Kindergarten may be the new first grade, but kids learn more when teachers expose them to advanced reading and math content, instead of sticking to letters and numbers, concludes a new study. Students don’t benefit from “basic content coverage,” researchers write. “Interestingly, this is true regardless of whether they attended preschool, began kindergarten with more advanced skills, or are from families with low income.”
Mrs. Lipstick, a first-grade teacher, has mixed thoughts on Organized Chaos.
When we “teach up” kids do tend to learn more, often because we are giving more meaning behind the basic, rote concepts we want them to learn. This is why I saw so much progress in my intellectual disabilities class last year. Not knowing another way to teach I simply taught the class the way I would run a general education classroom- and the kids responded by soaking it all in.
I still had to provide small group work and individual, direct instruction that worked on basics like what is a word vs a letter, or even what is a picture vs a letter.
Cramming academics only isn’t the answer, writes Mrs. Lipstick. Children can learn through play.