Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The "B" word

Bored, that is.
I know I've been a big proponent here about teaching kids that boredom is a fact of life, but I'm hearing that 'B' word come out of GS9's mouth a bit too often when he talks about school. Short term solutions are widening the gap between what he knows and the classroom material. I give him math challenge & logic books a couple years above his grade level, I keep him supplied with plenty of his choice reading material(fiction or class related non-fiction), he's in chorus, daily gifted program, art after school, scouts, and farm related activities. We're playing chess daily and starting 10-15 minutes of studying spanish together.
I thought all this extra stuff would be the solution to keeping the 'B' word at bay, but I think it's just making it more apparent to him that he's wasting time on classroom activites when he has more interesting things he could be doing.
I decided last school year that a skip is not in his best interest at this time, I wanted to get him to middle school where I'd advocate for a skip. Now I'm not sure. I don't want him to tune out of school now. His grades are really, really good but he's starting to blow them off as, "yah, another 100, yawn".
I'm trying to find something he's really passionate about. He likes a LOT of things but he likes company when doing work so he hasn't dug deep into anything at school. Conferences are coming up in 3-4 weeks, so I'll ask his teacher if she's heard the dreaded 'B' word at school.

Tough question.

From what I read, he's being provided with a lot of interesting stuff, but it's all outside the classroom. The problem seems to be inside the classroom. The school day is a long time to sit around not doing anything productive.

I'm not convinced that extra stuff at 4 pm can alleviate boredom at 11 am. In fact, the boredom is probably highlighted because he knows exactly what he's missing. So I suggest focusing on what the school can do to help.

What do you see as the liabilities of a grade skip now? How will they disappear or be attenuated in middle school? How bad is the boredom now, and what will be the effects of two more years of it? For example, how will too-easy material affect his ability to study more difficult material later? etc. etc.

Val

But, dear OHG, they ARE wasting his time....

Tomorrow is 'take your parent to school' day. I get to spend the morning in his classroom, seeing what he does. Then we get to eat salsibury steak! Is there a barfing icon here? haha.

I just am not ready for this, 3 years ago he was hiding under his desk, 2 years ago he was clinging to his teacher, 1 year ago he started kicking butt with academics, this year he's getting farther ahead(his grades currently are 2 'A's & 4 'A+'s); but he still seems a bit fragile emotionally. That fragility and the need to be accepted by the older kids leads me to think acceleration is a bad idea right now. But boredom is a really bad thing, too.

One of the other scout moms is a teacher at the high school, she teaches physics & some AP science classes. I was talking to her about what is available in middle school. She said the advanced kids take algebra in 8th grade. That's not much of an advancement and that has me worried too. Without any acceleration it will be 4 years before he gets to good math & science--that's too long to wait. It's almost like his brain would be warehoused for the next few years.

I think I'll know a good bit after going to his classroom tomorrow. And right now I think I did find a passion for him, chess! I've never played it beyond learning the pieces and their basic moves. So I picked up a book for him, we learned notation and are alternating between playing and copying some of the master's games.

mmmmmm, salisbury steak
I hope you learn something in school tomorrow - sometimes those bring your parents days don't really show you what's going on.

Cool about the chess - did you see this thread on HG kids and chess? i'm sure there are lots of related resources within it:
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/25348/1

Have to say - 4 years without good math and science doesn't sound too great.

I'm sorry, OHG. It sounds like a difficult situation. How likely is it that the teacher might work with you for some differentiation? Aside from the GT program, is he getting anything geared to GT kids in the regualr classroom right now, or is it all afterschool? How long is the daily GT program, what subject(s) is it, and is that working for him?

I think the fact is that virtually every HG+ kid needs some special services during school hours. It might be a grade skip (though I think you're right to be a bit wary of it in his case, given what he's been through and where he's come from. You don't want to endanger all that emotional progress he's made), it might be in-class differentiation of regular assignments, or it might be independent work during school time, like Aleks or Singapore Math at the back of the class. But I think it sounds like your GS needs more. 7-ish hours is a long time to be bored, day in and day out. To some extent, I'm with you on learning to deal because life isn't a party, but there are limits to what a kid should have to tolerate.

I think he needs more, one way or another. I don't know if that opinion helps you at all, but that's what I see...

I'm thinking un-bored thoughts for him!

Hi OHG!
I hope the visiting day goes well. Your grandson hass been through so much, and I'm glad that he found himself academically. I don't think that you have caused the bordome by 'enriching him outside of school.' We stayed away from 'enrichment' when our DS was entering school for the same purpose, and he got miserable and acty-outie without our help. They just get to a certian age where they become aware of the gap between their 'burn to learn' and what they are getting in school. I don't think that this is your fault, or even a 'sad side effect' of the intervention you did to heal him. It's just not suprising that a child who is HG or beyond HG who is healthy enough to complain, will be unhappy with out significant accomidation.

I would like to hear more about what you are seeing as 'emotional fragility' and 'needing to be accepted by the older children.' Afterall, OverSensitivities can look a lot like emotional fragility or immaturity. If you DGS had a need to be accepted by his agemates, would that worry you? LOL, mine did and it led to all kinds of 'class clown behavior' habits. Lots of kids have a need to be accepted by some kind of peer group, and in a way, older kids are good candidates to be his peers. Somehow I have this picture of him smoking cigs in the bathroom with the 5th graders - I sure hope not!

Finding a reasonable peer group is a problem that follows us Gifties all through our lives (see thread about Isolated Adults)

OK - so there are lots of ways to find a good fit without a full skip - although a full skip, for all it's disadvantages, has a kind of 'they can't take that away from me' solidity that we found nescessary when dealing with real humans down at the school.

Online classes during school, with credit substituting for regular classroom work.
Attending the gifted pull out with the older kids - I like this one because no one can complain that it creates 'gaps.'
Workbooks in the back of the room
Attending a few classes at the Middle School and then returning to the elementary school.
Attending a few classes with older classrooms in the elementary school.
Socialize by day, learn by afternoon lifestyle, if he can handle it.
Academic competitions.

A lot depends on if he likes to learn alone, or if he needs teaching and peers to learn. My son's extrovert-preference also pushs us towards the compromises that go along with gradeskipping.

The good news is that Schools expect Middle School kids to be 'disorganized, and mentally led off topic' because they recognise that as one's mind expands, there is more to keep track of! So once my DS got to Middle School, folks were more excepted of his oddnesses.

I'm starting to believe that what was causing his organizational/out in left field difficulties was a kind of 'mental puberty' that hit around age 9, and is quite similar to what folks blame on hormones in Middle School kids. Perhaps the hormones are mearly a noticible association with the kind of new mental processes that make 'sit and obey' approaches to the classroom difficult.

I sure hope this help (not that I've gotten you into this)
It isn't isn't isn't your fault!
Grinity

If all school days were like this morning, I don't think there would be any problems with boredom.
His class is working on individual reports for different tribes of Indians. She showed them previously how to start organizing their report into a very basic outline. The teacher has copies of materials the kids were allowed to highlight for information. GS9 had very appropriate highlighting, some kids highlighted everything. Most kids were pulling information just from the teacher supplied materials, GS has some additional information from the net & library books. His report looks like it will have quite a bit more depth than the others. That's good for GS. So he was working at a more intense level than the other kids. The one bad thing I can say, is he's not getting instruction on report writing at his level. The teacher presented report writing at an appropriate 4th grade level and spent much of her time with kids who needed help achieving that expected level. 1 teacher for 27 kids and they were given about 45 minutes to work on it today.
We went to a different classroom/teacher for math. She introduced the distributive property of math and gave the kids manipulatives and instructions for a game to practice that property. She quietly commented to me to watch GS & the girl next to him -- "they are very good". OK, GS got it right away and showed the girl. (In all fairness, I had demonstrated that property to him some time ago, just hadn't told him what it was called.) That was pretty fun for him, the girl still didn't quite get it. Unfortunately I got the idea they will continue this until most of the other kids get it. GS said he often reads or takes AR tests while the other kids are working in math. So, one day out of the week(?) I guess he's getting something new. I do provide him with an assortment of logic and challenge problems for 5th-6th grade, he works on them during math while he's waiting on others. They do have a 4 minute drill, but he doesn't have to do pages of problems on things he's mastered.

GS does some of the class clown routine to entertain the other kids but I think it's typical 9-10 year old boy stuff. What I worry about older kids is how his feelings are so easily hurt by what they say. I also don't like how his best friend has treated him at times, just to be included with the older kids; I don't want GS to treat others badly just to be included with the 'in' clique. The school bus is a pretty rough place to be, that's where most of the bad behavior happens. The older elementary kids really picked on GS for the last few years. Any sign of tears was like a 'kick me while I'm down' invitation. GS is in 4th, K-5 ride one bus, 6-12 ride another bus. He'll have to get on the bus at 6:30 a.m. when he rides the jr/sr high bus. Then with the Webolos crossing over to boy scouts in the spring of 5th grade, it just seemed better to keep him with boys he knows from cub scouts, until they're all boy scouts in middle school and up.

And yes, Grinity, he's hit that mental puberty! He can read a paragraph, put down the book, demonstrate almost perfect recall of what he read, but can't remember where he just laid the book!

Dotty, unfortunately, private ability testing is not an option right now. But I plan on him taking the Explore in January. If we're looking at DYS levels on the Explore, I'll find a way for IQ testing.

I think I'll start a journal for the next few weeks to track how he thinks things are going in school, then bring it up at conference time.

Dottie, I have a couple questions about in-class differentiation. Hopefully you, or others here, can help me out.

How do the teachers grade things like this writing project if one child is capable of working at the higher level? For example, I keep thinking the teacher would look at GS's 5-6 paragraphs and give it a 'B' while the typical 4th grader would get an 'A' for the same or less; GS would not perceive that as fair(I fear).
And judging by what I saw in the classroom yesterday, the teacher would not have time to teach GS at his level. I'm capable of teaching GS in the evenings, but it would require the teacher to work with me on his assignments. Also, if the school agrees to in-class differentiation, I want a committment from them for whole grade accelleration in 1-2 years. Otherwise we're just going to be widening the divide between what GS is doing and what his classmates are doing, and I'm already contributing to that by giving him math, science, & reading books to keep him occupied in his spare time at school.

In class math differentiation presents much of the same issue, and the same possible solution. Grading would be easier, I think, because he would be given different problems. But do the other kids ever comment on 1 child being given different things to do?

This year there are no other kids from his classroom that go to the gifted program. The school mixes the kids each year. Last year he had a friend from the gifted program in his classroom, that worked out well for both of them.

Ah, Dottie, sing it! Right on target!

I agree that the whole notion of dividing the GT kids up so that there's one per classroom is just dumb all the way around. It's harder on the kids, the teachers, the parents...*sigh* Just flat stupid. I like fairness as much as the next person, but it's hard for me to believe that any teacher would like another special needs kid on his/her own in a classroom, with no one to group the child with. At least pair them up people! For the teacher's sake if not the kids'! Sheesh!

And yes, there's really no way to avoid widening the gap.

As for the grades, maybe if you presented it to GS as "you can have challenging work with the potential for getting a B, or you can have straight As and be bored silly," then maybe those slightly lower grades wouldn't be so problematic for him. Just a thought...