Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy how do you know how much to accelerate

Great question. I think they think they know what they are doing. They have no clue. But this has actually been a gift. Given that DS hasn't had those years of instruction and he only attends class 20% of the time, he is still doing well. I am actually glad that they set it up this way. We'll see if THEY can recognize this. I am already doubtful. I talked to DS again and he is certain that he wants to stay with them and is now pissed that the school is asking him to continue with first grade. We have two such over the top psych reports to send to the school now. They would be complete idiots if they didn't recognize what is needed as written in the reports.

Yesterday, DS7 forgot to bring home his math worksheet. But he wanted to work on a math worksheet. So, we found some free worksheets online and flipping through topics and he wanted 6th grade statistics. So, I print a sheet out with questions on mean, mode, and median and some "find the mean" problems.

OK, so mild surprise to me, he knows the terms and knows how he is supposed to calculate mean. But he has some problems wrong from misreading to mistranslating (thinking the problem had 5 rather than 4 items, etc.)

So, that is one of the acceleration problems. Mean, median, mode are math terms and calculating averages, not bad. Really, hardly more knowledge in most of K-5 math than rules in a game like Monopoly. But, there are a lot of secondary skills, heuristics, sanity checks, etc. that are supposed to develop through practice, play, and exposure to various problems and such.

From above, in each of DS's mistakes the mean value was outside the bounds. I pointed this out and we talked about sanity checks and rereading problems. So, they can accelerate as fast as they can, but school and online videos are rarely going to offer the direct metacognitive support for the secondary skills they did not give themselves time to develop.

Curriculum focused standardized tests are more often going to focus on the direct testing of specific element knowledge and application. They can become poor indicators of actual mastery that would include the full range of secondary skills.

You have to be very careful. We decided on no acceleration. Well kind of no acceleration. Declining acceleration is unusual in this group I know.

My son in 1st grade went to 2nd grade math and reading. In 2nd grade he went up to 4th grade math and reading and also joined in the 4th grade book club. In 3rd grade on to 5th. He then had maxed out what this school had to offer. He is now in 4th grade same school. He is doing AoPS pre algebra at home and has a tutor once a week. He has participated in several Saturday classed at the local universities. He has participated in 2 different math competitions that are entry math counts. MAP Reading and Language scores went up over 10 points this spring. Math MAP went up 16 points.

I guess in a nut shell I am saying, I have no idea what to do with these kids but he is still growing like a weed in every way.

There is a local private school that adopts the same philosophy as AoPS.
We are entertaining the idea of sending him there. It goes through 8th grade.
The downside is the price tag.

that is our story minus a book or two.

The presenting issue for us was that DS who used to LOVE SCHOOL started to ask to stay home. After a while, we thought.that something was up. Sure, he had this high scores, but we actually weren't very educated about school refusal and profoundly gifted children. Then all sorts of other academic acting out started. We got him tested andevaluated and it all started to make sense. When he was given higher level work, he stopped complaining about school when he started to attend the fourth grade math class once a week, he started skipping to school. So at this point, honestly, I don't really care about the gaps anymore (if in fact there are any). It's where he needs to be now. If he spends all of next year being a B student, I would be thrilled with that. If he has two months of working hard to make up gaps - fantastic. Because I NOW know that in another year or two we will be right back in the same situation.

WOW. Thank you, ZenScanner, for that. THAT. That is what I have been trying to put my finger on with mathematics instruction and what distresses my DH and I about the way her school is tending to do things.

This is a real problem with flipped classroom methodology in practice, too-- it neglects the same heuristic factors. I do think that the only way that most students-- even PG students-- pick those things up is by NEEDING them, or seeing someone else apply them in real time.

There's no teachable moment quite like "Wait-- WHA?? Why did you just do that??"