There is a great study on how well prepared kindergarteners are across the country before it starts:
http://ift.tt/17mDAl1
It was important to us in seeing where everyone is lining up at the start of the race.
One thing we learned about that we didn't think of before is that some parents choose to hold their kids out of kindergarten until age 6. I remember now that I saw parents doing this so their kids would do better in sports.
Amongst true five year old kindergarteners, if you can come in at both high second grade reading and high second grade math, you are off the scale of measurement for the study.
So what if you come in already finished with grade school altogether? Yet, that isn't very difficult to do. It took making school a daily family activity, sure. It took reading peer reviewed science literature. Making up thousands of lessons. A school culture where it was every day. No difference between week-end, holiday, whatever. A day off here and there, if we felt like taking a break.
In the popular literature they talk about "milestones" for children who do no formal training whatsoever. We were interested in what we could accomplish if we trained them. So we followed the best papers we could, and it sure worked. From before birth, actually, because the brain is already developing in the womb.
We finished grade school a while ago, but when you are so young it is pretty shaky. So we decided to burn through the entire spelling and math lesson sets from the local grade school for a re-trenching and shoring up of the basics. We got them from the school.
So he did the entire second grade in two days. Thirty spelling lessons, over 400 words and 186 math problems. He's going to take a more leisurely approach to third grade spelling and do an intensive math camp in the last ten days before school begins.
Obviously, we have a regimen of alcohol, drugs, and violence prepared after that.
The point of this though is in the context of the USA finishing high school three grades behind world leaders in math, science, or reading. We can actually finish three years ahead of THEM if we are committed to it.
Even finishing WITH them isn't very difficult other than making it somewhat of a priority. Massachusetts has done it.
It seems to us, and we think we have proven it - that the greatest gain can be had over other nations in the earliest years. We arleady have pre-school programs for the developmentally delayed. That is like backing your worst horses. You put the brightest kids on an accelerated track and they are going to have three times the academic gain.
But, this is not for us to decide. We have been at it for six years now, it is no accident. We had the best scientists in the world helping us and actually we wrote the authors of the papers most dear to us and they took the time to not only correspond with us, but to give us more papers and even review video clips we sent them. Hats off to Dr. Phil Zelazo, senior formerly of Harvard and Dr. Karen Adolph at NYU for example - how warm and encouraging they were with us. So willing to spend time making up a portfolio of research papers for everyday "street people" like us just because we wrote them.
http://ift.tt/17mDAl1
It was important to us in seeing where everyone is lining up at the start of the race.
One thing we learned about that we didn't think of before is that some parents choose to hold their kids out of kindergarten until age 6. I remember now that I saw parents doing this so their kids would do better in sports.
Amongst true five year old kindergarteners, if you can come in at both high second grade reading and high second grade math, you are off the scale of measurement for the study.
So what if you come in already finished with grade school altogether? Yet, that isn't very difficult to do. It took making school a daily family activity, sure. It took reading peer reviewed science literature. Making up thousands of lessons. A school culture where it was every day. No difference between week-end, holiday, whatever. A day off here and there, if we felt like taking a break.
In the popular literature they talk about "milestones" for children who do no formal training whatsoever. We were interested in what we could accomplish if we trained them. So we followed the best papers we could, and it sure worked. From before birth, actually, because the brain is already developing in the womb.
We finished grade school a while ago, but when you are so young it is pretty shaky. So we decided to burn through the entire spelling and math lesson sets from the local grade school for a re-trenching and shoring up of the basics. We got them from the school.
So he did the entire second grade in two days. Thirty spelling lessons, over 400 words and 186 math problems. He's going to take a more leisurely approach to third grade spelling and do an intensive math camp in the last ten days before school begins.
Obviously, we have a regimen of alcohol, drugs, and violence prepared after that.
The point of this though is in the context of the USA finishing high school three grades behind world leaders in math, science, or reading. We can actually finish three years ahead of THEM if we are committed to it.
Even finishing WITH them isn't very difficult other than making it somewhat of a priority. Massachusetts has done it.
It seems to us, and we think we have proven it - that the greatest gain can be had over other nations in the earliest years. We arleady have pre-school programs for the developmentally delayed. That is like backing your worst horses. You put the brightest kids on an accelerated track and they are going to have three times the academic gain.
But, this is not for us to decide. We have been at it for six years now, it is no accident. We had the best scientists in the world helping us and actually we wrote the authors of the papers most dear to us and they took the time to not only correspond with us, but to give us more papers and even review video clips we sent them. Hats off to Dr. Phil Zelazo, senior formerly of Harvard and Dr. Karen Adolph at NYU for example - how warm and encouraging they were with us. So willing to spend time making up a portfolio of research papers for everyday "street people" like us just because we wrote them.
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1IWwe6y
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