When I was in school, we had reading groups. I was a Bluebird. The Bluebirds were an elite group of 3rd grade readers. We were so cool, we read out of the fourth grade book. Most days of the week we would sit on the floor of the back of the room and read our fourth grade book full of interesting stories and big words.
The Cardinals were the group right under us. They read exactly where they were supposed to read at all through the year. We knew because they sat in the middle of the room and we could hear them reading a story we had already conquered.
The Robins were the slower readers. We didn't know what they read because they sat in their desks at the front of the room with the teacher.
As a much older person and also as a teacher, I can see that this maybe wasn't the best system for the Robins, or even the Cardinals. I know now that grouping readers like that is bad for self esteem, especially when it was near impossible to move up or down in groups.
So why are my kids being grouped in math?
There are a million arguments against and for Common Core, and I am not debating that. I'm debating the fact that my kids come home from school gleeful that they received the E homework, or devastated that they got the P, or heaven help us, the dreaded R homework.
Most days they have a Quick Check. I don't know what that is, but that determines the homework paper they have that night.
The E is for Enrichment. That's a paper they get that has absolutely nothing to do with what they learned that day, my kids say. It is the elite of math homework. When you get the E, you are a smart cookie. (And when you get the E, your math smart mommy is clueless on what to do....it's like those problems at the end of the lesson that mommy's teacher always told them to skip).
P is for Practice. It has a bunch of problems about the lesson. Sometimes Math Mommy still doesn't know what to do.
R is for Reteach. My kids are so upset and embarrassed when they get an R that they hide it. So I have never even seen an R paper.
And so I wonder, how is this any less harmful to my kids' self esteem than the reading groups? Sure, it's a daily chance to get an E, but it's also a daily dose of ego boosting or ego crushing. And Ivy says all the kids know what the other kids got. And then they gloat or are embarrassed.
When I was a Bluebird, I never once made a Robin or a Cardinal feel bad. When reading class was over, all the bird life was forgotten and we were one class again going outside to enjoy our 30 minutes of morning recess. Followed by our lunch recess, and then our afternoon recess (and I'll complain about that in another post some day). We didn't feel the need to wear a scarlet letter declaring our intelligence and worry about it changing daily.
