Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Subject Acceleration & Timetabling

For those of you who have experience with single subject acceleration, what sort of ways have you circumvented the dreaded timetabling issues that arise?

Had a meeting today re Science acceleration for my 12yo ds & while Head of Science at his school seems in favour, we're struggling to work out how it can be coordinated with the resulting timetable clashes.

Any creative ideas / experience would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Cassandra

Yes, I mean scheduling issues. Not only do the missed Science & the advanced one not line up, but the advanced class options line up with either all his History or all his German classes (both favourites!) Short of either dropping one of these classes, which is really not an option, or working independently on course content during the time he should be in a missed class, which is obviously not the optimal solution, I don't know how we can make it work. I had expected the advanced science to be scheduled at the time of a different current subject for each period per week, so he might miss 1/4 of his scheduled lessons in 4 different subjects & be able to make up the work in his usual science time - shows how much I know about high school scheduling!
I guess I was just hoping someone might have experience in this area & have ideas as to what might have worked for them that I can try & apply to this situation.

Hi Dottie,

Sorry, I should have explained myself better. All my son's other classes are in 8th grade (first year of high school here) & all on the same campus. So thank goodness I'm not contemplating trying to coordinate travel between campuses - now that would be scary!

Actually, we're hoping we may have found a solution if he can accelerate in German as well. It seems that just as the Year 9 Science class is held at the same time as Year 8 German, so Year 9 German is held when my son has his regular Yr 8 Science class. So if he accelerates in both, no problems with the timetable. I'll have to find out if his German teacher thinks he can cope with Yr 9 German, though.

The only other problem we have at his school is that all classes in Yr 9 go away for a 5 week extended camp during term, one class at a time. If the class he accelerates into hasn't already been away, I'm not sure what will happen when they go & he's left without a science class for 5 weeks!

Hi Cassandra,
Subject Accelerations are wonderful, but scheduling is the downside. If everyone is flexable, then a lot can be accomplished. You can always work on Greman a bit over the summer to help fill in the gaps.

Best Wishes and Welcome,
Grinity