Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Improving time management skills

Long division is one of those "pay your dues" kind of topics. You should do some of it, but don't grind it to death. It is laborious, and it's not surprising it takes a while (but one should just get stuck into it and get it over and done with). It is important to understand how and why it works, so later you'll have no problem with (e.g.)

x^3/(x-2)=x^2+2x+4+(8/(x-2))

She has actually always been pretty fast with calculations, though, so it's surprising to see her slow. One thing that has been psyching her out ths year is that this teacher is REALLY into showing your work, and neatly. DD is freaked out about this, esp after having a teacher last year who did not require work to be shown at all (DD took full advantage of that). I have caught her carefully writing out things like 3 x 4 = 12 and had to be like--uh, DD, the teacher knows you know that! She isn't sure what is required to show because she has no concept of what is "normal" to need to show.

Maybe it is all about cognitive dissonance. She knows the work is repetitive and pointless. Seriously, 5 and 4 digit manual division is almost just mean-spirited. Perhaps, she knows she wants to succeed and do well and prove her capabilities, but she also hates the idea of flushing that time away on tasks that never give the outcomes of Miyagi's "wax on, wax off." Maybe she is finding abstract solace in the precision and accuracy of execution.

I think many gifted kids know what they need to learn, and either resist externally imposed methods and suffer extrinsic trouble, or conform and experience intrinsic trouble.

Ah, had started mine, and came back to it; hadn't seen your latest. But "show your work" is a phrase I despise, because (talking about cognitive dissonance) it literally is asking for a lie from a kid who does stuff automatically.

She certainly has to show work for long division, but would prefer to just scribble things out in the margin as needed, not meticulously scribe every little thing. I personally feel like it should be up the kid--like, you can get partial credit for shown work, but if you don't want to show, okay. It's on you. (I guess this might be a bad idea for a poor student who is failing, but DD is far from this.)