5 yr old not making academic progress

[cameransmommy]

There is very little reading going on in my DDs 3-6 public M classroom. This is her first year in M and this would be her K year. I guess she is the only child in the class that can read (she is about a mid first grade level) and write well. They are still working on numbers 1 - 10, though i think she is still learning to use the M materials (??), so that is why she is unable to move beyond that point with math.

It just seems like she is being held back and there is no way for her to access any work that is challenging to her. It appears that they are making her work through all of the pre-k type easier materials before she is even allowed to do anything challenging to her. This is not motivating to her, so she dilly dallies and doesn't work as quickly as she could just to just plow through the boring stuff to get to the "meat and potatoes" type work that might be more interesting to her.

Anyway, i have my first parent teacher conference next week. I emailed the teacher my concerns and asked if we could spend our 15 mins (!!!) together to come up with a plan to help my DD make some academic progress. I am not sure what sort of accommodations i can expect or what sort of plan we could come up with.

I chose Montessori instead of putting her in the full time gifted K that she qualified for because i knew that M is individual and i didn't like the idea of the academic hothouse of the GATE program. Now i am worried she is stagnating.

If you have had a similar experience as a parent or teacher, i would love to hear your thoughts and ideas.

[WiscMama]

Article that may help

Hi, cameransmommy -

I came across this excellent article recently (written by Lakshmi Krapalani, the woman who worked directly with Maria Montessori to get Montessori ed. established in India). It's from a publication that is focused on public Montessori education, and it talks about the whole issue of teachers focusing too much on the sequence of the materials and not letting the children work with a material unless they have had a formal lesson on it. Perhaps you could share it with the teacher...?

http://www.jola-montessori.com/psm/8...kripalani.html

Another similar article by Ms. Krapalani in which gives a specific example of a situation in which she worked with a child and got him hooked up with work that was at the right level:

http://www.jola-montessori.com/psm/85/articles/kripalani.html

Hope this helps!

[cameransmommy]

Thanks for the great articles, WiscMama! I printed them out and will bring them to my conference as back up!
I am so afraid of making an enemy of the teacher by questioning her methods. I really need to stay with this school until 6th grade. Luckily, she will only have this teacher for one yr. It just makes me sad. She seems to be learning that school is sort of boring and has told me more than once that she doesn't need to read because "there is no reading at school". This is the teachers 2nd yr teaching and the 2nd year of her Montessori training. She is super sweet, but is inexperienced and it shows. :-(

[carmel23]

Those are great articles!

I think it is odd to have a 1-3rd grade class with no books? My son's class has tons of books. And the children should be free to choose what they want to work on, as long as they aren't picking only one work forever.

Can she bring books from home?

Good luck with the p-t conference.

[MattBronsil]

It sounds normal for someone starting in the Kindergarten year.

[cameransmommy]

Originally Posted by MattBronsil

It sounds normal for someone starting in the Kindergarten year.

Thanks for chiming in, Matt! I would love to hear if you think i should be advocating for her to skip lessons or be pushed forward in her reading. The teacher emailed me back and said "Oh, well the nice thing about Montessori is that she can move through at her pace". Which IS the nice thing about Montessori. But, she just seems unchallenged and not motivated, so her "pace" is like a snail because she is learning letter sounds in her lessons while she is reading chapter books at home. I am just not sure if this is OK for her.

[Aeress]

Just a thought, maybe since it has been just about a month of school the teacher is still figuring who is doing what and what their needs are(?).

[Lisa1970]

I sent one of my children to private kindergarten. They assured me it would be individualized and fit to him. Instead, he got there and they were all working on counting and learning their letters. This was a very frustrating year considering that my son was already reading well and adding and subtracting 3 digit numbers in his head. I wanted to withdraw him, but half the years tuition was in a fee paid up front. It was just an impossible year. I wish I had just either homeschooled him that year, or public schooled. Honestly, he would have been way better off in public school.

[Lisa1970]

I do want to add that I agree with the person who said this is kindergarten stuff. Most kids, even with high pressured preschools, are not beyond counting and learning letters. The only goals for a typical kinder would be counting, maybe very low addition (1+1, 2+2) by the end of the year. It also includes learning letters and then the very basic sounds. Anything beyond that would be considered higher level stuff. So what she is doing sounds like very normal kinder stuff. Can you ask to have her moved to the next higher class?

[SomedayMom]

It took a few weeks into this year for the teachers in DS1 class to evaluate reading levels and they are all at their level now. Also, some kids in his class who read very early learned by sight reading but did not actually have phonics skills and they did need to get back and learn some of those building blocks even though their sight reading skills were high. They still sometimes had a hard time figuring out new words. I would definitely talk with the teachers about her reading skills.

I had a similar issue last year with DS1 and math. He started Montessori at 4.5. He is very talented with math, but with Montessori there are very important concepts that kids learn along the way that he needed to backtrack and get before moving forward. He went through them quickly, but I remember him being a little frustrated doing the teens board when he could already do addition/subtraction. However, he really didn't have that mental picture of what the quantity of a teen really looked like that makes Montessori math so completely amazing. In the end, it was really beneficial that he backtracked a bit and picked up those details b/c his math skills really took off.

In public Montessori though (and maybe this is a completely off base bias?) I would want to watch closely how well they really follow Montessori. They are still going to be stuck adhering to NCLB and public school testing and maybe the compromises they have to make do not give the same experience you were expecting.

[MattBronsil]

Originally Posted by cameransmommy

Thanks for chiming in, Matt! I would love to hear if you think i should be advocating for her to skip lessons or be pushed forward in her reading. The teacher emailed me back and said "Oh, well the nice thing about Montessori is that she can move through at her pace". Which IS the nice thing about Montessori. But, she just seems unchallenged and not motivated, so her "pace" is like a snail because she is learning letter sounds in her lessons while she is reading chapter books at home. I am just not sure if this is OK for her.

The hard part is you're also working with a situation where the child hasn't seemed to feel she's gotten everything from the materials yet that she is working with. It'll take time and it's normal to be at this point when entering the new classroom.

She could be shown stuff, but she still might be craving that sensory experience with the letter sounds.

Not saying that's it either way...just from my experience of those that started late in the program. Usually took most of the year before they moved on.

[cameransmommy]

Thank you, everyone, for your thoughtful responses! I meet with the teacher tomorrow and i plan on bringing those articles i printed and some samples of DDs work. I will let her know what DD said to me about "baby work" and then her and i can decide what she will do. It IS a public Montessori, so they do have to adhere to NCLB and other mandates. Which means they do have sort of forced reading groups. I think a good comprimise may be to make sure she is in a reading group on her level (they use Fontess and Pinell for leveled reading assesment, she is at least an "E"), but let the lessons go on as normal. If she is feeling challenged and "understood" with at least her reading, she may be more willing to work on the lessons that may "bore" her.

She is unique in that she never went to an academic school before K. She did go 3 1/2 days to a creative arts school based loosely on Bev Bos and a Sudbury model. So, she is a very independent learner, but the big adjustment for her is in being told "what to learn". Which is why i felt she would thrive in Montessori rather than a gifted program.

I guess the most important thing right now is that she enjoys going to school and likes her teacher. So, that is setting up the foundation for having a good attitude about schooling in general.

[AllyRae]

The big problem is that Montessori is a 3 year cycle. They learn the basic work during the 3 and 4 year old part of the cycle so that by the time they are in the 5's (kindy), they are using the more advanced work. The basic work builds up to the more advanced stuff. All of the sensorial work, through a series of lessons and extensions, leads up to reading and writing. So, unfortunately, to learn how to do the more advanced stuff, she has to go all the way backwards and learn the things she should have learned the first year of the cycle (it's why a lot of Montessori schools won't take a new student in the 3rd year of the 3 year cycle). They can't have a child who has never seen the pink tower before come in as a kindy student and misuse the pink tower for example--not only does that lead to the younger kids learning from your daughter how to misuse the tower, but it doesn't help your daughter progress in the series.

Not only that, but the first 6 weeks of the school year in most Montessori classrooms is a time of adjustment, low academic expectations, and learning the basic work and rhythm. Generally, the more academic stuff is introduced closer to November, when the children are all in a good rhythm.