What grade level is Kumon Japanese D for?
Kumon D materials are equivalent to 4th grade primary schools.
If you started Kumon in grade 2 or 3, it is standard to finish the D materials in grade 4. If a family is putting a lot of effort into Kumon, they may reach this point in grade 1. If they have reached this point in the older grades, it is outstanding both in terms of the family's commitment and the child's ability.
What kind of materials is Kumon Japanese D I?
Kumon gives examples of its teaching materials on its official website. First, let's check the description of the D I teaching materials.
The Kumon Japanese DⅠ course aims to develop the ability to quickly understand the topic and narrative parts of a compound sentence, as well as to accurately read the various information contained in the sentence. Learn to organise the contents of sentences according to the topic, and introduce the reading attitude of "grasping in a coherent manner", which is the main learning task of D II. Of the 200 Kanji characters in the 4th grade, 104 new Kanji characters are studied to expand vocabulary. In addition, using the radicals as a starting point, a comprehensive review of the kanji studied in D I is conducted.
In the C material, there were questions on extracting important information from a single group of sentences, such as "5W1H" and "question and answer"; in the DII material, these groups will change from one to several, and DⅠ is a preparation for this. Also, the number of Kanji characters dealt with in the materials has increased.
What kind of Kumon Japanese DII materials are they?
Let's continue to check the explanation of the DII teaching materials.
The Kumon Japanese DII teaching materials cultivate the ability to grasp the content of sentences in units of 'clusters' for each topic, and to read sentences in clusters with an awareness of the topic. Of the 200 Kanji characters in the fourth grade, 96 new Kanji characters are studied to expand the vocabulary. In addition, students review all the kanji learnt in DII using the radicals as a starting point.
On an ongoing basis, there will be questions to capture sentences in a 'coherent' manner.
What is required in Kumon Japanese D is an improvement in reading comprehension itself.
The ability to grasp sentences in a coherent manner is, when you get right down to it, an improvement in reading comprehension itself.
For example, you can answer basic questions in Japanese for the examination if you can grasp the gist of the passage before and after the question. If the question is more difficult, you will need to grasp the gist of the whole sentence and answer it. If you are a well-read person, you can look at the table of contents to get the gist of the book as a whole and then read the necessary sections carefully. Furthermore, if you are an expert in a certain field, you can read not only the book or article in isolation, but also understand the position of the article in the various studies related to that field.
Increasing coherence leads to an improvement in reading comprehension itself. Therefore, it can be said that the "ability to read sentences in chunks" handled in DII is the very first step in improving reading comprehension.
In Kumon Japanese D, it is easy to feel that "I don't understand the problem?" It is easy to feel "I don't understand the problem?
One of the problems often heard around the D materials is that children "do not understand the content and just copy the problem sentences".
From an adult's point of view, it may be a matter of course to understand the content of a sentence by grasping it as a coherent whole. Therefore, when they see a child working on D materials that require comprehension of the content, they are shocked to realise for the first time that the child does not understand the text as well as they expect. In addition, Kumon materials are about repetition of the basics. When they start to be tested on their ability to understand the content, which is not knowledge, they often doubt whether the Kumon approach they have used so far will be effective.
However, understanding the content is not a skill that is acquired at the start of the D-learning materials, it is a skill that is acquired in the D-learning materials.
Many children may be confused because they are required to use their minds in a qualitatively different way than before. However, Kumon believes that not only the mere memorisation of knowledge, but also the use of the mind, such as understanding the content, can be acquired through a step-by-step approach and repetition. Rather than being shocked that they did not understand the content, it is preferable to think that they will be able to understand the content through this material.
Experience in processing large amounts of information leads to the Kumon Japanese D strategy.
In order to acquire the ability to grasp sentences as a coherent whole, it is effective to give them opportunities to process large amounts of information.
If you are not under any pressure, you will not realise the need to process sentences as a coherent whole. This is because if you read each sentence from the beginning, you will at least understand what is written in that one sentence. People who can read coherently may think that reading in that way takes too much time and does not allow them to understand the meaning of the sentence correctly. But for someone who doesn't know how to read coherently, what's wrong with being able to understand the sentence?
The only way to get out of this mindset is to feel the need to process information quickly and accurately.
For example, if you like books, you will find many books to read. But if you cannot grasp the content in a coherent way, it will take you a long time to read the book and you will lose track of what it says in the middle of reading it. If you are still curious to know what the book is about, you will go back to the book and try to read it all the way through. In the process, they will realise that they need to read in a different way.
Daily communication is also useful in terms of information processing. Conversations between friends are important, but what is useful here is a rather one-way communication. If you have a classmate who is a mentor or a geek in some field, you have the opportunity to teach him or her information that you don't know. People who are in a position to teach are often too knowledgeable to give a lot of unnecessary details. If your child can find a way to communicate with such people, he or she will become better at choosing and selecting information.
In the C materials, it was mentioned earlier that children learn to understand which information is important through familiarisation with stories, while in the D materials, it is important to have opportunities to read books like illustrated books that tell more and more about unknown and miscellaneous knowledge, rather than stories that naturally attract their interest. As a parent, it may be more effective to take an approach where you help your child to find and develop some area of intellectual curiosity.