Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Ideas when no reading teaching needed--updated

We will soon meet to discuss a plan for DS6, who has been IDed as gifted based on IQ test. The school is very familiar with him and he was accelerated part-time to 1st last year on their initiative. The area he is most advanced in achievement-wise at this time is reading. Though I do not have numbers (the school may), he reads books like Harry Potter at home. He emphatically does not need any reading or phonics instruction. His spelling is also very good, and his handwriting and writing are good (not nearly at that level, but good--like 2nd grade level or so).

I would like to ask that he not have to complete reading and phonics instruction. But what should he do instead? In other areas he is "enrichable" within a range close to true grade level, but here he kinda isn't. Should he just read? Do a writing journal? Reading comp workbooks? Should he do another subject? Assume unusual cooperation from the school. However, his teacher has a lot of kids with lower literacy and will be busy. There may be a couple of other kids in his class who are strong emergent readers, possibly ahead of grade.

I come from the camp that everyone can use more instruction/thought in their reading skills.

Can he discuss the books he reads? Can he synthesize material? Can he make inferences, and harder for young kids, inferences about the motivations of characters? I'd go for whatever skills he does not have in place and take aim at that.

As for getting it done in the school - this level of differentiation takes teacher time or peers or both. It's hard. I spent 5 years discussing books with DD before school was able to take up these skills.

Would they consider continuing to cross-grade him in language arts?

Can they send him up to second (or even third) for reading? If not, can they group the stronger readers in the grade with their own teacher?

Not sure if this would work, but could he independently work on Michael Clay Thompson books? My son does this at home by himself. I just "check" that he understands the concepts once a week. Might be a good supplemental idea. Also, I took over writing questions to required reading (I gave). Maybe your dc could work on answering these type questions during phonics.

My ds7 sounds quite similar (in this post) to yours. He could not tolerate the boring grade level (even the high group) work. I did a lot of extra work to help support him, but it has been worth it so far. I think public school is not equipped to challenge kids that are years ahead- and got there with zero instruction.

Good luck. Keep us posted!

Sorry--I didn't mean to imply he could not benefit from any type of reading instruction! Only that I did not want him to have to sit through first-grade phonics and reading lessons, and that he is at this point so far past early-grade reading mechanics that differentiating isn't very easy in class.


Well, I don't know. This was promised to us, as a matter of fact. But we think he has been placed with a small group (2-4, I think?) of other competent (possibly gifted) kids. He had no such cohort last year. Because of this placement I kind of doubt they will want to continue the PT acceleration, because it could create the expectation that all would be accelerated. It could be that these kids are also very good readers, but in my experience there are not many 1st graders reading at this level even among gifted kids. (I don't mean to sound snotty. My own DD was not reading this well at this age, either.)

I think his other needs can be met in the classroom without too much trouble, but in this area he is just kind of out there. Last year he did do a journal, which was great. I am happy to buy materials and the school is fine with him using those, though it might be weird if there are other kids with advanced skills. Last year I sent in some reading comp books, which I think he used some. They weren't...great, but I have not found any that are. I will look at these Thompson books.

He will also be receiving some pull-out programming, but no idea how much or what it will be yet.

I think it's perfectly valid to ask the school what their plan is for this year.

I looked at Michael Clay Thompson and it doesn't seem quite right--seems like it isn't something you can pick up here and there, but a full course of study needing quite a bit of instructor support.

DS can write pretty good short answers--a few sentences at a time. Surely there must be some decent reading workbooks out there? (Ha ha ha. I don't know why I'm asking this when I see the stuff DD10 has to do.)

At my daughters school they told us before she entered first grade that they do not teach reading, they teach the first graders reading skills that they may have missed out on by teaching themselves to read. What these skills are precisely, I am not sure.
Just something to think about!

I've been looking at the Evan-Moor Daily Reading Comprehension series for one of my own. It's designed for use in 15-minute bursts, basically, and would ideally be briefly teacher-introduced each day, but looks fairly self-explanatory (or he could get the teacher version, which has both directions and full-size worksheets in it, and read the teacher explanations himself, as they're scripted). Each worksheet has a reading passage, followed by one short answer question and a handful of multiple-choice questions. It's laid out a week at a time, emphasizing a particular reading comprehension strategy each week. The reading passages are self-contained for each day. Since it's supposed to be a supplement to a full language arts curriculum, the worksheets are pretty stand-alone, and could easily be done here and there. He could do as many or as few worksheets as he wanted to do on any particular day. There are books from grade 1 to grade 8. It's a teacher resource, which might have more legitimacy in the eyes of the school.