My wife and I attended our daughter's first class meeting for Standard one (Grade 2). We had many concerns and wanted the teacher to address them. During the course of the evening the discussion came to how she teaches Study Skills, some of which are alphabetization, parts of a dictionary and its use. To our surprise and dismay we discovered that the teacher does have children in class use a dictionary! She says,"It's not necessary..." She says that she needs the approval of the school's administration to allow the use of dictionaries in her classroom but in her view it is not necessary. REALLY?!?!?!
One concern I had and still have is with regard to the teaching of penmanship, a necessary skill for all students. I observed that her handwriting on the white-board was in script so I inquired as to her rationale for this approach. I was informed that she intends to first teach the correct formation for all the letters ( Uppercase and Lowercase) then will she begin to model cursive lettering on the board and allow them to do the same. Her reason for this is that if she waits for children to copy cursive lettering from the board in every subject area she would only be able to do two subjects for the day. I am thinking that if you teach penmanship you need to model the standard you want from your students. Also I think that any opportunity to write is an opportunity for good penmanship...but that's just me.
If you read this account please let me know if I am correct in being incredulous or is this best practice and I should just shut up.
