busy work with no real intellectual challenge or moving forward with measurable academic learning gains.
Thank you for this, indigo. I am indeed using differentiation as a shorthand,but the idea of measurable academic learning gains and benchmarks is the language I need.
I know we're only in Kindergarten, but I'm trying to find a way to express to the teacher during parent-teacher conferences that I'm still worried about what my daughter is or is not learning in K. I'm a huge believer in play-based classrooms (esp because of social skills, etc), but we've already done a year at the same school of PK where she did get that great introduction to how school works. I didn't sweat it during PK, but I'm watching her in K and thinking..man, something's off. The idea of benchmarks and goals is what it is.
Case in point: I volunteered today during their language arts unit. They do centers, where there are definitely *opportunities* for differentiated learning. Some of the kids chose to make little books where they drew a picture and wrote about their pictures. A lot of those kids couldn't even write their letters correctly but they were working so hard to create something and I could see their little brains turning and I could see them growing.
DD5, being the creative one, chose the play-doh station, as she does consistently. Now, the play-doh station hits K benchmarks: they have to make letters with the play-doh, which is a great boon to the kids who still don't have familiarity with the letter shapes. But DD knows her letters. She's known them since she was 18 months old. There was *value* in what she was doing -- creative, social, expressive -- but there was no language arts value. Now, part of my job was to go around to the different stations and make sure the kids stayed on task. So at the whiteboards, they shouldn't just be drawing; they needed to be writing. So although there is social, creative, expressive value to drawing, they needed to actively be engaged in something that had language arts value.
Well, for DD, even though she was staying on task, it doesn't mean anything. There is no educational boon to her making letters with play-doh. It hit Kindergarten benchmarks, but not DD's benchmarks, whatever they are. The opportunity to differentiate was there -- she could have been working on writing a book (and writing/spelling is something she could use a lot of work on). There she could have challenged herself, but she's only 5, and she's not the same as some of the PG kids on here. She thinks like a 5 year old, so play-doh it was.
So what do I do there? How do I explain to the teacher, without sounding like a pushy mom, that I'm disappointed that although the opportunity is there, the strong encouragement for her to try harder isn't there? How do you single a kid out in a play-based classroom and say, "no, this station isn't for you. You need to work on xyz skills instead"? You really can't. I can, when I'm volunteering there, to steer her in that direction,but the parent volunteers the other days of the week aren't going to do that.
And that's language arts, where I think she's not really that ahead. What about math? At the most, the classroom could have her add and subtract dice (she of course, instead chooses to do the magnatiles..which again, yes, there is a creative and expressive value, but the kid isn't learning math that way). But even if she did the dice, my DD who knows basic multiplication wouldn't be challenging herself. How the heck do you do that in K?
I think sadly the answer is to let it go, and wait until it becomes an issue in a more traditional classroom. But I don't like that because that's addressing a problem once you have one, not being proactive. I get the sense that most of you, even with PG kids, just "let it go" during K. Is that what I have to do (since she is, obviously, happy)? She's happy, but she's not in a growth mindset, and I hate that.
