Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments only works 1 grade level ahead?

HI everyone, so it was confirmed with me yesterday that my sons gifted class will always work only 1 grade level ahead and at the same pace. This means that even though DS can (and enjoys) books that are at a 7th and even 8th grade level, they will only do 5th grade level stuff (he's currently in a Gifted 4th grade class). I was under the impression it was a "self contained" gifted class when he first started 2 years ago but knowing now that all kids will work on the same exact thing and only 1 grade level ahead I'm nervous this isn't the best kind of gifted program. So....what is your child's gifted program like? Similar? Different??

Thanks a bunches
Cola

Working one year ahead probably works best for the mildly gifted, kids with an IQ of about 110 to 130. Which is of course not the top 2% of the cohort, rather the top 25%. Makes for impressive numbers in the gifted program and makes 25% of parents happy. The moderately gifted kids probably do okay as well, but for the HG+ cohort, it's no more than a bandaid.

A program like this would more or less correspond to the high achiever track where I live. The local gifted program (130 or above, but expanded to 120 or above now, though so far it's skewed higher due to most parents preferring high achiever track for their kids) takes the regular high achiever curriculum and telescopes it by year, using about 75% of the time for the regular curriculum, and the rest for enrichment.

Similar, sadly.

My DD9 is skipped into 5th grade with daily GT pull-outs for math and ELA, so effectively, this should be a two-grade skip. She's currently complaining that both pull-outs are doing the same things they did last year.

Long division? AGAIN?

Sure enough, look at CCSS for Grade 6 Math:
http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/6/introduction/

Tigerle points out what I was thinking as I thought about your post this morning, Cola.

That is, acceleration is generally not a good solution for HG/HG+ students when used as a SOLE means of accommodation or differentiation.

The reason is that using multiple modes of accommodation simultaneously is often a better way of getting a truly adequate balance between finding true academic peers, gaining an authentic social experience with a peer group, etc.

So sure, a PG student at 7yo might be academically best off if placed with 7th or 8th grade cohort, but socially? Not-so-much-- this is probably putting it mildly, come to think of it.

So the other strategies are also important when you're talking about higher LOG:

a. Acceleration, sure (probably unavoidable, but ideally just a year or two)

b. compacting/telescoping

c. deeper/richer/differentiated work/assignments

d. enrichment outside of regular curricular offerings


For example; my DD COMPACTED K through 5 into just about 3 years, then was tracked into the "gt" course offerings in middle school, which included literature electives, math acceleration and higher level instruction/assessments, etc. etc. She was also just 9 years old and in 7th grade-- so accelerated 2y (or was it 3 already? I forget). Her peers were high-achievers and MG kids 2-4y older than she was. This was a more or less adequate peer group until she was about 12-13 and in AP high school coursework, and then she started to outstrip them again, at which point we encouraged extracurriculars to take up the slack, because we didn't want to accelerate her any further due to the age disparity and her "under construction" status with executive function. We spent some of that extra energy hot-housing executive skills in the 3y run-up to college.

I still think that was a reasonably good series of compromises, if imperfect. Perfect didn't exist as an option for her.

I don't know ds IQ only his cogat scores but he's just so bored I think if he were challenged more he would do better but they won't go above 5th grade curriculum.

Sounds similar to the program my DS was in 4-6th.

But keep in mind my son's class didn't just do the next grades material. What they did try to do was have "deeper" discussions about topics and more complex projects. The teacher expected more detailed writing. The teachers spent less time 'explaining' what to do, and dealing with discipline problems that they could have time to add interesting. Much of what is normally seat work was set home as homework, so they had time to do group projects at school. They did MORE material with more complex problems instead of accelerating all the kids even more grades.

If what your son needs is grade acceleration perhaps you need to talk with the school about that.

Really, for 6th grade? Acceleration might not help us, either, then! DD9 is in G&T math this year in a school following the CCSS (she is not yet subject accelerated), and SHE is also doing long divison, again. We have been speculating acceleration might help, but if that is CCSS - they are also doing that in G&T 4th. The "deeper" approach they are taking here is too slow for DD.

Really, the G&T population should be treated like a special ed population, with all of the students potentially needing something different. In our case, we have seen the G&T students all being taught the same thing, and "deeper" is the buzzword this year. Unfortunately, I am starting to hear this as, "slower" or in our case, too slow for DD. We are trying to see if we can improve the fit by working with the school.

Same thing....long division and double digit multiplication being taught for longer amounts of time but in different approaches. His class is now working on double digit multiplication using factor trees. And they are all being taught the exact same even though part of the class is high achieving and some are gifted. Its so disappointing.

Well, we've hashed out the numbers already in the earlier thread about widening access that got locked...according to the probabilities that I didn't understand but take a statisticians word for, even in large metropolitan areas it might be difficult to reliably fill a congregated classroom with HG+ kids every year. One solution at least for larger cities (I don't care about district sizes, merely geographical accessibility) could be mixed age classrooms (three grades, the montessori style) with highly individualized Instruction and keeping the kids with the highest LOGs carefully at the lowest end of the age distribution. (Which of course needs highly specialized teachers, or maybe a very enthusiastic volunteer from teach first - I am sure even an MG grad from a highly selective school could teach a PG kid, or at the least help a PG kid learn.
Of course, the smaller the student population of the area, the lower the LOG needed to be admitted in order to fill a classroom like that. However, I'd think that an area would have to be extremely rural in order to go as far down as the 75th percentile - which isn't to say I do not believe that those kids do not need accelerated instruction too, I believe they do.
Maybe someone here can run the math. I can't.

cola, my children's gifted program in elementary school consisted of pull-outs once per week where the kids worked on special projects outside the normal curriculum. I don't think my kids got much out of it, other than the opportunity to be with other gifted kids - which was huge for them! They loved that about the program, plus the projects were fun for them.

Elementary school (when we were in public) wasn't ever going to be a good fit for gifted kids in the schools my kids were in, and to be honest, I don't think my kids would have benefited from a grade skip, because grade skips just meant moving up, not picking up the pace or depth of instruction. Our private school worked much better, not because it was private, but because the focus was on meeting individual students where they were and challenging each student to reach for a lot more, not mass-producing good scores on state testing. FWIW, the options in middle school and high school open up quite a bit (here) over elementary - because you can start to subject accelerate more easily with multi-class schedules. OTOH, it's still not great. My ds is in HG classes in high school, but the pace and depth isn't what I would have expected, and we've been discouraged from allowing him to reach higher - the emphasis seems to be more on grades and SAT scores than learning for the sake of learning.

polarbear