August 2011

Are 21st century 5-year-olds cognitively ready to read?

August 12, 2011

TextProject founder Elfrieda (Freddy) Hiebert’s examination of assumptions in the Common Core State Standards regarding kindergarten instruction and the history of kindergarten text difficulty. Click to view the blog post at the Washington Post website in the Washington Post blog, The Answer Sheet.

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Is Reading in Kindergarten the Means for Ensuring College and Career Readiness?

August 3, 2011

Freddy Hiebert

The inclusion of kindergarten in the CCSS about text difficulty represents an implicit assumption about beginning reading that also requires consideration—that earlier is better. Does beginning reading in kindergarten truly ensure that high school graduates are better at reading the complex texts of careers and college? In this essay, I review research on both the explicit and implicit assumptions within the CCSS regarding formal reading instruction in kindergarten: the dumbing down of kindergarten texts and the pushing down of reading instruction to kindergarten.

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