Let's Start With Chapter... Seven?!?

My daughters' school rolled out their new ELA curriculum, Ready-Gen, yesterday.  By today, my 3rd grader was complaining about it.  And I don't blame her!  She told me that the teacher read aloud a chapter from The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies, an excellent book.  So far, so good.  The students were required to follow along, pointing with their fingers.  OK, I can see the rationale here, but my daughter hated this.  She said it was hard not to race ahead of the teacher.  Don't we want to encourage readers like her?  I can remember this type of frustration from when I was a kid - but even worse, other kids were reading aloud, much slower than a teacher would.  I always read ahead and then couldn't find my place when I was called on to read! 

The questions following the read-aloud were boring too.  They had to write something they "learned" (it is unclear if this means something they learned about a character or plot point or something factual)  and write down what questions they had.  Not scintillating.  Not inspiring.  Not thought-provoking.

But what really got to me was that the teacher read Chapter 7 - and only Chapter 7 - to the kids.  Really?  Chapter 7?!?  Why not Chapter 1?  Why not the whole book in fact?  This curriculum seems like a step backwards to the days (my days) of what were called basal readers - boring collections of stories and excerpts, rather than actual books.  No one learns to love reading by reading from a basal reader.

What do you think about this type of reading curriculum?  What type does your school or your child's school use?

How The New Curriculum + The Common Core = Less Reading

As I've mentioned before, I volunteer at my daughters' public school, entirely parent-run library.  This year, as we sat down with the administration to arrange the class schedule, we were informed that teachers had been approaching the administration and requesting that they only bring their classes to the library every other week, rather than every week.  The reason?  The new curriculum.  Whether it's due to the curriculum itself requiring more time, or the fact that the teachers are - rightly - overwhelmed by being handed a new curriculum with no time to review it before using it (in fact, our school did not even have the ELA curriculum on the first day of school and as of now is only in possession of Unit 1; rumor has it that other units are not even written yet!), it is just sad that the alleged raising of standards results in teachers feeling that they don't have time to allow their students - many of whom do not or cannot go to the public library - to choose their own books.

One last word about the Common Core.  I got a peek at the kindergarten ELA curriculum the other day.  The curriculum our school is using is Ready-Gen by - who else? - Pearson, it of the completely mismanaged G&T testing.  It includes such gems as having 5-year-olds draw pictures of past-tense verbs like "quacked" and "flapped"  (the first unit is on ducks), words like "distance" (not a short or long distance, just distance), leaves little space for the children to write, and what space there is are lines that are too small for typically-oversized kindergarten handwriting.  I almost cried.

How is the Common Core working out in your school?