Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School So howis it going?

I think science is different, because it's so incredibly broad...you could afterschool/enrich in science in a million ways and run little risk of overlap (I would choose slightly obscure things...as in, not germination or the 3 kinds of rock). We are a very sciencey family, so we essentially afterschool in science constantly, though it isn't bookwork. This helps a lot.

I don't want to sound like I'm defending the school, but it is hard for them when a child can easily go so far ahead. Would they let him work solo on something like Khan? I would think that might be your only option.

He's not going ahead of where he should be, he's just going where he goes. It's obviously going to be harder for them to accommodate someone with special needs, but they could be doing much more-- it's not that hard.

For instance, they could have looked at aggressive subject pullouts long ago, or another grade skip; there's been resistance not because those things would be tough, but because they are simply resistant to acceleration and have a weird no-double-acceleration policy. After a huge amount of pressure from us the principal finally admitted at the end of last year that DS obviously wasn't being served well and that an extra pullout was warranted at least for math, and that if one grade wasn't enough this year that they'd find the best grade level fit for him.

Honestly, except for transportation across school boundaries, I don't think it costs much at all for a school to find an appropriate grade level for a student. The pace remains a problem, but it's far better than sitting in a class that's below the student's level, and resets can happen periodically to somewhat accommodate for the pace.

Another option: the school could have given him enrichment, but not taken a half-assed approach. What happened at the start of last year was that the school delegated to the teacher, who didn't want to deal with the problem and shoved DS in a corner with some worksheets (fourth grade, too low for him), without any lessons or other input, and with erroneous grading of the worksheets to boot. Proper enrichment isn't that expensive, especially with parents volunteering to offload some of the work as we did. All the teacher would have had to do is approve the materials, and could have taken as active a role in selection and grading as she wished, or not.

We even suggested to the school that I afterschool him on math, but that he be allowed to work on material sent from home during math class. Again, the teacher could have vetoed or graded any or none of the material as she wished. This was attractive because it would have meant his time during class wasn't wasted, he would have needed minimal instructional time outside the school day, and he could study with the other students during the day, sitting in his regular classroom. They simply ignored these suggestions by suggesting alternatives, I think because they didn't want to admit at the time he wasn't being well served or that they found it hard to accommodate him.

So Khan Academy really isn't the only option, and I don't like the idea of my son getting all of his math learning from a computer anyway. I feel like a student has a right to a teacher, at least at this age. This implies to me some teaching either in class or at home which might be supplemented by a computer. Again, they've nixed the idea of us teaching him at home, but they've also not provided one single day of teaching at his appropriate level. My wish is simply that he learns at school and can actually be productive during the day.

Sure, but if the solution is to fix the program or allow acceleration, then it becomes the principal's problem. Whereas, if your child is simply held back, then it's not his problem.

True enough, until I and my wife make it our problem to make it his problem. :|

That's very sad. In the best possible situation a child would be able to pick up the pace later and suffer no ill effects from artificially retarded progress early on, but I'm worried that DS7 would suffer from a lack of challenge, aside from how much further back he would be set on his learning curve toward mastery (and is already set, unfortunately). I am pretty meek about initiating every push with the school, and honestly find the whole process stressful and distasteful, but I just worry that I'm not doing enough for him.

IMACS is cool. DS and I used to both work the challenge problems posted by IMACS on Facebook. He does enjoy some other math-related activities, and I think that those can help greatly to keep interest stimulated and develop problem-solving skills. I still don't want his progress through normal math skills development artificially slowed, though.

Right now DS3 is in puppy dog mode, and has to get involved in everything he sees his big brother doing. It's undeniably keeping him highly stimulated. Some things, like plugging together Mindstorms pieces, come more easily than others, like typing Java (his syntax sucks).

Oh, I don't mean to imply that we are enriching DS in ways we didn't enrich DD. The Flashmaster's been around for ages--in fact, we did get it when DD was asking to "play math" (or something) when she was younger but didn't want to write things down. She's pretty much aged out of it now although we'll need it briefly to memorize division tables. We do keep a very building-toy-oriented household here. (I should start a new thread on that. Need something new for Xmas.) Both kids love Legos, although it's not often done "by the book" here. But DD wouldn't want to do math classes online or anything like that. She would resist, and since her homework load is VERY heavy (at least an hour a day, usually more like 1.5 hours--she is 8), I would never push it. I did get her some logic workbooks, which she finds mildly diverting but isn't necessarily prone to picking up unless we're in the car or something.

We may be missing the boat a little bit. I hope not too much. There are trade-offs with this school. She's being stimulated in other ways. It's MUCH better than her previous school.

its just so depressing that the trade offs have to be so significant though. DS's school is fantastic in so many ways and so much better than previous also. But I find even in his school with a gifted population it seems to under pitch half the content while asking the kids to do a lot - if that makes sense. They do so much quite well which is what makes the science, engineering and other stuff like that so oddly underdeveloped.

DeHe

It certainly does make perfect sense--that's what we see as well. DD is certainly being taught to tote that barge, etc. I don't like to describe her HW here because it would be too identifying, but in terms of special projects, what she is asked to do was asked of me in perhaps 5th grade. She writes lengthy research reports and so on.

We see this as well. DD's school has a very heavy load of writing and reading, but it's not really as advanced as she could handle, and there's lots of repetition and worksheets.

To be fair, I don't feel we see a lot of repetition. They do move more quickly than the "nongifted" school--absolutely. They advertise it as such and it's correct. But it's not as fast as DD could go, and by all rights, she shouldn't be anywhere close to the most gifted/fastest kid in her class, going by her test scores.

Basically, on the whole, they work a year to a year and a half ahead, with special projects perhaps two years ahead in terms of expectations. They are extremely enriched by field trips and presentations and speakers. They work very hard, in a sort of collge prep tradition, despite the fact that this is elementary. They are not, however, individually accelerated. I have come to realize that we are getting something like a nice private school education at a poor public magnet. It's a bit weird. But it's the best thing available.