After a month and realizing school was done for the academic year, I grew concerned with our sons placement next year. http://family.go.com/parenting/article-sk-773400-should-your-child-repeat-kindergarten--t/, Special Offer on Antivirus Software From HowStuffWorks and TotalAV Security, 5 Things to Know on the First Day of Kindergarten, Family.com: Learning Disabilities in Your School Age Child. The skills learned in kindergarten laid a vital foundation for later learning. And in fact, thats what im going to do. Read my reply above. She has learned up to this level in 3 weeks of bringing home A C books that we read together every day. We were provided with an Encore/Spire program and later in the year, a speech therapist that gave him 15m- once a week. Think about it this way: if the teacher was asking out of malice for your child, she certainly wouldnt want to have him as her student again. The major problem Im having is not only did the teacher tell me, my son would be in many encore programs but that they would be advancing the curriculum quickly to catch up. The Age of the Child. He has tested gifted and talented, is reading at the 95% and the teacher and special ed coor wants to push him ahead to 1st, there are no blocks/legos in first. My older son is in kindergarten. Your child only turned 5 in August. He cannot add and subtract past 30 or write any sentence, but he uses words like complicated, magnificent, epic, future, liquid, total, fantasy, responsible, etc. It's no big deal. Is your child ready for kindergarten? She only just turned 5 this month while the other students are all turning 6. Reassure him that you think he'll have a happy and successful year, and work with the teacher to help make that happen. When my son Sammy started kindergarten, I looked forward to our first parent-teacher conference, imagining all the wonderful things the teacher would say about his interest in history and his precocious verbal skills. Children learned math and reading skills in hands on ways, through singing and dancing and through hearing, retelling, and acting out stories, through building with blocks, measuring, pouring, and doing puzzles. Does he play well with other children? Kids who are already the oldest in their grade will be almost two years older than the rest of the class. He is very smart in my opinion, when he was 3 he could recite the pledge of allegiance and pledge to the Bible and much more. My son turned 5 a week before the deadline. He's well above average academically and he gets along great with the kids, but his teacher wants him to repeat kindergarten because he's socially immature. Acting immature can be a sign that kids are struggling and need more support. "Should Your Child Repeat Kindergarten?" Social interactment, discipline, only basic skills as for letters and numbers, and becoming more mature are the only skills needed for first grade. They needed less remediation, and they earned higher grades while enrolled. So because he is not doing well with blending sounds and he only knew 55 words of 100 on a site word test. While lots of schools still have a primarily play-based curriculum and relaxed standards, more and more have implemented a more academic approach to kindergarten, not only to get young children better prepared for first grade, when reading and math really take off, but also in an effort to meet increasingly objective and consequential government standards. Now, we have been pushing to retain him in Kindergarten, and little did we realize this was going to be such a difficult call for us to make. It could be he will find it comforting and safe to stay with his kindergarten teacher for one more year. After administering the scale, Jones interviewed 20 of the families to collect more in . To reading. Published August 17, 2017. You turn to your computer and good old Google, and end up more confused than ever. The recommendation to repeat the year is not a comment on your child's intelligence; it's a comment on your child's maturity. It's about whether he or she is ready to make the jump to first grade. And 4th we have our 5 year son who has ADHD and maybe ODD. In the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a great deal of progress made in converting teachers and schools into providers of developmentally appropriate curriculum, and allowing children to grow at their own paces. We also dont want him to hurt his self esteem. Suddenly, scores on those tests were the only thing that mattered. And the question of benefit vs. detriment can be a more difficult one to answer. In cases like these, retention might be a reasonable solutionafter all, your child probably didn't get sufficient content instruction the . I am also currently looking into private tutor for my Does he like to look at books? Emily you are 100% percent correct! He is on an IEP for behavior and we have seen great improvement. Get in touch! Most of the other students were 6 years old and much more mature than my 5 years old who already had developmental delays (and he was born 6 weeks pre mature, so if he had been born on time, he would not have made the kindergarten cut off anyway). The truth is you knew that it might come to this. She has been a regular education classroom teacher, a consultant teacher/resource teacher, an educational evaluator/diagnostician, and has also taught graduate students at the university level. We missed the registration for pre-k by a week. Children who are behind in these areas late into kindergarten may: In deciding whether your child should repeat kindergarten, it is important to consider whether he has all the skills he needs to go on to first grade. Backing up . Im ver sure I could have helped him read the schools books that they test him with that would have helped him with retention of sight words ( we continue to read ours), I am continuing to go over the sight words and he can put them into sentences and makes up stories as well. This, in my opinion could greatly help my son with almost zero downside. Although this article is well written and touches on plenty of other skills students need to go into first grade, it fails to mention they need to be reading, fluently adding and subtracting, and do more than just hold their pencil correctly. Please help! Some children would benefit from repeating kindergarten. Joined Jan 1, 2006. Repeating Kindergarten. Red, yellow, green, blue with red being the worst. We found we had good results at home. Some kids act younger than their peers because they are younger than most kids in the grade. I emailed his teacher and she responded that he would be advanced to the 1st grade. So in the middle of this chaos comes Covid-19 shutting the school down on March 18th in our state. Ugh. But for kids like Sam, schools and parents may make a more difficult call: to repeat kindergarten. What can cause kids to seem immature. But according to organizations such as NAEYC, the National Education Association, and the National Association of School Psychologists, the best option in most cases is to provide specific support to help the student catch up during the remainder of kindergarten, over the summer, and in first grade. Marzola is an adjunct assistant professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and Hunter College of the City University of New York. ??? She scored green on 2/4, yellow on 1, and red on reading. The most productive way to approach the topic . However, in years past, before standardized testing became so prominent, in the years when teaching to the test was an anathema, children learned to read in first grade. Still, finding out the teacher thinks your child should be "held back" can be jarring and, for many parents, upsetting. My daughter is behind and her teacher wants to retain her. Second do you have any suggestions on how to teach him to blend sounds into words? Not kind of reading but really reading. Here are more reasons kids may seem younger than other kids their age: Hyperactivity: Does the child seem to be "driven by a motor," like the . Andrew mined two large data sets in a way no researcher has done before and concludes that kids who repeat a year between kindergarten and fifth grade are 60 percent less likely to graduate high school than kids with similar backgrounds, and even . As a result, the repeating-kindergarten phenomenon has become relatively commonplace. You can go higher up to members of the local school board and explain how you feel. But these days, kindergarten can seem less like a nurturing bridge to formal learning and more like academic boot camp. Andrew, thank you for taking the time to tell us about your experience, as well as sharing this important study. He has some learning challenges (I think a learning disability), and has been in speech since he was 2. . Sensory issues: Some kids react strongly to sensory information and may get overwhelmed by things like bright lights. Last Wednesday his teacher and principal told us that they wanted him to be held back, SHOCK was how we felt! This used to be Kinder requirements, now they are prek requirements. His pediatrician suggested that I keep him in daycare and wait until the following year to send him to kindergarten, but she did not mention that until his 5 year well visit which was a week before school started. Colors perfect gets along with other kids good, writes his name and letters and much more. She has fine motor and minor speech issues and is receiving OT help. I did not have an early birthday, just was low in a lot of areas and immature for my age. Pre-first is more about social and emotional immaturity than it is about academics, educators say. New research suggests repeating elementary school grades even kindergarten is harmful. They did some testing prior to the start Kids who are much younger than grade-level peers and who have a history of struggling academically can benefit from repeating a grade. As a rule, school professionals strongly avoid this practice of . I believe struggling kids should be promoted, but receive other intervention methods, such as intensified learning, supplementing classroom instruction, and providing one-on-one tutoring with a teacher or cross-age tutoring with an older student . No matter what you decide to do, keep in mind your child is looking to you to set the tone. Im a grandmother raising my grandson with my husband after raising four sons and kindergarten was never like it is now! Sammy, for instance, could discuss ancient Troy but couldn't draw a stick figure. But generally, if the school wants your child to go ahead, thats what will happen. I would like to know what specific research you have found that states that retaining is not beneficial. Staying in kindergarten means not only repeat exposure to the curriculum and so a greater chance of picking it up, but it also means being the oldest -- and most knowledgeable, mature and capable -- student in class, which can increase confidence dramatically, setting the tone for long-term positive self-concept and continued school success. Collect more in, if the school down on March 18th in state... After a month and realizing school was done for the academic year, a therapist. 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