reading woes

I am becoming very frustrated with the way schools teach reading. I honestly don't see any logical progression to their method other than the font size getting smaller to accommodate more words. I think the problem is partly that they're trying to teach kids to read before most of them are developmentally ready. At the beginning of the year Kevin was getting books with text like, "The cow. The horse. The pig. The sheep. The farm." They didn't decode the words--they just used the pictures to know what it said. As the year has progressed, they have learned a lot of sight words and they are also learning endings like -ing and -ed and being trained to see sight words with those endings added, and they largely use the pictures and first letters of the words to guess what the rest says. I have not seen very much phonetic reading. So now Kevin has gotten into the habit of thinking that you have to know the word before you can read it, and getting him to sound out words is like pulling teeth. It's frustrating because I spent a lot of time and energy teaching him how to do that last summer and it feels like they've undone all of that work.

It's also hard because the books the kids are given to read are terrible. First of all, they are not interesting. What five-year-old would want to read a book that says, "The train goes up the hill. The train goes down the hill. The train goes around the bend. Oops!" (The pictures show some toddlers playing with a toy train.) Second, they throw in words that the kids have no resources to read. And when I look at the easy reader books at the library I find the same problem. I spent fifteen minutes going through them yesterday and wanted to cry. How are these kids going to be motivated to read when we give them stupid books to read? I realize it's difficult when they don't know that many words yet, but can we at least try to make them entertaining? I don't think the writers of these books have spent any time with five-year-olds.

I still try to pull out Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons sometimes, but Kevin won't have anything to do with it. At this point we're trying to find books that are interesting to him and helping him with the hard words. There are several Step Into Reading books about superheroes and movies that are interesting to him. If the words are phonetic I make him sound them out and if they're weird words I give him time to try to figure them out and then just tell him if he doesn't. One of the books he read this week had the word pigeon in it. This was supposed to be a Level 1 book. I don't get it.

It feels like they're trying to move all the curricula back one grade. I really don't see what the rush is. There is still so much mental and emotional development going on in the early grades of elementary school. I really don't see any benefit to expecting all kindergarteners to be able to read and do addition and subtraction. Let them play. I think so many people don't realize that playing is a physical need for children. It's not just that it's pleasant or fun for them. They need to be running, jumping, and swinging, especially kids like Kevin who struggle with regulating their senses.

And if you're going to suggest homeschooling, believe me, I've thought about it. Again and again. I seriously considered it before enrolling Kevin in public school, but when I prayed about it the answer was clear that he needed to be at a public school, and he needed to go this year. I do feel that he has gotten a lot of benefits from school. Other than the way they teach reading I've actually been very happy with what he's learning in school. He loves having a routine, and I just can't give him that kind of routine at home right now. Just having the routine has really helped him to regulate himself, and his behavior has improved dramatically since he started school. He's gone from refusing to pick up a crayon to writing all of his letters and numbers and spelling phonetically. Oh, and for the record, I don't blame the teacher. The state has rigid requirements for kindergarten students to be reading at Level D by the end of the year in order to move on to first grade, and she kind of has to teach the kids using the methods they tell her to use or else the kids won't pass the tests.

The one thing I'm hoping is that Heidi will be more interested in the reading book, because if this is the reality for public schools then I want her to be reading before she goes to school.

I thought writing this blog post would be helpful, but I think I'm just more stressed.