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"Prefer working and playing with peers of the same gender." I often wonder how much of this is from historical social/gender norms. I believe educators need to be careful not to promote gender stereotypes by spending more learning time on male leaders (Presidents, scientists, inventors, etc.), lining up children by boys and girls or by comparing class performance by gender.

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"Better control of eyes and hands..." I gave up boardwork long ago when it became obvious that young children could not transfer information from a chalkboard to their paper. There's a developmental reason for that!

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"Listen well..." Due to longer focus on learning, increased understanding of other, and less physical fatigue. 30 years ago I realized that 1st grade learning would be so much easier for children if everyone was a year older. It's no surprise that there are countries where more formal literacy instruction begins at age 7 or 8.

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"Need physical release through time to play outdoors." Some things never change. Policy makers need to let children be children. Play is fundamental to child development

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Older 5 yr. olds - Social/Emotional pg. 6

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Older 5 yr. olds - Social/Emotional pg. 6

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"Need consistent rules and discipline..." should have further explanation. Ideally, the rules would come out of a class meeting and the consequences would not be punitive. Young children (read: everybody will) make mistakes. Discipline sounds too harsh. It might be more appropriate to say they need order and predictability.

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"Need a good deal of physical activity..." This is so true for most of the school year. It's unrealistic for school districts to expect children to sit to read, write, and compute for long stretches of time. Young children are built to move!

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Reversals of letters and numbers are very common in the beginning of the year. This is a frequent topic of discussion with parents in the fall. Most children will develop out of reversals.

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I agree that in the fall, many of the children are very verbal and they use more words than needed to convey an idea. This is not as challenging as the children who need more time to feel safe in the class before they share their ideas. The talkers can be good role models in the beginning of the year.

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I have found that many of my students in Sept. are restless, tire easily, and can only write for short periods of time. They would benefit from a half day of school during the first wee.

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"Sadly, school resembles more and more a miniature adult world of packed schedules, multitasking, and exhaustion." This is why I started the Facebook group, "I believe in childhood." bit.ly/ibichildhood
Everyone is welcome to join us.

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"...America as a whole, to this day, still devalues African Americans." The events from the past week prove that point. Shame on the POTUS.

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"Schools are often too quick to label the latter children learning disabled or remedial." The CCSS are punitive in the way they promote the labeling of children as "above, on, or below" grade level. Children that are "below" grade level are removed from my room for 30 minutes a day for RtI so they can "catch up." Many of those children simply need more time to develop.