Did anyone have a child who read early and attended public school? I would like to hear your experiences. My just turned three-year-old is reading, and we had been planning to send him to our zoned school for kindergarten. We have two complete school years before he starts, so I am not sure where he will be when he is actually eligible to enroll. Thank you.
I choose to skip kindergarten and keep my son home until grade 1. He is adjusting well. His teacher does not seem to push him as hard as I do, so I tend to do a lot of afterschooling with him. BUT in the end I would rather my child be ahead then behind.
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My mother was a special education teacher so when my brothers and I had trouble in school she was our advocate and pushed to have us tested. We were all labeled “gifted” and my mother demanded that we each have IEP’s (independent education plans). We all had behavior issues to different degrees because we were bored. I got kicked out of the library for using it too much in 2nd grade.
The school system did not make it easier for my mother but because of her own teaching background she pushed to get us the services and advanced education we needed. If any teacher or school system discourages you from teaching your children go on the internet and find out your rights. The law that deals with the rights of handicapped kids also addresses gifted children so your school, by federal law, is required to adjust your child’s schooling to meet their demands.
I would also recommend getting involved in www.nagc.org/ which has an advocacy wing as well as great resources for parents. I hope this helps.
Hi JamisJS,
I would suggest researching your zoned school first. Try to see what kind of accommodations (if any) they make for children who are above their grade level in any subject. You have plenty of time so do as much homework as you can. See if there are any other options besides your zoned school just in case they are unable to meet your child’s needs.
The reason I say this is because my oldest is 9, I taught her to read before she turned 4. This was before LR. I used flash cards and various other methods. She was tested at the beginning of kindergarten and was reading at the second grade level. Unfortunately I live in Chicago and most of the CPS (Chicago Public Schools) schools are horrific. I can’t afford the over $12,000 a year or more that most of the good private schools wanted. There are a few good CPS Magnet schools but the only way to get in is through lottery. I applied my daughter to 20 different schools and she did not win the lottery for any of them. So my only other option was to try a charter school(which is a public school just not controlled by CPS).
The problem we had was that the Charter School she was in was not willing to accommodate her. At the beginning of the year the teacher didn’t even believe she could read. The school year starts at the end of August for Charter Schools here, and by October the teacher expressed concerns that she was unable to read. She said she didn’t know any of the sight words and would be in danger of failing Kindergarten if she didn’t pass the reading test at the end of the year.
When I asked my daughter why she wasn’t reading for her teacher she said it was too boring. So I scheduled a parent teacher conference. I brought my own materials and bribed my daughter with two brand new toys if she fully cooperated and read whatever I or the teacher asked her to.(I know it’s not the best thing to do, but I really needed her teacher to see what she was capable of.)
Long story short, she read everything the teacher put in front of her. Including all of the sight words they had to learn for the whole year(most of which they hadn’t covered yet) and second grade material from another class. The teacher was stunned.
I offered to send some of the material we were working on at home(I was afterschooling at that point) so that when she finished her “easy” classwork(her words not mine), she could work on something more at her level. The teacher said no she had to stick with their curriculum. The teacher just wanted her to read the books that were at kindergarten level when she finished work early. Of course my daughter thought these books were boring as well. And refused to read them.
So then when she finished her work early she would goof around and get in trouble. She started to refuse to read the sight words for her teacher again. Her teacher finally told me to stop reading with her at home because it was making the teachers stuff seem boring. And if I stopped reading with her completely she would be more interested in the books and sight words at school. Yes that’s right I could not even read stories To Her! :ohmy: She said she would fail unless I complied because she would not pass the test at the end of the school year. I told her “But that doesn’t make sense, you know she can read!” She said it didn’t matter if the teacher knew she could read. What mattered was her passing the test. Well of course I got scared and foolishly stopped reading with my daughter. I did not want her to fail kindergarten for reading when I knew she could read at a second grade level.
At the end of the school year I started to teach her again and she actually fell behind. She struggled to read things that were extremely easy for her at the beginning of the school year. Worst of all was that she now Hated Reading or anything to do with learning. I immediately pulled her out of school and started homeschooling her. It took a year and a half just to get her to be okay with learning and tolerate reading.
She is now 9 and still doesn’t love reading the way she used to. I feel really bad and if I could do it over again I would have probably waited until she was in first grade to try school or just kept her at home and homeschooled her.
Hi c4andy20,
Amazing story there. I recently read this article on New York Times and was shocked. The article is titled ‘Reading at Some Private Schools is Delayed’.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/nyregion/15reading.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
My daughter is reading well at 4.5 years of age and is due to start K next year January (we run Jan-Dec here) I am a bit worried about it and we have a meeting with the school this Friday so I will try to ask them what we can expect. We all started school able to read - my sister was advanced a year, they made adjustments for me so I could read other books instead of the readers expected by the school and my brothers didn’t pay much attention at school. My sister’s child started K this year able to read well, but she started in a French school so that she could learn that language - she has complained that it is boring and that she sits around too much. The teachers have allowed her to read in plays that the class produced, but I do not think they challange her much.
At the moment we are keeping our options open and waiting to hear from the school then we must decide whether to enroll her for a trial run and see how things go with the possibility of homeschooling if it doesn’t work or to just homeschool her from the beginning.