Is REAL learning choosing the “right” answer?

What is real learning?

Do you know what your child is learning in school right now?

Are you seeing growth at home? I hope that you are.

Unfortunately many parents I speak with are either:

a). not plugged in to what is being taught (and how) because their child is making “good enough” grades.

b). struggling to help their child bring up their grades on unfit assignments and tests.

What do I mean by “unfit?” Well, I just mean assignments that the child is not really ready for. Usually it’s something like a passage that’s written at a higher level, a smaller font, and not much spacing. The child is then expected to not only read it and get the gist of the passage, but also deeply analyze it, answering all sorts of multiple choice questions about it. Long story short, they end up bringing it home with a big D or F written at the top. Guess how long it takes them to start hating reading?

While there is nothing wrong with digging deeper into a text, it’s not the best time to do it when the child isn’t even reading the text fluently. And honestly…THAT is what I am seeing right now through the work my tutoring students are doing at school.

You see, I tutor and try my best to help children and their parents navigate through learning at school and bringing grades up. It’s not always easy. I often find myself asking, “Why can’t they just teach them to read—for real?”

Real reading, of course, means they can also adequately understand what they have read. Do we always have to test it with confusing (and sometimes poorly written) multiple choice questions?

Comment below if this is ANYTHING similar to what you’ve experienced with your child in school.

I can tell you that having started teaching in 2002, it was not always like this. Something has changed: Curriculum Standards and Testing. I have to ask, “Are children reading better now than they were back then?”

For those of you with children who are far apart in age, did your older child have a different elementary experience than your younger child?

All in all, I’d have to say that some of the curriculum standards I see presented in elementary school are presented prematurely.

To put it plainly, students would learn these more difficult skills more quickly and much more easily if presented a little later.

There are too many children struggling with simple decoding (sounding out) of words, skipping words or lines of words, substituting words for the wrong words and simply not being fluent.

The basics of reading (phonics, decoding, fluency, etc.) should be covered FIRST. Maybe they are being covered, but they should be MASTERED before a child is expected to do more with the text like answering complicated questions that require going back and rereading already difficult text.

Are teachers feeling pressured to rush these more difficult skills? Probably.

Are there too many standards in elementary school. Absolutely!

Instead of being certain a child is going to make it through elementary school able to read adequately, write in coherent sentences and paragraphs, and compute real world math problems accurately, we are seeing numerous children behind in these very basic skills. Why? Too much time has been lost during the school day teaching skills that USED TO BE TAUGHT IN UPPER GRADES.

If your child is advanced with no learning issues, I suppose that’s not a problem. However, for many children across the country that is not the case. Their parents are still conditioned to think the school will teach their child everything they need to know. Their children come to school not knowing the alphabet, while some select few students are already reading. As a result, it’s a struggle year after year to “catch up.”

We can do better. We can create confident readers and confident learners in general, setting children up to succeed in the basics they need to pursue more difficult skills later.

Talk to a teacher you know personally and ask candidly how it is going for them. Teachers don’t decide what the standards are, but they are working daily with the students. Ask your child’s principal about the reading level of the students in your child’s school. Ask your state representatives what they are doing to help education. Teachers know that the last two years were rough on student learning. Ultimately, you have the most influence with your own child.

Giving your child supervised and involved reading practice at home will make the biggest difference. Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands.

Remember, YOU are your child’s most influential teacher.