Mar
15
How are US kids taught at primary schools?
By
dmaivn questioned:
I am curious about how US kids are taught at primary schools. Here in Australia, I guess that the Aussies follow a lot of practices in the US. But one thing that has been controversial is a huge break from the ancient way when kids were allowed to have textbooks. Now they do not have any textbooks. Even if schools question parents to send in money to buy books, kids are often not allowed to take the books home. As the result parents have no thought what kids are taught at schools. We often do not even see worksheets, workbooks, … Very few teachers would allow kids to take any thing home apart from the home work. If parents make a formal appointment to see the teacher, then they might be allowed to see some of the work. But this is not what a normal parent would do.
I am curious about how US kids are taught at primary schools. Here in Australia, I guess that the Aussies follow a lot of practices in the US. But one thing that has been controversial is a huge break from the ancient way when kids were allowed to have textbooks. Now they do not have any textbooks. Even if schools question parents to send in money to buy books, kids are often not allowed to take the books home. As the result parents have no thought what kids are taught at schools. We often do not even see worksheets, workbooks, … Very few teachers would allow kids to take any thing home apart from the home work. If parents make a formal appointment to see the teacher, then they might be allowed to see some of the work. But this is not what a normal parent would do.
Teachers also find it very hard as doing their own programming is part of their job. Each teacher can potentially teach quite differently from one another. And certainly photocopying sheets for every kids is not environmentally friendly at all!
As the result, if you are not pushy, you have no clear thought what kids learn at school. It won’t be simple to teach them at home if they are not doing well (apart from helping them with the homeworks).
Is this the same experience in US primary schools?
SpeedMath From Ame Labs
I can only speak for the schools in Ohio where I live. My kids had a lot of workbooks which they could write in when they were in elementary school. At the beginning of the school year, we paid $30-50 for these workbooks. They had textbooks that they could bring home too. Some teachers sent homework home on xeroxed sheets and some had them do problems from the textbook. It really depended on the grade and teacher. There were two formal parent teacher conferences a year. Every 4 1/2 weeks you received an interim report that gave you info about progress to date.
the kids are learning things they want to learn. and by them i mean the state. the less things your kid learns the best for them. and why? look around, everything is a huge system, your kids, our kids are in it.
Not at all! But I can only attest to the public school systems in the State of Indiana. Here teachers really do very small ‘teaching’ like they used too. They really are misnamed. They should be called assigners. The work is assigned in class and the children take the work home, without so much as an explanation as to how to do it. The parents are really relied upon to do the actual teaching, and if the parents should happen not to be qualified to do this, then, too terrible. You have to find a tutor for your children. I’m sorry, but the teachers of today have turned into custodial work assigners.
It really just depends on the school district, school, and the teacher. All teachers have standards that they are held responsible to teach each of their students every year. Most schools do have textbooks or some kind of work book, but depending on how much funding the school has will determine how many books, which deterimes if students are able to take them home each day or not. From what I know of students do take most if not all of their work home for their parents, now whether the parents care to see it or not is another question. Most schools have parent teacher days where school is closed for a day and parents set a time to meet with their child’s teacher and talk about the child’s progress.
Each teacher has their own teaching style. Usually teach the way they feel the most comfortable and the way the reckon is the most beneficial to their students.
I hope this helps.