What should they know junior infants

kilco

Hi everyone just wondering what sort of stuff they'd be doing at the moment. Trying to get informaion out of ds is like drawing blood from a stone. Should he know all his letters and be able to write them all etc. He was in play school last year?? I think he's too exhausted to be bothered telling me everyday, evry question is met with I don't know or remember.

E.T.

I wouldn't expect infants to know all of their letters really well until the end of Junior Infants. Some mightn't even reach this stage until they're into Senior Infants. It depends on the scheme the school or teacher use too. I use Jolly Phonics, and I'd expect that most of the kids would be familiar with most of the 42 sounds by the end of Senior Infants.

Most infant teachers will concentrate on improving the children's fine motor skills for a while before starting formal penmanship. We use jigsaws, threading, jigsaws etc until most of the kids are well able for writing. There's no point jumping straight into a skill that most kids aren't able for yet.

Infants don't realise that what they're doing in school is work at all. A lot of things are taught through play - Maths (sorting, classifying, addition, subtraction), Gaeilge, motor skills etc. It's more structured than play school as in there are learning objectives for the different tasks used. You might get a proper answer from your ds by first class!

byhookorbycrook

Infant cycle is a two year one, but as a (very general) idea: By the end of the year I'd expect a child to know letter names and sounds (the correct one!! M does not say "muh" but mmm)formation of lower case letters,numbers 1-10, simple shapes,colours and the junior infant sight vocabulary (common words they recognise that cannot be broken down phonetically,eg red can be sounded out rrr,,eh,dd and you'll get the word but a word like night has to be known on site because you can't "sound it out".)
Does the school use the Jolly Phonics programme?if so,they could be reading "decodable" (ie words can be broken down.)

You'll get the full curriculum here, but as I said, it's a two year cycle.

http://www.curriculumonline.ie/en/Primary_School_Curriculum/

kilco

thanks for the replies I'm just relieved now because he had done some letters in playschool but missed a lot of days in playschool so I was afraid he was behind because he didn't know them

E.T.

To be honest - a lot of the kids who "know" their letters and numbers from playschool have really only learned to parrot them off. There's a huge amount of time spent in infants on teaching sounds (not just letter sounds, but blends too) and how to use them to decode words.

The same goes for numbers - most of the kids I teach can identify numbers to ten coming into Junior Infants, but the work we do is on different number bonds, and understanding of numbers.

Big Bag of Chips

He's definitely not "behind" because he missed a few days in playschool. There are probably kids in his class who didn't go to playschool at all.

For junior infants he needs to be able to go to the toilet with confidence.. pull down and up trousers & underwear, wash and dry his hands etc. Put on and take off his coat, and manage his lunch box. Everything else... he has plenty time to learn!

Don't worry about not being told anything either. My senior infant "can't remember"... anything: who he played with or sat beside, what he did or had for lunch.

namurt

I have to second the post above. The most important thing a child can learn before starting school are basic independence skills. A teacher with a class of thirty or so children won't have time to zip/unzip every child's coat, open every lunch box (and it's contents e.g. bananas, frubes, yoghurts etc.)

The academic side of things I wouldn't worry about. Teachers have to start at the beginning and teach everyone together, allowing for children who haven't gone to pre-school.

kilco

thanks again everyone I need to chill out a bit I think.