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Friday, April 19, 2013

Some things can't be skipped

I wrote a post last week about Peanut and her brain. And the fact that the school wants to put her in a few advanced classes.  We knew it was coming.

We never expected this.

Peanut brought home a packet of math related work. (Keep in mind, she's at the end of 1st grade.)

Her class is just getting into learning to multiply single digit numbers. Makes sense, right? Math is all about stepping stones and building a foundation, just like building a house. You cannot possibly build a house without laying the foundation first to make it as stable as possible. (You could try but it would fall down eventually. Not to mention, you're not passing any inspections that way.)

So why in the hell is this packet for 3rd grade math?!?

It's got a ton of double digit multiplication in it. Also, word problems using double digit multiplication and time. (They have been doing lots of packet work on practicing telling time on an analog clock. But they aren't ready to use time in word problems.) Not to mention measurements. Um, they haven't started going over most of that as far as we know.

How in the hell can the child possibly know how to do this stuff when they essentially gave her a packet that skips an entire grade?

My husband was trying to help her but then we talked and neither one of us are okay with the way this is being implemented. WE are supposed to teach her? Might as well homeschool her if that's the case.

I saw her face last night. Complete dejection. And when a kid gets that feeling, school starts to suck. (I know. It happened to me quite often.) She's always enjoyed doing homework or any sort of school work. I would hate to see that change.

I don't want Peanut to hate school simply because it makes her feel stupid. She's so smart. And she knows it. But to have this work in front of her that makes her feel less than adequate? No way.

My husband is planning to tell the school that this is not how "advanced work" should work. She can't just skip an entire years worth of math for this. If this is their plan for her, they can just take her off the list now.

Plus, her teacher should know by now that if Peanut learns all of this at home, good luck getting her to pay attention in class while her classmates are still learning it at school. 

I've known people that have skipped an entire grade and usually the summer in between, they take a few classes to get them to where they need to be in order to skip. They don't normally throw you into a new grade without the fundamentals you need to survive.




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