“Every child will come to school ready to learn” sounds reasonable and causes many to wonder how else could kids come to school? Assumptions (not valid) are made that all children are reared in loving, structured homes that teach children the readiness skills they will need to be successful in school.
Assumptions (not true) are made that readiness skills mean knowing academic skills like counting and letters. Although some children may come to school knowing the alphabet, able to count, or even in a few cases to read, these are not readiness skills.
Many parents willingly purchase books or videos to help their children learn academics without understanding that there are far more important skills children need to be successful in school. The result is frustration, misunderstanding, failure and lost opportunities for parent-supported, student-school achievement.
If readiness isn’t the old “three Rs”, reading, writing, and arithmetic, what exactly is it? How do children get it?
The Weekly Reader magazine for children published, in February 1982, a list of what they considered readiness. The list included: 1) being able to listen to directions, without interrupting, for five to 10 minutes to a poem or story; 2) being able to hear similarities and differences in sounds and rhyming words; 3) being able to see likenesses and differences in pictures, designs, patterns, and shapes; 4) being able to understand direction words such as up/down, top/bottom, over/under, and quantity words such as little/big, empty/full; 5) being able to speak clearly, to contribute to discussion and to retell stories or poems; 6) being able to think, to give reasons for his/her opinions, to generate ideas, to solve problems; 7) being able to adjust, to accept new situations or changes without excessive worry or fear, to be able to ask for help appropriately, to be able to lose as well as to win; 8) being able to play cooperatively with other children, to share, take turns, take responsibility for group functions; 9) being able to work, to stay on task until completion, to follow directions and to take pride in his/her work.
Twelve years ago educators had concerns we all shared about children learning skills that would help them succeed prior to coming to school. All of the skills listed are what children should come to school knowing — very plainly that means children should be learning and should be able to learn these skills in their homes. That means parents should be able to teach these skills to their children.
Not one of the skills mentioned above involves directly teaching to any child the alphabet, numbers, counting, colors, shapes or reading. Each readiness skill does, however, play a critically important part in how well children are able to learn when they do begin school. The responsibility for getting children ready to learn clearly lies with parents or other caring adults.
The secret of teaching readiness lies in having daily experiences throughout each child’s early years which provide opportunities for learning.
Readiness doesn’t mean teaching what, it means teaching how to learn. Parents only have a few hours each day to spend learning with, listening to and teaching young children in their care.
Use those hours to read stories, work puzzles, to talk to children about what they are seeing and hearing, to encourage children to try, to learn new skills, and to take children to interesting places such as zoos and museums. Doing so will place children at the top of the readiness list when time for school arrives and almost certainly assure success.
