Should We Put him in the school?

[elmerRex]

I am having trouble to decide if I should put my son in American public schools for next year when he is in 2nd grade. He would continue to study at home in maths, games, character, art and our language. I hesitate a lot because I hear from my fellows that the American school here does not actually do anything well but is very bad for maths, character, art and foreign language.

 

If we do put him in school, it is to help his English grow, to help his accent develop and to help his reading of English. We are ESL, we don't speak very much English at home, but my son does speak English fluent for his age level. But he has very, very poor vocabulary though. We do not have TV or many videos at home, there are many families in the area who are from our country so my son would not be single foreign kid in his class. We are going abroad this summer so much English will be forgotten or lost for my kids this summer.

When we come back, recovering English will be a big time waster because we do not want all English TV and videos in the home all the time and our nanny is going to leave us in winter.

 

We want them to grow up fluent in our language and English. Also in 3rd grade we will add another language for the kids so we want English to be good and strong before then. What should we do? If we put him in 2nd grade at school, then he will not participate in many other activities during the week and may feel left out because the younger kids will have activities that he will not.

 

 

 

[8filltheheart]

I agree with your perspective.  I would definitely want to embrace an opportunity to improve his English, whether via school or another activity.  I think you could join something like Boy Scouts or 4H or some other club type activity and accomplish the same goal.  If you are planning on spending so much time after schooling and he does not need to attend ps, you might want to look into other opportunities to interact in English.

[elmerRex]

I agree with your perspective.  I would definitely want to embrace an opportunity to improve his English, whether via school or another activity.  I think you could join something like Boy Scouts or 4H or some other club type activity and accomplish the same goal.  If you are planning on spending so much time after schooling and he does not need to attend ps, you might want to look into other opportunities to interact in English.

I do not know anything about these groups. Is that enough exposure? Is there any cost for Boy Scouts and 4H? Public school would let us have free English immersion, 7 hours daily, 5 days a week and my son can learn good English speaking there because he will have 35 hours of speaking and conversation practice everyday (we would not put him in ESL classes, only English speakers classes.)

 

How much exposure and interaction is there in Boy Scouts and 4H do you know? I do not know if it is enough.  I do not believe in fake language learning methods--its my conviction that to learn conversation, you must be immersed in the language and forced to converse in the lanugage and listen to it a lot and speak it a lot until you are getting things right. Especially since we will not be speaking at home. We want to speak less English at home, not more.

 

 

The nanny can help him with his English home-works and teach them vocabulary and phrases to adjust in school his first term.

[Ellie]

When my brother and his family went to Germany, the children went to German schools, specifically so that they could learn to be fluent. They ended up homeschooling because they really didn't like the German schools, but my nephew and niece are fluent in German.

 

So, yes, I think it would be a good idea to enroll your son in school for the exposure to English. He will only be there for one year, yes? That his school might be weak in some areas academically will not have a long-lasting effect on his education.  Also, many children who are enrolled in public school still participate in scouts and 4-H and so on. Why wouldn't that be possible for your son?

[8filltheheart]

Scouts normally meets for 2 or so hours per week. Scouts costs something like $35/yr for membership + shirt and handbook. 4H depends on the individual club, but twice a month is pretty normal. Community sports like soccer are cheap and meet frequently. (We always had practices and games every week.) I do think a combo of activities would give him language exposure for conversational skills. It really depends on your objectives.

 

If you want "school," then you should put him in school. I was only offering alternative options. Our oldest became fluent in Portuguese simply by playing with neighborhood children. Everything within our home was in English. He just played after school. He was so fluent in Portuguese that when we were out places like parks or the pool and he was playing with other kids and then came over to us and talked to us in English, people would ask him where he learned English. When he would tell them he was American, they would be shocked. That said, we moved back stateside when he was 10 and over time he lost the language.

 

It really depends on your goals. If you want him reading, writing, and speaking in English, then you should opt for school. If you want him to be able to converse, he might have equal success just through playing and being around the other kids. Only you know what your goals are. It sounds like you want validation to put him in school. The only one who needs to tell you that is you. :)

[Arcadia]

There is not much talking in school actually. My do not like talking older boy didn't even need to talk unless he wish to for the years he was in public school.

There is not that many hours of talking in scouts or 4H either to give the immersion environment you are looking for.

 

I would suggest looking for a replacement nanny or an au pair instead for when your current nanny leaves.

 

If you are looking at social activities that has higher chance of immersion, I would check out drama/theatre classes for him. The "foreign" accent for English would diminish in time.

[8filltheheart]

Drama is a great suggestion!

[chiguirre]

Another thing to consider is increasing his tv time. Many parents in Venezuela set their DirecTV to English only with closed captioning. That, combined with grammar instruction at school or English classes, works surprisingly well at getting kids to speak English. They can see the words and hear them at the same time so it helps them make quicker connections.

[Tsuga]

The United States does not have a national education system or, in spite of what some would say / desire, a national curriculum. We have national benchmarks.

 

In my district, we have a very large non-native speaker population and we also as a district score among the top districts in the world for math, reading, and science. Though early testing is not always top in the world, later testing (high school) is. That is because they focus on foundations of experiential learning, creating community, reading, reading, reading and developing a love of learning.

 

I would strongly recommend putting a child in this school district.

 

On the other hand, I don't know where you are. You need to evaluate your choices based on what is locally available.

 

 

 

 my son does speak English fluent for his age level. But he has very, very poor vocabulary though.

 

I am not sure what this means. Fluency involves vocabulary. Is his receptive English fluent, then?

 

Honestly, if you don't like American culture, schools, or media, you're probably better off avoiding the American community at all costs. My own children learned more about media from the neighborhood kids (some of whom have very limited media time) than they ever did in public school.

[Bluegoat]

If it were me, I would be willing to sacrifice some academics for a time in order to have fluency in a second language. So what I would be concerned with would be more the atmosphere of the school - is it safe, are the kids and teachers generally nice, and that sort of thing.

 

We are probably going to send our kids to public school for grades 7 8 and 9, as they will have the opportunity to become fluent in French, which is a big advantage in Canada. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the academics won't be so poor we have to take them out again, because I am not willing to spend a lot of time on academics outside of school.

[elmerRex]

I am not sure what this means. Fluency involves vocabulary. Is his receptive English fluent, then?

He has good grammar--he can correct my spoken English, and he can understand almost everything but he doesn't have automatic vocabulary for many variety of things. If you look around your home and name 100 common items, he will not know them all. He might know some cartoon words like spacemen, but not house words. Or he knows the words for the playground parts like swing and slide and sand but does not know kissing or text or keyboard. Many times he asks "What is ___?" when he is with the nanny or tutor. He can play with the American kids and understand and speak just fine.

Honestly, if you don't like American culture, schools, or media, you're probably better off avoiding the American community at all costs. My own children learned more about media from the neighborhood kids (some of whom have very limited media time) than they ever did in public school.

Its not that I don't like American culture, he is exposed to American culture every week. We do many activities in the city with the kids and we had planned to put him in public school for kindergarten, but he is so babyish we kept him out. And he wasn't ready in first grade either, but I think that he will be able to handle American public schools now and the competitive nature of his peers and stress of behaving in a group and being punished for not behaving and how to take a test with importance and how to obey the teacher very nicely or have punishment.

 

We do not allow much media at all and most of the media we allow at home is not English. We watch movies in the cinema in English. He watches English television at friends homes and with relatives. Also, when I asked I was told that the schools  they aren't good for much because they are so narrow. In my area the school do not teach foreign language, they do not teach maths well, and the  kids do not have lessons in traditional games or music or art. That is what I don't like. What is a Grade 2 student doing all day that they don't have art or music or games? I just think it is strange.

 

 

[Heathermomster]

I know that you have emphasized math, but how is your son's reading, writing, and comprehension in English?  What is his spelling like?  Does he take dictation and/or copywork?

 

 

[shinyhappypeople]

Also, when I asked I was told that the schools  they aren't good for much because they are so narrow. In my area the school do not teach foreign language, they do not teach maths well, and the  kids do not have lessons in traditional games or music or art. That is what I don't like. What is a Grade 2 student doing all day that they don't have art or music or games? I just think it is strange.

 

 

In many schools, they're working almost totally on English and math (with a little social studies and science, time permitting) in order to prepare for high-stakes standardized tests.  

 

Would he be interested in listening to audio books or reading along to kindle books with whispersync?

 

I second the idea of getting him involved in theater.  Also, a children's choir might be fun.  

 

I empathize with your desire to limit media in your home, but how about English language music?  There are some good options that are appropriate for kids. 

 

Good luck :)

[Heathermomster]

You haven't responded to my questions yet, so I have a handful comments.  I cannot see you being satisfied with the ps system.  You could enroll your child and pull him mid-year if the classroom was not working out.

 

If English is important to you, speak it at home or at the very least, set aside 4 hours daily where English is the only language spoken.  Listen to audio books in English.  Not all US tv programming is bad.  Turn on closed captioning and consider allowing your child to watch episodes of Martha Speaks, Curious George, Word Girl, Wild Kratts, and Backyardigans.   Maybe expose him to 30 minutes of programming 2 or 3 times per week.  You would not be not using the tv as a mindless babysitter without a purpose, but rather exposing him to quality children's programming. I dont know whether I am making sense.   

[Roadrunner]

We have close friends whose kids spoke no English when entering K. After 6 months they were fluent. So school will accomplish what you want. 

[elmerRex]

I know that you have emphasized math, but how is your son's reading, writing, and comprehension in English?  What is his spelling like?  Does he take dictation and/or copywork?

I do not know what dictation and/or copywork is, can you explain? My sons spelling is not that great. He can not spell many 3 sound words. As for his reading I can not judge very well because I was not an English pupil when I was a young children and he has a tutor. I do have reports from his reading tutor, they work on reading lessons and practice and the tutor shares with me the vocabulary he doesn't know so I can teach him those words in our language to help his understanding and reading be smoother.

 

She gives me a list of words like the ones that he could not read well to practice with. This is a passage from my sons reading book that he read a couple of weeks ago with his tutor that she shared with me after his first reading. She shares the passages with me so that I can help him in our language.

 

* is vocabulary he did not know

this is a word that he struggled to read.

 

His time for this passage the first time was 9:13, with no preparations to read this exact thing.

The second time for this passage was 6:08 after 2 days of studying vocabulary and practicing with words.

 

 

Jane Goodall

Kate MacAndrew

A girl was watching a sea* gull* as it dived* toward* the water. The gull was looking for food. The girl counted the number of times the gull dived before it found food. She wrote a sentence* about the gull in her notebook. Then she started walking home, watching for more birds as she went.

 

This girl, Jane Goodall, lived in England on the seacoast*. She spent most of her time watching birds and animals. She watched robins*, starlings*, blackbirds*, field mice*, moles*, and rabbits. She wrote notes about the things they did. Jane wanted to learn how these birds and animals behaved*. She spent her pocket money on books about animal behavior.

 

When Jane was eighteen, she left school to work in an office. She wanted to save money to go to Africa. After a time she had saved the money, and she was ready for the trip. In Africa she met a noted scientist* who was interested* in animal behavior too. His name was Dr. Louis Leakey. Jane became Dr. Leakey's helper and friend. Dr. Leakey knew that Jane did fine work with animals. He asked her to work on a special project on chimpanzees.

 

Jane went into the African forest and set up a camp near a large lake. She lived alone at a place where a group of chimpanzees lived. This way she would be able to watch them and learn how they behaved. At first the chimpanzees ran away before Jane could get close to them. They had never seen a human being before. They were afraid of Jane.

 

Jane learned where the chimpanzees went to eat in the morning. She would get up early and go there before the chimps did. She sat quietly so that the chimps would learn to know and trust her. Slowly the chimpanzees lost their fear of Jane.

 

 

Here is a writings my son did for his tutor last week when she asked him to write about a wish he has.

 

 

I wish a pet wod live with me and my family but my dad sez he not!

 

He has 2 wrong spellings, and one wrong letter "p" in pet was backwards, and he does not have good grammar when he writes. My son would not speak it that way, but he wrote it that way.

 

One thing that the public school is good at is making kids good writing, so my son could learn to write properly in school.

[elmerRex]

In many schools, they're working almost totally on English and math (with a little social studies and science, time permitting) in order to prepare for high-stakes standardized tests.  

 

Would he be interested in listening to audio books or reading along to kindle books with whispersync?

He is very picky, but he likes the library story time with real people better than most audio book we have tried. I do not know kindle, I will ask my husband.

I second the idea of getting him involved in theater.  Also, a children's choir might be fun.  

My son has activities already, we will evaluate again when we return to the US. We are not going to change his activities before we go away for the summer.

I empathize with your desire to limit media in your home, but how about English language music?  There are some good options that are appropriate for kids. The nanny picks their English music and we do not bother with it, we can not understand much English music. They have many educational childrens songs and country music to listen to. Also there is Elvis Presley because the nanny said he is very important for kids to know about.

 

Good luck :)

 

[elmerRex]

You haven't responded to my questions yet, It took me a while to get my reply. Sorry, my English is not fluent and it is hard to communicate all in the web boards and get it "right". so I have a handful comments.  I cannot see you being satisfied with the ps system.  You could enroll your child and pull him mid-year if the classroom was not working out. We know we could take him out. The question is should we send him at all. I think that maybe we should. Maybe, but I don't want to. My husband is not so sure and wants to wait until the school year to decide. We never wanted to homeschool him, we want him to go to school but he is such a baby that we wanted to give him more time.

 

If English is important to you, speak it at home We will not do that, I could never speak to my kids in English like that. We communicate in our language because it is nearest to our hearts. There is no love in English for us, one of my daughters will not reply to me in English at all. We use our language because we are our selves in it and because we want the kids to be bilingual.  or at the very least, set aside 4 hours daily where English is the only language spoken.  We use some English, at home. English is important, but not more important than heritage language and good family connections. Listen to audio books in English.  Not all US tv programming is bad.   I said we do not watch much TV at home and the tv we watch in our house is not in English usually. My son watches English movies in the cinema, he watches English TV at friends and relatives homes a few times each week.  Turn on closed captioning and consider allowing your child to watch episodes of Martha Speaks, Curious George, Word Girl, Wild Kratts, and Backyardigans.   My son is very sensitive to scary or monsters. He does not like even the Elmo, he complains for many picture books too. He does not like 90% of cartoons because the creatures are strange and scary to him, he likes real life people and animal shows. Maybe expose him to 30 minutes of programming 2 or 3 times per week.  You would not be not using the tv as a mindless babysitter without a purpose, but rather exposing him to quality children's programming. I dont know whether I am making sense.   

 

[Tsuga]

He has good grammar--he can correct my spoken English, and he can understand almost everything but he doesn't have automatic vocabulary for many variety of things. If you look around your home and name 100 common items, he will not know them all. He might know some cartoon words like spacemen, but not house words. Or he knows the words for the playground parts like swing and slide and sand but does not know kissing or text or keyboard. Many times he asks "What is ___?" when he is with the nanny or tutor. He can play with the American kids and understand and speak just fine.

 

I see. That sounds like my kids' German. They don't know house German. But they did not learn it in years of German school. I mean they know some, but not all. I am not sure that will be made up in school. Instead, especially in 2nd grade, the child will get the problem wrong and if the teacher is not trained in ESL they will treat it as a logical error, and may not be able to remediate this.

 

Its not that I don't like American culture, he is exposed to American culture every week. We do many activities in the city with the kids and we had planned to put him in public school for kindergarten, but he is so babyish we kept him out. And he wasn't ready in first grade either, but I think that he will be able to handle American public schools now and the competitive nature of his peers and stress of behaving in a group and being punished for not behaving and how to take a test with importance and how to obey the teacher very nicely or have punishment.

 

I am sorry to hear that they use punitive methods. That sounds awful.

 

We do not allow much media at all and most of the media we allow at home is not English. We watch movies in the cinema in English. He watches English television at friends homes and with relatives.

 

I see. That sounds like our family.

 

lso, when I asked I was told that the schools  they aren't good for much because they are so narrow. In my area the school do not teach foreign language, they do not teach maths well, and the  kids do not have lessons in traditional games or music or art. That is what I don't like. What is a Grade 2 student doing all day that they don't have art or music or games? I just think it is strange.

 

Sadly, in some schools they are just memorizing, drilling for the test. We live in a great school district, of which the residents are very proud. We don't have super high elementary test scores, though they are good. But they have an hour of break per day, free reading for 30-60 minutes per day, reading by the teacher for 15-20 minutes per day, plus creative building, experimentation, computer programming, science experiments, free writing, some math practice, etc. all day. Every day they have one special subject: PE, art, music, library, and one other thing, I forget. It's still more academic than I had but it's nice. When I knew I'd have a hard time homeschooling for various reasons I became committed to finding excellent schools and luckily it worked out for us.

[8filltheheart]

How about children's songs in English? Toddler tunes via CD?

[Arcadia]

My heritage language isn't English. For English shows, David Attenborough is nice and easy to listen to, BBC's version of Shakespeare plays are good too as well as BBC production of classics like Oliver Twist.

My boys are doing their heritage language, Chinese, and a world language, German.

 

Schools do Art, Music and Science in 2nd grade when they have time. How well they teach it depends on the school. My older did typing/keyboarding in public school from kindergarten. A lot of time is spend on English followed by Math in K-3.

 

ETA:

I am bilingual though.

[mathmarm]

For me vague notions or ideas about a thing do not satisfy me at all. I have to know. I'm a list maker and a box checker and I like to leave as little to chance as possible. Have you toured the school yourself?

 

If not, then I suggest you tour the local schools yourself. Go and tour the public, private school and any charter schools in your area. Browse the schools library and ask about the reading level policies that they have for students as a school. Speak with the teachers for your sons grades to learn about the schools philosophy and how they teach in their classes. You want to learn about their experience with and expectations for that grade. Even sit in on a class one grade up and on grade down if they will let you because you should check that the teaching methods are consistent, the lesson progression logical. Ask tons and tons of questions, write down the answers if you need to.

 

If your son needs books on a different level than his classmates, how accessible will those books be to him?

 

What are the expectations for 2nd graders their first term?

 

Do they differentiate reading instruction in the classroom? If so, how?

 

Do they differentiate math instruction in the classroom? If so, how?

 

If there is no differentiation in the classroom, then is it available in a pull out?

 

How is the home-school communication?

 

How are students evaluated throughout the term?

 

What type of home work can be expected? How much of it?

 

How does the school prepare students for states testing?

 

How often are P-T conferences available?

 

How is student discipline handled?

 

What about student-conflict? What do they do when the student-conflict escalates towards bullying levels?

 

How is bullying handled in the school?

 

 

Find out about any and all pull out programs. If you are enrolling your son in 2nd grade, don't just look at 2nd, but ask to watch a 1st grade and 3rd grade class as well so that you can see the progression of lessons and how the teaching style is and whether or not it is consistent. If necessary, ask about the ESL class or pull out and observe that also.

 

Talk to other parents with kids in the school, both American and non-American. If many of the parents had a similar school experience as you, then they could just be nostalgic for their own school experiences. I'm sure that it is different, but different doesn't mean bad. It just means different.

[mathnerd]

The problem with homeschooling in a heritage language at home is that after elementary level, kids need to take standardized testing and similar things where English Language Arts (including vocabulary, reading comprehension etc.) is a big chunk of the test material. Your son will be at a severe disadvantage at that time. And speaking and playing with friends who speak English (even watching TV shows in English) is insufficient to develop deep comprehension and language acquisition. Advanced academics in this country is in English and it takes a lot of vocabulary building to be able to access the knowledge for higher level learning.

 

What you can expect in a public school: From my experience, there is not much talking your son can do at school time. The early elementary classes have library story time at school, read alouds by the teacher, reading groups, class plays with all children memorizing lines, weekly spelling lists and writing paragraph style essays. Your son will listen a lot to the teachers speaking in english. He will be asked to participate in class discussions in English. He will get remediation and help in his reading and writing if he is struggling in English. What they did not teach is handwriting and penmanship in the time that we were in the PS.

 

You definitely cannot have it both ways. It seems that you are unhappy with the Public schools and that your feelings towards your heritage stops you from talking in English and you homeschool. If you continue to homeschool, you need to implement a rigorous education in English from an outside source like a tutor (for remediation and also for advancement in English as it is a core subject).

 

So, you need to weigh the pros and cons of the decision- you can increase the tutoring and nanny help he gets in English at home and simultaneously encourage him to read and read and read many english language books. Or you can send him to PS and get their help for improving his English skills and add other enrichment like music and art on your own. 

 

Good luck with your decision.

[hornblower]

We will not do that, I could never speak to my kids in English like that. We communicate in our language because it is nearest to our hearts. There is no love in English for us, one of my daughters will not reply to me in English at all. We use our language because we are our selves in it and because we want the kids to be bilingual. or at the very least, set aside 4 hours daily where English is the only language spoken. We use some English, at home. English is important, but not more important than heritage language and good family connections.

Given what you said here, I think you need to put him in school because it sounds like you want 2 incompatible things: you want him to be fluent in English but you do not want to homeschool him in English.

 

I'm bilingual, my kids are not. It's ime very hard to achieve this (bilingualism in children) at home by yourself. It's one thing for him to be able to play with friends, but being able to do spelling, grammar, comprehension, writing will require instruction. Also, his lack of vocabulary is probably because of limited exposure. Playing with kids his age will not expand vocabulary.

Books, TV, radio, educational games, &/or exposure to older native speakers having varied conversations will help with that.

 

The only other way around it would be to hire a tutor for about 1-2 h daily, plus add tv & esl computer programs.

[Mabelen]

If you want your son to be truly bilingual and be academically competitive with his U.S. educated peers, he is going to need to have significant and consistent academic instruction in English.

 

How you go about that is up to you. Other than putting him in school, would you consider something like he Kumon reading and language program? How about one year you do Science in English and the next you do Social Science, for example? I would think you need at least two daily periods of instruction in English to achieve your goals, especially since you seem very restrictive with regards to other sources of English in your home and you spend the summers immersed in your home language.

[8filltheheart]

Ok, after reading through this thread, I am confused about a major issue. Are you planning on staying in the U.S. or are you here temporarily? I assumed based on your original post that you were only here on temporary work or student visas. Are you planning on your children growing up in the U.S. long term and assimilating into upper level education here and pursuing employment here as adults, or are you returning to you home country and your children will grow up there? The answers to those questions really matter.

 

If you are not incorporating English language studies at an intensive level and you are planning on remaining in the States long term, enrolling him in school would be to his benefit. Not mastering written as well as oral English will be detrimental to long term educational objectives. If, otoh, you are planning on returning to your home country and learning English is simply a desire before you leave, just how much and how he learns is really a matter of balancing your options and what your goals are. (This was our perspective on our son learning Portuguese. We wanted him to learn it, but it was subordinate to being educated in English because we knew we were only there for a couple of years and would be moving back to the States. If we had actually planned on emigrating there, complete mastery of Portuguese would have been vital to his long term well-being. It wouldn't have been optional.)

[Arcadia]

One thing that the public school is good at is making kids good writing, so my son could learn to write properly in school.

That would depend on the teacher he gets. Not all public school teachers are good at teaching writing. You might still need to keep your son's English tutor.

 

I am assuming you are staying in the states. If you are, then you might have to increase the amount of English tuition or send him to school or set an hour or more a day for him to read in English. While my kids do a vocabulary workbook for fun, they get their grammar and vocabulary from daily leisure reading.

 

If your family is here temporarily then you won't need to worry about how fast he picks up English.

[elmerRex]

Ok, after reading through this thread, I am confused about a major issue. Are you planning on staying in the U.S. or are you here temporarily?

We have plans to be in English speaking countries long time.

I assumed based on your original post that you were only here on temporary work or student visas. Are you planning on your children growing up in the U.S. long term and assimilating into upper level education here and pursuing employment here as adults, or are you returning to you home country and your children will grow up there? The answers to those questions really matter.

We travel much for jobs and have goals of spending as many years in English speaking countries as we can.

If you are not incorporating English language studies at an intensive level and you are planning on remaining in the States long term, enrolling him in school would be to his benefit. Not mastering written as well as oral English will be detrimental to long term educational objectives. If, otoh, you are planning on returning to your home country and learning English is simply a desire before you leave, just how much and how he learns is really a matter of balancing your options and what your goals are. (This was our perspective on our son learning Portuguese. We wanted him to learn it, but it was subordinate to being educated in English because we knew we were only there for a couple of years and would be moving back to the States. If we had actually planned on emigrating there, complete mastery of Portuguese would have been vital to his long term well-being. It wouldn't have been optional.)

Thank you for helping us sort through much to think about.

 

[elmerRex]

My heritage language isn't English. For English shows, David Attenborough is nice and easy to listen to, BBC's version of Shakespeare plays are good too as well as BBC production of classics like Oliver Twist.

My boys are doing their heritage language, Chinese, and a world language, German.

 

Schools do Art, Music and Science in 2nd grade when they have time. How well they teach it depends on the school. My older did typing/keyboarding in public school from kindergarten. A lot of time is spend on English followed by Math in K-3.

 

ETA:

I am bilingual though.

Thank you for this input.

 

[elmerRex]

For me vague notions or ideas about a thing do not satisfy me at all. I have to know. I'm a list maker and a box checker and I like to leave as little to chance as possible. Have you toured the school yourself?

 

If not, then I suggest you tour the local schools yourself. Go and tour the public, private school and any charter schools in your area. Browse the schools library and ask about the reading level policies that they have for students as a school. Speak with the teachers for your sons grades to learn about the schools philosophy and how they teach in their classes. You want to learn about their experience with and expectations for that grade. Even sit in on a class one grade up and on grade down if they will let you because you should check that the teaching methods are consistent, the lesson progression logical. Ask tons and tons of questions, write down the answers if you need to.

 

If your son needs books on a different level than his classmates, how accessible will those books be to him?

 

What are the expectations for 2nd graders their first term?

 

Do they differentiate reading instruction in the classroom? If so, how?

 

Do they differentiate math instruction in the classroom? If so, how?

 

If there is no differentiation in the classroom, then is it available in a pull out?

 

How is the home-school communication?

 

How are students evaluated throughout the term?

 

What type of home work can be expected? How much of it?

 

How does the school prepare students for states testing?

 

How often are P-T conferences available?

 

How is student discipline handled?

 

What about student-conflict? What do they do when the student-conflict escalates towards bullying levels?

 

How is bullying handled in the school?

 

 

Find out about any and all pull out programs. If you are enrolling your son in 2nd grade, don't just look at 2nd, but ask to watch a 1st grade and 3rd grade class as well so that you can see the progression of lessons and how the teaching style is and whether or not it is consistent. If necessary, ask about the ESL class or pull out and observe that also.

 

Talk to other parents with kids in the school, both American and non-American. If many of the parents had a similar school experience as you, then they could just be nostalgic for their own school experiences. I'm sure that it is different, but different doesn't mean bad. It just means different.

Very helpful advise. Yes, we are going to the school next week to visit it, but I have not been there since we decided not to send him.

[elmerRex]

The problem with homeschooling in a heritage language at home is that after elementary level, kids need to take standardized testing and similar things where English Language Arts (including vocabulary, reading comprehension etc.) is a big chunk of the test material. Your son will be at a severe disadvantage at that time. And speaking and playing with friends who speak English (even watching TV shows in English) is insufficient to develop deep comprehension and language acquisition. Advanced academics in this country is in English and it takes a lot of vocabulary building to be able to access the knowledge for higher level learning.

 

What you can expect in a public school: From my experience, there is not much talking your son can do at school time. The early elementary classes have library story time at school, read alouds by the teacher, reading groups, class plays with all children memorizing lines, weekly spelling lists and writing paragraph style essays. Your son will listen a lot to the teachers speaking in english. He will be asked to participate in class discussions in English. He will get remediation and help in his reading and writing if he is struggling in English. What they did not teach is handwriting and penmanship in the time that we were in the PS.

 

You definitely cannot have it both ways. It seems that you are unhappy with the Public schools and that your feelings towards your heritage stops you from talking in English and you homeschool. We are not mad with public school exactly. We kept our son out of public school because he was not ready for a long day at school with a large group of kids. My son is babish and can be naughty, we did not want him sent around all the time, we did not want him to fail to be a class-room student and his K-grade or 1st grade naughtiness to put shame on him in his records for years to come. We did not want to assign him a task that he can not do because he would just fail at it. We speak mostly our language and some English at home. My son can do reading and maths in both languages, and he is on level with his peers for English reading and understanding. If you continue to homeschool, you need to implement a rigorous education in English from an outside source like a tutor (for remediation and also for advancement in English as it is a core subject). My kids receive private tuition in English, they have an English nanny, an English reading teacher and they do many activities in English--story time, cinema, swimming, music, play group and others. The nanny will leave us, but we plan to replace her. We need a nanny and we would never stop ALL English for the kids.

 

So, you need to weigh the pros and cons of the decision- you can increase the tutoring and nanny help he gets in English at home and simultaneously encourage him to read and read and read many english language books. Or you can send him to PS and get their help for improving his English skills and add other enrichment like music and art on your own. Part of my problem is my son hates reading so getting him to "read and read and read" is easy to say and difficult to do.

 

Good luck with your decision.

Thank you for your inputs.

 

 

[elmerRex]

Given what you said here, I think you need to put him in school because it sounds like you want 2 incompatible things: you want him to be fluent in English but you do not want to homeschool him in English.

 

I'm bilingual, my kids are not. It's ime very hard to achieve this (bilingualism in children) at home by yourself. Yes, it is so hard to find the right balance. It's one thing for him to be able to play with friends, but being able to do spelling, grammar, comprehension, writing will require instruction. Also, his lack of vocabulary is probably because of limited exposure. Playing with kids his age will not expand vocabulary.

Books, TV, radio, educational games, &/or exposure to older native speakers having varied conversations will help with that. Yes, this is why we are considering school for them. Even though we take the kids many places and do many activities in English each week, they are still ESL. They have good grammar, but poor vocabulary and my son has accent that he does not like. Our hope is that a year of English school would make stronger his foundation and richer his vocabulary.

 

The only other way around it would be to hire a tutor for about 1-2 h daily, plus add tv & esl computer programs.

The kids do have many hours with an English tutor every week. We have a nanny who speaks only English with the kids, they get English reading lessons from an English teacher. After the summer we hope that the kids will have 2 English nannies for a while which will give them a chance to see complete models of full conversations at their level.

 

[elmerRex]

If you want your son to be truly bilingual and be academically competitive with his U.S. educated peers, he is going to need to have significant and consistent academic instruction in English.

 

How you go about that is up to you. Other than putting him in school, would you consider something like he Kumon reading and language program? We laughed because we refused to do Kumon (Maths) with him when he was younger like all his peers because he wasn't ready. Now we think that we might try a program like Kumon English for them during the summer while we are away.

How about one year you do Science in English and the next you do Social Science, for example? I would think you need at least two daily periods of instruction in English to achieve your goals, especially since you seem very restrictive with regards to other sources of English in your home and you spend the summers immersed in your home language. We have a nanny and the kids speak to her in English only, but baba and mama do not speak much English with them--there is no reason for me to speak English to my kids all the time, it is unpleasant for us. It isn't about heritage pride, it is an emotional thing. I am not truly bilingual, and I are different in different languages.  I am not a mama in English the way that I am in my language. It is just too different and my kids don't like me speaking English all the time.

 

[elmerRex]

That would depend on the teacher he gets. Not all public school teachers are good at teaching writing. You might still need to keep your son's English tutor. I will definitely check how they are teaching writing in the school and I will try to get him into the best teachers class.

 

I am assuming you are staying in the states. If you are, then you might have to increase the amount of English tuition or send him to school or set an hour or more a day for him to read in English. <-- If you hate me that much, you could just come out and say it. :lol: My son would run away if we made him read for 1 hour in English. He is only a little boy and does not take to reading with kindness. While my kids do a vocabulary workbook for fun, they get their grammar and vocabulary from daily leisure reading.

 

If your family is here temporarily then you won't need to worry about how fast he picks up English.

 

[elmerRex]

Thank you to eeryone for all your inputs and discussion. Very valuable :).

[Dmmetler]

Would you be comfortable putting him in PS as a first grader next year, since you're going to continue his academic studies at home anyway? Emotional immaturity and just plain being a little boy and functioning in a 2nd language is a lot for a child to deal with, and since 1st grade is really focused on beginning literacy, it may be a better fit for English instruction than 2nd would be, especially if the plan is for him to do one year of school and then be home full-time anyway. I'd especially consider this if there's a strong phonics program taught in primary where you are, because with a good solid English phonics background, as his reading skills in English improve, he'll be better able to convert those written words into his spoken vocabulary.

 

 

 

 

[Arcadia]

--there is no reason for me to speak English to my kids all the time, it is unpleasant for us. It isn't about heritage pride, it is an emotional thing. I am not truly bilingual, and I are different in different languages.  I am not a mama in English the way that I am in my language. It is just too different and my kids don't like me speaking English all the time.

 

I understand that.  My dad is ESL and my mom is multilingual (English, Chinese, Malay). My dad only speaks our heritage (Chinese and Chinese dialects) languages to us.

 

My boys will run away from sports other than swimming and golf :lol:

 

While checking out teachers, some are a lot better at taking care of active children than others.  Also find out the seating arrangement.  Those with the six to a table would have children sitting with their backs to the whiteboard so it is harder to copy down instructions from the board.

 

ETA:

If you have a tablet, download one of the Merriam Webster dictionary app and download the audio files.  Also, did the reading tutor teach your child how to make use of the phonetic symbols in the English dictionary?  Link below is what I meant about the phonetic symbols in the dictionary

 

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/help/phonetics.html

[Ad astra]

Given what you said here, I think you need to put him in school because it sounds like you want 2 incompatible things: you want him to be fluent in English but you do not want to homeschool him in English.

 

I'm bilingual, my kids are not. It's ime very hard to achieve this (bilingualism in children) at home by yourself.

While I also agree with many others who said school would benefit your son, I completely agree with what hornblower said above. It is my experience, too.

 

I grew up in East Asia and first came to America at the age of 28. Now I'm 34 and this is my 3rd year in the U.S. so my English is not that good, either. The difference in our situation is that my husband is an American, so we're a dual-language family who mostly speak English at home (because my husband can't speak my native language at all).

 

My son who turns 5 next month came to America at 3 not knowing any English. He was fluent in my native language but had forgotten most of it and picked up English quickly to a fluent level like in 6 months. Attending preschool and watching TV definitely helped his English immensely. I pulled him out of our local private preschool in the mid-year and have been homeschooling him for pre-K only because he was not learning anything new academically in that outrageously expensive school and there's no public pre-K option in this area. There were times when I was seriously considering continuing to homeschool for K and up as well, but we're most likely to send him to a PS K in our next destination this fall, for social time and English immersion. I will afterschool him and have him tested for a GT IEP. My son is fairly advanced academically across the board for his age and we're a military family who move frequently so we do have many reasons to consider homeschooling, but I simply can't create the language rich immersion environment at home by myself that he will need in order to pursue selective higher education and career goals in the States. Using a variety of solid and handholding homeschool materials and participating in local homeschool co-ops and extracurricular activities would not be enough for this. I do have that unnatural feeling of speaking foreign language to my own kids all the time when I speak English to them, but it's even harder for me to speak my native language and keep consistency because my husband would feel left out every time. My son has already resisted to learn my native language saying "Mommy, you're the only person who speaks this language. No one else does. Why don't you just speak English to me like you do to daddy?" *sigh* I still speak it to him now and then, teach him how to read and write in it and read books in that language aloud to him every night. However, I don't think he will ever become "fluent" in it unless we move back to my home country and spend at least a few years there.

 

Raising children to be "true" bilinguals is no simple task, even though both parents are native speakers of the second language. Learning a second language to a fluent level, not just a conversational level, and maintaining both languages academically and socially takes a major investment in time and life-long endeavor. Not many Americans seem to understand this. If you really want to achieve this goal, in your situation (where both parents are non-native English speakers with no experience of attending K-12 schools in the U.S.), I think it'd be a good idea to take an advantage of creating your own "immersion island" at home by speaking your native language exclusively and doing extracurricular activities and supplementary academic works at home while sending him to American public school full-time so that he can have enough exposure and build the strong foundation in English. If he's too "baby-ish" for his grade, there is a redshirt option; if he is advanced in certain subjects, there are gifted education programs. Look into those options in your district.

 

Good luck! :grouphug: