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    Joined: May 2011
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    Curriculum Compaction?

    DS is at the end of his first grade year with an ability placement charter. Currently, he's in second grade reading and third grade math. (His reading ability is much higher, but his handwriting is age appropriate, thus the second grade placement.)

    He's a compliant child who will do what is asked, even if he doesn't want to, with some complaints and loss of attention, however.

    His end-of-the-year conference is coming up and I want to ask about compacting the curriculum next year. I don't know if this is appropriate or not. He has commented on having to do, "Long division, again?!", and this is what has made me think he really does not NEED more practice. But at the same time, I've seen him make silly mistakes after completing many, many, many of the same type of problem. (I really attribute this to boredom, though.) Assuming next year's math will be more of the same pace, I want to introduce the idea of compacting at the meeting.

    What exactly has compacting done for your child? I mean, other than combating the boredom of repeatedly demonstrating mastery of a subject? How should I ask for compaction?

    I'm sorry if this is disjointed. It's something that has been on my mind over the last couple of months and I'm really not sure if it's appropriate for DS or not. I suppose I'm testing the water here.

    Btw: His MAP testing results will be available to us at this meeting. His beginning of the year results placed him at the 99.9% for reading and math in his grade. Our state identifies gifted children from K-12. Should I ask for a formal id if I get push-back from the school on compaction?

    Last edited by Ametrine; 05/30/14 05:00 PM. Reason: added detail
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    My daughter is also at a charter school with individualized levels. This may not be true everywhere, but I have found that everyone says no if I ask for compacting. However, we have been able to negotiate that my daughter can do a few problems to demonstrate mastery and then move on to the next assignment (instead of having to work through all of the problems). It isn't a pretest system like is commonly recommended, but seems to be more easily accepted by some schools.

    My daughter likes this approach much better. It does mean that she gets through the curriculum much faster. However, it doesn't increase depth of learning and doesn't help to make the work more interesting. That would require specialized assignments for her, which would be better but more effort for the teacher. I have sent in her Art of Problem Solving book and the teacher says she can supplement with that, but it has been hard to actually do. We will be working on that more in the fall.

    Reading/language arts is my daugher's favorite subject and that has gone extremely well with this system because she spontaneously adds to the assignments. It has worked less well for math because she has less enthusiasm for it and there is no opportunity for her to gain enthusiasm.

    If your child actually works with other children and a teacher all working on the same material, that can help. Realistically, if your child compacts material and most others don't pass the pretests (or sample questions), then it is had for teachers to have time to work with them individually and they can end up doing lots of worksheets or computer work. Just being assigned to a higher grade level doesn't increase the speed of the class.

    Last edited by apm221; 05/31/14 05:11 AM.
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    Originally Posted by Ametrine
    What exactly has compacting done for your child? I mean, other than combating the boredom of repeatedly demonstrating mastery of a subject? How should I ask for compaction?

    Okay-- we've done compaction-- BUT-- there are some catches in the how of it, and it often involves a certain level of don't-ask-don't-tell on the part of parents, student, and teachers with respect to administration.

    apm really identifies some of the problems that we've had with this strategy all along, I'm afraid--

    1. Do just a few still means spending a lot of time demonstrating THAT you know. Often again and again, since curriculum is spiraling in most subjects now. This was bad news.

    2. Supplementing is hard for teachers to keep track of, for some reason. Well, I know why-- it's that teachers have too much other stuff to keep track of in the first place, and things like this (especially with compliant, pleasant children) just seems to fall through the cracks.

    3. Reading/L.A.-- yes, easy enough to add to assignments, read all of the reading selections (not just "pick one") etc. BUT-- at its heart, this doesn't really supply differentiation if the work itself is not challenging to begin with. DD has never done "spelling" work. It would have been most appropriate when she was in 3rd grade (er-- well, before then, probably, but she wasn't in formal schooling until then)-- but by then the selections were SO far beneath her literacy level that all we could reasonably do with it to make it meaningful was have her pretest the entire year in about five sessions covering 6 weeks each. She missed four words in three years' worth of curriculum, btw-- this is what I mean by not being at an appropriate level. She might have been motivated by a spelling bee, but we didn't have access to any through local channels.

    4. There is simply no getting around the fact that some children are doing the same work in a fraction of the time, and getting a fraction of the 'learning opportunity' from that work. This is a placement mismatch, and merely compacting often does little to truly solve it. If the work is already too easy, then compaction isn't a great solution unless you're pairing it WITH another recommended solution (like acceleration).

    ~~~~~~~

    We used compaction with radical acceleration, and also with the ability to enrich materials (literature selections), plus with the ability to limit the amount of time invested in that kind of thing on a daily basis (virtual school). Even that has been a struggle because the curriculum is simply meant for NT learners-- it's not deep enough (and worse, it punishes students who know too MUCH too early), and a lot of it winds up feeling like busy-work because of the repetition.

    Compaction + acceleration seems to work the best with willing administrators, because it assuages their disquiet about "gaps" and because if a child CAN do it, then it's not as though this is an option that "all the parents" are going to want for their kids, too. But this is only a good solution if you intend to accelerate, and it's only a temporary one, probably, with HG+ learners. Even two grades up, the pace and depth is still constructed with NT learners in mind. Compaction also doesn't solve the problem caused by spiraling curriculum-- the fact is, there's still going to be a lot of time wasted on material that the student already has complete mastery of, and they feel frustrated by not learning-- or worse, they still learn that schooling is about showing what you know, not learning what you do not.


    To that last, I'd add that compaction and pretesting is only really a good idea if you have a notion of where your child will top out (currently, of course) and whether or not you're willing to effectively go there in terms of acceleration. It's IMO/IME not a very good idea to spend two years slowly pretesting your child's way through the next five grade levels if s/he isn't learning much along the way-- because it's ultimately still a waste of time, foremost. The other problem is that if +5 grade levels is about where "authentic learning opportunity" overtakes "standard curricular offerings in the classroom" you may be out of luck no matter what, unless you have an administration that is singularly visionary and helpful. I'm told that they do exist. wink This also assumes that YOU would be okay with a placement like that. I think that most parents begin to have serious misgivings beyond about +2 grade levels out of sync with agemates.

    Last edited by HowlerKarma; 05/31/14 07:46 AM.

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    We use compaction in a virtual school, and it works fairly well. Instead of skipping (missing, with possible gaps) a whole year's course, you just go faster through the courses, and cover 2 or 3 years material in one year. In the online lessons you can just skip over any unnecessary repeated material, extra explanations, extra practice (which are provided for those who need it, and are optional) and move faster through the material without wasting too much time. In other words the courses are designed to be compactible, and make it easy to skip busy work and repetition and move on. The courses still might not give needed challenge to the best students, but at least a lot of time wasting is removed.

    So compaction is a good idea if you can get it to work. (At least it's better than some alternatives.)


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