Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School 2nd/3rd Grade 2011-2012

I never liked to go either. DS10 didn't want to go at 6 and doesn't want to go at 10. Things are better than they were but ew still have the conversation about once a week. He wants to be a mathematician though and he knows he is probably in school for the long haul.

If he says he doesn't like to go it could be social, he may not like the teacher, etc. DS is so much happier now that he's got it going on socially and has found kids that are not just fun and nice but are academic peers to him. That was a BIG deal. Have you probed into those areas? Sometimes it's not the academics. DS doesn't like the long day and the home work. If we could do 3 days on, 3 days off, shorter days and no homework then he'd be thrilled! lol

If it's not making his life miserable and he is going to school without making your life miserable I wouldn't worry too much. I would gently probe to see what's going on. Have a meeting with the teacher to find out what he does at free times, who he eats lunch with, are they making them square dance in PE? etc...

Thanks Antsy-Pants. DS complains much less now that he's at a school for HG kids, and his classmates are a great group. He has a couple kids he likes to play with at recess, and he does like going to the afterschool classes (chess/science). This year's teacher is tougher than last year's, but DS complained about school last year too- and that was the most fun teacher imaginable.

If asked, he says school is a waste of his time (translated to "I would rather be playing Minecraft"), and that he'd like to skip more grades if possible. I think it's just the way it will be for him. He has hardly any homework beyond reading 30 minutes a day and studying his spelling (which are extremely hard words commonly misspelled by adults - first time DS has had to study anything!)

I would also like to have 3 days on, 3 days off, and shorter days for my work!

Thanks for letting me vent, anyway.

If DS had his way it would be Minecraft 24/7!

Well, my DS5's poison/crack of choice is Angry Birds, which I restricted pretty heavily. Until I had to keep 3 kids 7 and under busy on a 16 hours transcontinental trip. His limit on the way out was 3 hours. He barely played 2 hours on the way back. And there has been a bit less whining about the game since then.

So... Maybe not?

We had conferences this evening for ds8 - first time with letter grades, so kind of cool. His 4th grade math teacher popped in - says ds is grouped with the highest of his 4th grade kids, and doing great. They do stuff in 3 week rotations - he says ds is challenged when they start, but by the beginning of the 2nd week has it mastered. He's extremely well behaved, no problems whatsoever.
His 3rd grade teacher was also full of praise - she is doing her best to challenge him. His only behavior problem is "blurting" - which has been his only problem in all grades so far. We talked about ds maybe learning Latin/Greek, and is open to me sending a book in with him if I can find something suitable. Any ideas ?

Wish I had ideas for you st. pauli girl about the school thing with your DS. Working in schools though I see a lot of kids that have fun all day and enjoy themselves and then their parents tell us that the kids give them a hard time about going and don't want to come. It's a little confusing sometimes. Maybe the day just seems too long and he is just in that mindset of saying he doesn't like school. Lots of kids say it. Our DS7 is definitely in the minority as he has never complained about school, never said he doesn't want to go, and never said it is boring. He actually rarely says anything is boring which is odd to me....but he occasionally will tactfully say things like "I think that's a little too easy for me." But hearing about your DS's school, it sounds awesome! sounds like you have found the right school...but it's still a school. : ) I hope for your sake he gets tired of the complaining because that has to be hard for you when you know it's a good school and think things are going well. Good luck! How did conferences go?? Mine isn't until next week! My daughters is this Wednesday for pre-k though.

Minor update: DS is essentially receiving no math instruction at all for the first half of the year. :| A follow-up meeting is scheduled for December 1st. In the meantime the school is getting input from the middle school math department head (I don't know why, because I don't think he's ready for middle school math, i.e. sixth grade here) and school district math consultant, and I'm to investigate several online math programs with DS6 to hopefully pick one.

The new assistant principal's original plan at the last meeting was to have DS learn the same concepts as the rest of his second-grade class, but in more depth-- yes, (re)learning about adding single- and double-digit numbers but in more depth, perhaps either doing the equivalent of a book report on the subject, or creating problems for the rest of the class. The assistant principal said that DS6 needs to stay at the same level as his grade peers (too late by at least a couple of years) because otherwise, there'd be a problem when he needs more than fifth grade math, but the school can't provide it. I shot the idea down repeatedly in the meeting; I finally asked whether with that investigatory approach and no other instruction DS6 would be expected to show increased math understanding at the end of the year via higher scores on the MAP test (the local assessment tool of choice), stay where he was, or perhaps backslide a bit.

I'm not happy. Doing in-class work alone on the computer isn't the same as being taught by a good math teacher, and will serve to alienate him at least as much as another skip or a math pull-out would. I have half a mind to just tell my son to do what he wants during math time at school, and teach him after school. This year was supposed to cure the need for that, though. I really can't believe that the solution so far has been to continue to plan to make plans, while he spends a half year learning no math at school.

I'm sorry to hear about the math, locounu. It sounds like a meeting we had with our DS's local school before we transferred him to the HG school. Except they were telling us that he wasn't ready for higher math because his writing wasn't good enough. Ugh. We did finally get that school to agree to let DS test out of the units and then go to the GT teacher for new material, but we didn't stick around long enough to see if it would work. That must be so frustrating for you and your DS. When our DS was in kindy and not getting enough, we did join EPGY and DS did that at home after school, which worked OK. If you're willing and able to teach your DS, it might not be a bad plan versus getting absolutely nothing new at school.

shellymos, thanks for the support! I guess a lot does have to do with personality and individual kids. Lately I've been getting more of "I wish I never went to this school. If I had to take a test again to get in, I would purposely get all the answers wrong so I wouldn't qualify." We know it's a great fit though, and he's doing great. And the conference went well. DS is doing great academically, and the teacher said she has seen no issues with him being a grade skipper (except that it might take more practice to get up to some of the other kids in writing). I am really happy with DS's school. I hope your conferences go well too.

Thanks, st pauli girl. At one point last year we dealt with something similar. IIRC at one point DS-then-5's occasional 2-reversals were used as evidence that he was in an appropriate placement for math.

I hoped that this year would resolve all our issues for at least a couple of years going forward, and the plan from last year was supposed to have been implemented by the start of this year; instead we will have gotten solved math-wise until at least half the year is gone, if then.

We've had a lot of struggles this year, and now the teacher seems to have become a bit of an obstacle, but is less open about it than last year's teacher. Last year's teacher was open about her beliefs about what was best for DS6, and acted accordingly. This year's teacher ignores attempts at contact via email. She cut short DS's MAP test for reading, and didn't provide him with paper for the first part of the math test (he still tested quite well, though he was stuck trying to do long division and multi-digit multiplication in his head). We've seen a steady stream of things like this.

I wish we had access to a gifted school. One gifted charter was proposed to the NH DOE, but somehow during the approval process morphed into an open-enrollment school with only 52 slots, opening in 2012. I will probably apply, but I'm not holding my breath for that to be the solution either.

We got DD's report card from her GT magnet today--straight Es--and met with her teacher. Talked mostly about emotional and social stuff in the conference. DD is clearly doing very well academically and having no trouble with the curriculum. I'm a little mixed about some aspects of the school still (miainly math and reading--hmm), but pleased with the the meatiness of the science, writing, and SS material, and with the independent projects they do.