the similarities, but would also teach them something valuable about the world.
This is where I think thematic curriculum would be the most helpful, because themes can provide a context for the so-called academic skills that administrators and teachers alike deem important.
Since in my house, we're studying music right now, I immediately thought about having a worksheet where there were several orchestra instruments (of which there were two pairs with small differences for each instrument). Students would color and cut out the musicians with their instruments and paste them onto another sheet, arranging them into their like pairs and placing them where they belonged in the orchestra seating chart. There are several reasons why I think this activity would be better than this simple lamb matching one. First, coloring and cutting are great fine motor activities that most children inherently enjoy. So in addition to matching, which is the main goal, you're also working on fine motor control, which is necessary for good penmanship. Second, arranging the musicians by their instruments is something that would happen in real life, so it makes sense to do so. And finally, children can learn something more than just matching by learning about orchestras and why the instruments are arranged the way they are.
Next, was the Color Recognition Page.
I actually thought this page was a good one. It was open-ended and allowed the child to be active and search his/her environment, which is very developmentally appropriate. RJ enjoyed this one, too. Also, while the directions said to record RJ's answers for him, I took it upon myself to use the opportunity for writing practice as well, since taking notes on one's observations is a real-life science skill. I did write some of the longer words since the lines weren't really meant for a developmentally appropriate writing size, but the line size would honestly be my only criticism, and learning to write to the size of the line is something children will eventually have to do in their lives anyway.
I like when writing practice involves writing relevant words rather than focusing on one letter at a time (which his worksheets from school essentially are). Kids want to communicate, but that's difficult to do when they're focusing on only one letter at a time. When RJ wanted to start writing (he was about 3 1/2), it was because he wanted to communicate with his daddy - we started by writing out a menu of what we were eating for dinner so that my husband (who has a late commute and eats after the kids and I) would know what was for dinner. I taught him how to write the letters as we needed them to write the words and he was engaged by the process.
Classifying by Color
Kids like coloring, so this was better than circling objects that can be that color, but I'm still not impressed here. This was another case where RJ zipped through the assignment because he was largely trying to just be done with it. It was too easy for him. L (at age 2.5) could tell me which objects could be which color. I get that not all children have the same background as mine and I do want them to have the opportunity to catch up to where they need to be for kindergarten, however, I do believe there are better ways to do this. For example, why not let kids be creative? You don't need a fancy worksheet!!! Just give the instructions to draw and color one thing of each color (and include all the colors of the rainbow, not just two primary colors and two blends).
Circles
This is exactly what I see as wrong about our educational system and the awful curriculum systems that we have in our schools. This clearly comes from some uninspired workbook.
Imagine for a moment that you are a 5 year old kid. On what planet would you want to draw 16 circles and 3 spirals for no apparent reason?? And why wouldn't you rush through it just to be done? Yeah, RJ's circles aren't perfect here; he crossed or missed the lines, but this activity was so bad, that I didn't have the heart to make him erase and re do it either. We can practice circles in a more developmentally appropriate way on our own. I want to keep this critique civil and informative, but this sheet just incites a bit of a rant in me, so I will shout a little and then get back to the critique: BORING BORING BORING BORING!!!!!!!
Sure, curriculum companies and teachers and district administrators, I understand that you want my kid to have good fine motor control and be able to draw shapes and letters and numbers with accuracy. I agree, these skills are important. However, giving sheets like this ad nauseum is one way to ensure that a child who isn't strong on fine motor control will never want to practice his/her skills.
To kindergarten teachers everywhere, I realize that not all of this is your fault. Your districts mandate your use of various curriculums and the pacing of such curriculum. You're sort of stuck. However, last I checked, there was no one telling you that you needed to give out this worksheet. Yes, you need to get my kid to make decent circles, ideally starting and stopping at the correct points and staying within the boundaries of the lines. However, at the very least, could you please provide the child with some sort of reason for doing this? Can you make it into a game of some sort? One idea I had was to have them pretend that they're making rings for a ring toss game that have to be perfectly round (and concentric) and correctly sized to work well. You could even have them cut them out and try them out using a pencil stuck in play doh as the ring toss target. Practicing by independently drawing objects that require circle shapes would work too. Or, eschew the pencil/paper tasks all together and have them practice making circles with paint on easels or using an unsharpened pencil in salt or sand or mud. Any of these would be better. Looking at the spirals, I thought that even having some sort of labyrinth style maze that they had to go through with their pencil (with some story of why provided) would be more interesting for them than this sort of rote activity.
Number Verses
These are basically just instructions that are said in a sing-songy kind of voice. I like the idea of using music to learn, but having just a worksheet for these is inappropriate. I think this is better used as a teacher reference for a classroom activity where the teacher and children sing the words and practice writing the numbers in sand/salt trays or on mini chalkboards/magna doodles or something. Then again, I don't even think THAT is much better.
My main criticism of all of this is that there is zero context for learning these skills and they're all presented in isolation. Kindergarteners should be learning science and social studies in addition to learning how to write letters and numbers, right? Why can't their writing practice be within the context of a science activity? They could plant seeds and record how tall the seedlings are every day using a ruler. They could measure each other's height, arm span, etc. and record those numbers. They could play grocery store and have to write out the price of things on a "receipt" and add them too! There are so many better ways to incorporate writing practice into meaningful activities. They don't need to be able to practice writing numbers perfectly in a rote setting before they can do interesting things with the skill!
RJ's homework did end on a positive note though. One of the activities in RJ's homework was the Alphabet Card Activities, which was more of a game that involved him manipulating the cards in various ways.
I liked that the activities suggested were on multiple levels, starting with just seeing which letters the child knew (RJ knew them all, except he floundered a little with lowercase q, but he quickly showed after that fact that he knew that one as well) and leading up to identifying vowels and consonants. One thing that I saw as missing from the list was to name things that start with each letter. This could also be used with thematic curriculum as you could name animals starting with each letter, or pick the letters that start each planet or find the letters that start various musical instruments. The possibilities really are endless when you have an engaged child. I also wonder if adding a story could help a non-engaged child to participate. I could see some sort of riddle scavenger hunt for letters around the room being fun. RJ didn't seem to need any additional prompting as he was more than happy to just arrange the letters and match the upper and lower case letters and name things starting with them (actually when he was matching the upper and lower case, he did this all on his own, so we went with it). My only major criticism is the "Alphabet Slap Game" because I really don't see why slapping is AT ALL necessary, but that's just my general stance on non-violence coming through.
I hope you find this critique helpful and that some of you kindergarten teachers out there on the internet can use some of these ideas effectively.
The first page in RJ's homework was the Mary Had a Little Lamb Matching Page.
The first thing that came to my mind as I saw this was, "wow. lame". This wasn't because recognizing similarities and differences aren't important, but rather because it was too easy and lacked any sort of real context to make it interesting. This really lacked any sort of real-world importance. Why did they need to be matched up? Where would we have to do this in real life?
Having a real-world example would not only enable children to use their observation skills to recognize minute differences between objects and match the similarities, but would also teach them something valuable about the world.
This is where I think thematic curriculum would be the most helpful, because themes can provide a context for the so-called academic skills that administrators and teachers alike deem important.
Since in my house, we're studying music right now, I immediately thought about having a worksheet where there were several orchestra instruments (of which there were two pairs with small differences for each instrument). Students would color and cut out the musicians with their instruments and paste them onto another sheet, arranging them into their like pairs and placing them where they belonged in the orchestra seating chart. There are several reasons why I think this activity would be better than this simple lamb matching one. First, coloring and cutting are great fine motor activities that most children inherently enjoy. So in addition to matching, which is the main goal, you're also working on fine motor control, which is necessary for good penmanship. Second, arranging the musicians by their instruments is something that would happen in real life, so it makes sense to do so. And finally, children can learn something more than just matching by learning about orchestras and why the instruments are arranged the way they are.
Next, was the Color Recognition Page.
I actually thought this page was a good one. It was open-ended and allowed the child to be active and search his/her environment, which is very developmentally appropriate. RJ enjoyed this one, too. Also, while the directions said to record RJ's answers for him, I took it upon myself to use the opportunity for writing practice as well, since taking notes on one's observations is a real-life science skill. I did write some of the longer words since the lines weren't really meant for a developmentally appropriate writing size, but the line size would honestly be my only criticism, and learning to write to the size of the line is something children will eventually have to do in their lives anyway.I like when writing practice involves writing relevant words rather than focusing on one letter at a time (which his worksheets from school essentially are). Kids want to communicate, but that's difficult to do when they're focusing on only one letter at a time. When RJ wanted to start writing (he was about 3 1/2), it was because he wanted to communicate with his daddy - we started by writing out a menu of what we were eating for dinner so that my husband (who has a late commute and eats after the kids and I) would know what was for dinner. I taught him how to write the letters as we needed them to write the words and he was engaged by the process.
Classifying by Color
Circles
Imagine for a moment that you are a 5 year old kid. On what planet would you want to draw 16 circles and 3 spirals for no apparent reason?? And why wouldn't you rush through it just to be done? Yeah, RJ's circles aren't perfect here; he crossed or missed the lines, but this activity was so bad, that I didn't have the heart to make him erase and re do it either. We can practice circles in a more developmentally appropriate way on our own. I want to keep this critique civil and informative, but this sheet just incites a bit of a rant in me, so I will shout a little and then get back to the critique: BORING BORING BORING BORING!!!!!!!
Sure, curriculum companies and teachers and district administrators, I understand that you want my kid to have good fine motor control and be able to draw shapes and letters and numbers with accuracy. I agree, these skills are important. However, giving sheets like this ad nauseum is one way to ensure that a child who isn't strong on fine motor control will never want to practice his/her skills.
To kindergarten teachers everywhere, I realize that not all of this is your fault. Your districts mandate your use of various curriculums and the pacing of such curriculum. You're sort of stuck. However, last I checked, there was no one telling you that you needed to give out this worksheet. Yes, you need to get my kid to make decent circles, ideally starting and stopping at the correct points and staying within the boundaries of the lines. However, at the very least, could you please provide the child with some sort of reason for doing this? Can you make it into a game of some sort? One idea I had was to have them pretend that they're making rings for a ring toss game that have to be perfectly round (and concentric) and correctly sized to work well. You could even have them cut them out and try them out using a pencil stuck in play doh as the ring toss target. Practicing by independently drawing objects that require circle shapes would work too. Or, eschew the pencil/paper tasks all together and have them practice making circles with paint on easels or using an unsharpened pencil in salt or sand or mud. Any of these would be better. Looking at the spirals, I thought that even having some sort of labyrinth style maze that they had to go through with their pencil (with some story of why provided) would be more interesting for them than this sort of rote activity.
Number Verses
My main criticism of all of this is that there is zero context for learning these skills and they're all presented in isolation. Kindergarteners should be learning science and social studies in addition to learning how to write letters and numbers, right? Why can't their writing practice be within the context of a science activity? They could plant seeds and record how tall the seedlings are every day using a ruler. They could measure each other's height, arm span, etc. and record those numbers. They could play grocery store and have to write out the price of things on a "receipt" and add them too! There are so many better ways to incorporate writing practice into meaningful activities. They don't need to be able to practice writing numbers perfectly in a rote setting before they can do interesting things with the skill!
I liked that the activities suggested were on multiple levels, starting with just seeing which letters the child knew (RJ knew them all, except he floundered a little with lowercase q, but he quickly showed after that fact that he knew that one as well) and leading up to identifying vowels and consonants. One thing that I saw as missing from the list was to name things that start with each letter. This could also be used with thematic curriculum as you could name animals starting with each letter, or pick the letters that start each planet or find the letters that start various musical instruments. The possibilities really are endless when you have an engaged child. I also wonder if adding a story could help a non-engaged child to participate. I could see some sort of riddle scavenger hunt for letters around the room being fun. RJ didn't seem to need any additional prompting as he was more than happy to just arrange the letters and match the upper and lower case letters and name things starting with them (actually when he was matching the upper and lower case, he did this all on his own, so we went with it). My only major criticism is the "Alphabet Slap Game" because I really don't see why slapping is AT ALL necessary, but that's just my general stance on non-violence coming through.
I hope you find this critique helpful and that some of you kindergarten teachers out there on the internet can use some of these ideas effectively.
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