How do you feel about "redshirting"

[Pandora II]

I've been asking around for details on some of the UK forums that have lots of primary teachers on them as if she is going to read I would at least like her to do in a way that isn't going to go contrary to the way the schools will teach.

I'm pretty sure that back in the 1970s I learnt by whole word recognition and 'look and say' whereas nowadays it's all about synthetic phonics.

For the letter v sound thing, it is rather annoying that they all learn the ABC song which has the names not the sounds.

The way I have explained this is: A dog is called a dog but he says woof, so an A (ay) is called an A but it says 'ah'...

This is great! I like it!

I bet you could make a mint if you wrote a catchy tune that went through all the letter *sounds* instead of the names. It would be long, but I'm just sayin' . . . there's probably a lot of money to be made, there.

I'm a reading specialist, so things like this interest me. I'm going to adopt your dog line, Pandora. Thank you!

ETA: It sounds like you learned to read during the whole language era. We're definitely in the middle of a mixed approach in my corner of the U.S. right now. The pendulum will swing back to both extremes once again. It always does.

Feel free to adopt the dog!

One of my daughter's favourite books is 'The GashlyCrumb Tinies' - it's rather macbre but she thinks 'X is for Xerxes, devoured by mice is brilliant'. If you haven't come across it, it's an alphabet of children coming to unfortunate ends - ideal for learning the alphabet and the dangers of things like fire, railways, lakes, mice, boredom.... I highly recommend it!

What does a 'reading specialist' do? I haven't come across one of them before!

I turn 40 this year so definitely back in the whole language era. From what I can work out it seems that bright children who find learning to read easy will probably learn whatever method they use, but children who struggle will do better using phonics and then decoding words. Hence better that all do phonics.

I have made a promise that I will not be a complete PITA and insist that DD learns to do things the way I did them - which would be my natural position - so I'm looking into this in a lot of detail.

I'm sure the pendulum will swing again - I just have to get one kid reading who a) wants to and b) looks like it isn't going to be a great struggle and even then I personally don't need to do it at all - I can leave it all to the school (if I wasn't such a total control freak I might manage that...)

I pity the poor teachers who have to teach hundreds of all abilities with whatever the latest fashion is... ugh!

 

[Pandora II]

About letter sounds...

I have a friend who teaches special ed. I teach as well, but I'm in a regular ed. classroom. My friend recently told her assistants that when they work with the kindergartners, they are not to emphasize the -uh at the end of the sound. For example, the sound for b is NOT "buh." It's clipped at the end. When I taught first grade, it annoyed me to no end to hear my kids say t as "tuh," k (and hard c) as "kuh," and so on. When they began to read words (well, those who couldn't already read), they read cat as "kuh-a [short a]-t" and then they had no idea what they were trying to read (if they weren't looking at the pictures, that is).

Gosh, that was hard to explain in typed form!

Okay, am confused. If you don't say 'kuh' for hard c, what do you say? Or is it that people say 'kuuuuuhhhhh' rather than 'K-uh'?

 

[partgypsy]

Weird if anything it seems the parents in our elementary school want to get their kids in earlier, not later. I was the same, where I suggested my daughter start earlier, but wasn't given the choice. My oldest has a December birthday but missed the cut off. Sure enough when she's in kindergarten she tests a year ahead (or more). She was upset when she found out she had to wait a year because she couldn't start when her friend (who had an earlier summer birthday) could.

Then they moved the enrollment date back even earlier (to end of August), so my second born who was born in September missed the cutoff (she will turn 6 the first month of entering Kindergarten). In her case I'm glad that she has the extra year because she still seems so emotionally "young" to me, in fact still doesn't want to go to school!

I guess the thing is, I wish they would be a little more flexible about the dates, rather than making it a very strict cut off.

In my case I was a late September baby and went in early. Didn't hurt me at all academically (in fact sat in on older classes sometimes) and I'm sure I wouldn't have liked it if they kept me back because of a birthdate.

 

[zoebartlett]

Pandora, I'm obviously not Haven but I can answer the reading specialist question (I'm one too). I hope you don't mind me chiming in, Haven!

A reading specialist usually works in schools (or can work privately) and focuses his/her attention on teaching the 5 components of reading: phonemic awareness (hearing and manipulating speech sounds), phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Reading specialists usually work with small groups of students or on a 1:1 situation. A reading specialist may also administer different formal and informal reading assessments and prepare reports for teachers and parents (although in a lot of schools, a school psychologist will do the formal testing and report-writing). Some reading specialists may also work as literacy coaches, working with teachers to provide effective reading instruction to students based on best practices.

 

[zoebartlett]

About letter sounds...

I have a friend who teaches special ed. I teach as well, but I'm in a regular ed. classroom. My friend recently told her assistants that when they work with the kindergartners, they are not to emphasize the -uh at the end of the sound. For example, the sound for b is NOT "buh." It's clipped at the end. When I taught first grade, it annoyed me to no end to hear my kids say t as "tuh," k (and hard c) as "kuh," and so on. When they began to read words (well, those who couldn't already read), they read cat as "kuh-a [short a]-t" and then they had no idea what they were trying to read (if they weren't looking at the pictures, that is).

Gosh, that was hard to explain in typed form!

Okay, am confused. If you don't say 'kuh' for hard c, what do you say? Or is it that people say 'kuuuuuhhhhh' rather than 'K-uh'?

Er, I'm sorry. You may be saying it totally right but it's hard to write out. The -uh isn't emphasized so much. If you say "cut" but leave off the t sound, it sounds like cUH, right? A lot of times people teach the sounds with such a strong emphasis on the UH.

Haven! Help!

 

[amc80]

About letter sounds...

I have a friend who teaches special ed. I teach as well, but I'm in a regular ed. classroom. My friend recently told her assistants that when they work with the kindergartners, they are not to emphasize the -uh at the end of the sound. For example, the sound for b is NOT "buh." It's clipped at the end. When I taught first grade, it annoyed me to no end to hear my kids say t as "tuh," k (and hard c) as "kuh," and so on. When they began to read words (well, those who couldn't already read), they read cat as "kuh-a [short a]-t" and then they had no idea what they were trying to read (if they weren't looking at the pictures, that is).

Gosh, that was hard to explain in typed form!

Okay, am confused. If you don't say 'kuh' for hard c, what do you say? Or is it that people say 'kuuuuuhhhhh' rather than 'K-uh'?

Er, I'm sorry. You may be saying it totally right but it's hard to write out. The -uh isn't emphasized so much. If you say "cut" but leave off the t sound, it sounds like cUH, right? A lot of times people teach the sounds with such a strong emphasis on the UH.

Haven! Help!

Is it like saying k-uh (like cut without the t) versus saying ick without the i?

 

[zoebartlett]

About letter sounds...

I have a friend who teaches special ed. I teach as well, but I'm in a regular ed. classroom. My friend recently told her assistants that when they work with the kindergartners, they are not to emphasize the -uh at the end of the sound. For example, the sound for b is NOT "buh." It's clipped at the end. When I taught first grade, it annoyed me to no end to hear my kids say t as "tuh," k (and hard c) as "kuh," and so on. When they began to read words (well, those who couldn't already read), they read cat as "kuh-a [short a]-t" and then they had no idea what they were trying to read (if they weren't looking at the pictures, that is).

Gosh, that was hard to explain in typed form!

Okay, am confused. If you don't say 'kuh' for hard c, what do you say? Or is it that people say 'kuuuuuhhhhh' rather than 'K-uh'?

Er, I'm sorry. You may be saying it totally right but it's hard to write out. The -uh isn't emphasized so much. If you say "cut" but leave off the t sound, it sounds like cUH, right? A lot of times people teach the sounds with such a strong emphasis on the UH.

Haven! Help!

Is it like saying k-uh (like cut without the t) versus saying ick without the i?

Why, yes it is! That's a better way to say it than what I had written. Sorry to be unclear!

 

[Haven]

I'm laughing over the letter sounds discussion! It IS a difficult thing to describe in words, since we're talking about sounds.

Zoe is totally correct. If children think /b/ sounds like "buh" they are going to struggle with sounding out words. "bat" becomes "buh-at" or "buh-a-tuh".

I like your description, amc--spot on!

Pandora--I was going to reply and say that you know TWO reading specialists, and then I saw that Zoe chimed in! Zoe and I cover both ends of the RS spectrum, because I work with adults and Zoe works with children.

There are a lot of things to do here in the US as a reading specialist. I teach college students who place below college level on our entrance exams in reading and writing. (I also teach plain old comp and lit courses, but those aren't nearly as fun.) When I taught high school I divided my time between teaching English classes, running a reading lab that addressed student needs in individual and small-groups, and literacy coaching.

Literacy coaching was a lot of fun. It entailed partnering up with teachers and helping them work through widespread literacy-related issues they see in their classrooms. We met regularly, I observed their classes, and we collaborated to develop ways to support literacy while still following the class curriculum.

I also teach pre-service and in-service teachers who want to earn their initial teaching certificate, or their reading specialist certificate. In my state, reading specialists hold master's degrees in reading and literacy, and have passed a series of state exams. They also must have taught FT for at least two consecutive years in the K-12 system on an initial teaching certificate in another area.

Basically, reading specialists study a program that integrates linguistics, pedagogy, and cognitive theory to help us address our future students' needs.

Sorry, that turned out to be a very long response. I love my job, can you tell?

 

[Pandora II]

Perhaps we should start a 'Starting Reading' thread? I would think a lot of us on this part of PS will have DCs starting school/kindergarten/whatever you call it in x country, and given that 90%+ of PS is probably made up of Type A control freaks I can't see any of us not taking a very active interest in what our kids are up to!

Since we have TWO captive reading specialists right here, can we get the low-down on what you think works/doesn't work. Pitfalls to avoid etc

Let me know if you are both interested and I'll start up a thread!

The K-uh as in cut makes lots of sense.

I can imagine that some of the sounds you guys use may be different from what we would have in the UK?

With the 'buh' sound, what do you use instead?

 

[Haven]

Pandora--Say the word "brag" and then try to isolate the /b/ sound. It helps to keep your lips nearly closed, because when you open them that's when a vowel sound will come out. The br blend makes it a bit easier to isolate the /b/ because you won't be tempted to open your mouth immediately after saying it.

I don't know if I have the energy at this point in the term to contribute a whole lot to a big reading thread, but Zoe will be the better one to consult anyway, if we're talking about emergent readers. While I know how to teach emergent readers, I don't do it on a regular basis. (But if anyone has any older children who are struggling with reading, I'm your gal!)

I think you should start the thread. If anything, it would probably become a fabulous resource based on everyone's experiences of what is and isn't working.

One important thing to remember, though, is that kids aren't going to start reading until they are ready. I didn't read until age 6, and I went from being unable to even work with onsets and rimes to reading every single thing I saw. It was a breakthrough sort of moment, and I remember the exact moment. (I was sitting in the back seat of my parents' car, we were driving down Dempster, and I had a huge Kaufman's Deli tray on my lap. All of a sudden, I could read the store signs, the trucks, everything. It was amazing. I felt like I was in an alternate universe.)

Anyway, modeling good reading behavior and habits is wonderful. Essential, even. But trying to force reading before your child is ready can have a long-term negative effect. (NOT that any PSers would do this, I just have to say it.)

 

[PilsnPinkysMom]

When there's no real reason for holding a child back (ie: some sort of delay maturity-wise, learning-wise, etc) then this practice is pointless at best, detrimental, at worst. Pointless because there's no REAL benefit to starting college at age 19 (or kindergarten at 6). Detrimental because, in some cases, a parent's silly preference is preventing a child from spending time with his or her intellectual peers. Maybe it makes no difference in high school- kids mingle with all different ages and grades- but then why bother?

My husband started kindergarten late because he did not seem mature enough. His birthday is in July and he graduated JUST before turning 19. My sister shares a birthday with him, and they graduated in the same year, but she's a full year younger. I was the baby of my class- I had a late September birthday, graduated high school at 17, and was 17 for my first full month of college.

We're all fine, functioning adults, but I tend to like my situation the best I enjoyed graduating college a bit younger than my classmates- I felt I had some extra flex time to figure out what I wanted to do. I spent some time in law school and then a graduate education program, but still entered the work force by 24 with a post-secondary and graduate education under my belt. It felt like it took forever to turn 16, and then 21, but I was able to hitch plenty of rides with my driving pals and my underage status didn't keep me from imbibing. (Though I realize these things do not matter much to parents- only the child! )

 

[Dreamer_D]

I have two friends with sons born on December 25 and December 30. The older boy was very shy and had some social trouble in school. My friend agonized over whether to start him a year later, and she did not. Now, 8 months into the year, she regrets it At age 5, a year is a big age difference, and he is a "young" 5 and very shy. He would have benefitted, likely all the way through puberty, from being with slightly younger kids think.

I would have held my sons back if they were born in the last few weeks of December and/ or were born a month earlier and were socially immature.

I am strangely cynical about school for someone who values intelligence so much I think early school is all about socialization, and learning norms. So those factors would influence my decision. I don't put much stock in "enriched environments" and trying to teach your kids too much too soon. Genius is born not bred

 

[zoebartlett]

A reading thread would be interesting, Pandora. I don't know how much time I'll have to contribute, as it's almost report card time here, but I can do my best to chime in.

Haven, I have a friend who was a literacy coach and she loved it. (She's a SAHM now but she's looking to go back to the classroom.) She traveled to a few schools in her district and led workshops for teachers. They sounded interesting, as did my friend's job, but that type of work would terrify me. I'm more of a behind the scenes person, and public speaking is not my thing. I can work with kids all day and I love it, but put me in a room full of teachers, looking at me to impart wisdom, and I have a panic attack.

Sorry to veer so off-topic from the original red-shirting issue! It's definitely an interesting subject.

 

[LAJennifer]

I went from being unable to even work with onsets and rimes to reading every single thing I saw. It was a breakthrough sort of moment, and I remember the exact moment. (I was sitting in the back seat of my parents' car, we were driving down Dempster, and I had a huge Kaufman's Deli tray on my lap. All of a sudden, I could read the store signs, the trucks, everything. It was amazing. I felt like I was in an alternate universe.)

Ha! You had a "matrix" moment.

 

[mayachel]

The competitive public schools in NYC weight testing by age category in a 3 month range (I think). Having a Dec. baby, we still worry about her being behind her peers. We've seen both sides of the coin in various friends. Two friends with the same early Dec. birthday, one who was pushed ahead a year and did fine, one who was advised to hold back in kindergarten, but parents decided to push her ahead. To this day, we talk about how immature she came across straight through college. She also really struggled to keep up with the school work.

Meanwhile, my husband was pushed ahead a year at some point as an early Jan. baby. He was always very book smart, top of the class. Academically, he flourished being pushed ahead, but in retrospect, says he realizes he was pretty socially inept in a way that a year would have made a difference for him to figure some things out. The double whammy of being both in all advanced nerdy type classes, AND being a year younger than everyone, he feels lucky to have survived socially and saw at his (Ivy) college the people who didn't. He feels strongly that had her daughter been a boy, he'd be inclined to hold him back with a Dec birth date.

Personally, where I am concerned is the chain response in areas where this is more popular. If my 4 year old is ready to start K, I don't particularly think a class range of 4-6 at the START of the year makes for a happy classroom.

 

[brightlight]

Its been my experience that the kids who were older in school often got themselves into some trouble due to boredom.

I think as parents, it is your responsibility to foster an enriching, stimulating environment for your children.

Aubrey was born in September, and I'm not sure yet what we will do. I doubt we will be putting her in school at age 4 so she is really the youngest, but hope developmentally she is able to go to school at 5 and turn 6 right away. I know already she probably will have learning disabilities due to her genetic syndrome, and really hope the other kids don't make fun of her or assume she is a "dunce" or stupidbc she happens to be older if that is what occurs.

I would never hold her back intentionally. Id rather start her in school younger so she has a head start. By 2-3rd grade, kids end up being pretty "even" anyways, and some kids will rise to the tope whether they are born in September and the oldest or August and the youngest.

I don't know if anyone's already mentioned this (since I haven't read the whole thread), but I looked up kindergarten entrance requirements a couple years ago when I first started trying to get pregnant. Most of the states have changed the laws so that kids are 5-6 in kindergarten. The majority of the states require kids turn 5 by varying dates in September, a little over 10 states require they turn 5 by mid October, and around 8 states (including NY and CA) require kids to turn 5 by December.

 

[Pandora II]

Research in the UK showed that being an August birthday was a disadvantage till the age of around 16. August 31st is the universal cut-off date in the state sector here.

Why are the cut-offs so different in the USA? Do you have different academic years from us? School starts on approx September 5th each year so the cut-off is for then.

 

[brightlight]

I think US schools start around then too. If I remember correctly, is it a week before Labor Day? CA was considering starting school earlier and ending earlier because of the weather.

 

[amc80]

Research in the UK showed that being an August birthday was a disadvantage till the age of around 16. August 31st is the universal cut-off date in the state sector here.

Why are the cut-offs so different in the USA? Do you have different academic years from us? School starts on approx September 5th each year so the cut-off is for then.

Because we have 50 states, all of which make their own rules I would say most schools start in late August and end in early June. Some schools are moving to follow a university semester schedule, which means starting in early August to finish up the semester before Christmas break, and then having the second semester go from January to May.

 

[diamondseeker2006]

I agree with Missy that the best age to start school totally depends on the child.

I do believe that we teach more reading skills in kindergarten than we did 20 years ago (since I was teaching then, too!). It seems like we teach about half of the first grade curriculum in K now. Some children just do not have the readiness skills especially if they didn't have home instruction or pre-school. I taught in a high poverty school and those children came in behind and usually left kindergarten behind because they simply were not all ready for the academic curriculum in that grade. Our state has some 4 year old programs that teach what used to be taught in kindergarten. But not all kids who need it can access it.

I am another with a Sept. birthday who graduated from HS a year early and spent my whole first year of college 17 years old and graduated at 20. But that does not mean that I think all kids are suited to do that. I'd rather see a child with a late birthday start a year late than start and not be ready to learn to read.

 

[KimberlyH]

I think there are legitimate reasons to hold children back, but the need is not nearly as prevelant as the occurance. Or, what Haven said.