At the NEA-NH fall professional development day in Bow, NH, Susan Martin talks about demands the new standards make on kindergarteners.

Highlights

We have just put in an all-day Kindergarten  – plus we were charged with doing Common Core from the get-go – so we spent weeks doing this in terms of just setting up all the logistics behind it and determining how we were going to assess….

It was a huge commitment…I have to say,…I’ve probably increased my time by 25%…, but I think it’s getting less…. I’m just more familiar with the standards and what we’re looking at so that anxiety has decreased.

…The interesting impact is what parents say. They immediately recognize that it is more rigorous and that we are asking a tremendous amount, and at the Kindergarten level it is phenomenally hard. It’s like 1st grade stuff, and that’s what people will say. And most people are welcoming of it, not everybody accomplishes it…There’s less play but there’s still play.

…we recognize that the Common Core are standards; they’re not the curriculum. We’re still charged with implementing those standards through a curriculum. So if I can figure out a way of doing it in a playful way and I’m reaching those, those standards, it’s fine. It’s great.