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    Joined: Oct 2006
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    We are coming up on report cards and teacher conferences so I'm interested in opinions and BTDT experiences that might help with this first meeting with our teachers.

    As I've posted elsewhere here, my son is whole grade accelerated into 2nd and twice accelerated into math with 3rd grade. The issue is that he is getting straight A's and doesn't seem to be challenged really at all. There are SOME areas of reading we are working on - he seems to interpret reading material pretty literally and so his comprehension is relatively lower than other areas. But last year he took the Stanford Achievement Test at school, end of first grade, and scored in the 99th% overall. Only missed 3/114 questions. Overall, the reading material does NOT seem challenging and he brings home papers with As or 100% on them.

    The same is true with math. Our school uses the Saxon math program and there are bits and pieces in 3rd grade that are new, but he picks these up quickly and then has to repeat the task over and over on homework - that's how Saxon works. He does more advanced math at home just for fun!

    Both teachers think that he is being challenged. I'm not sure why and am eager to talk to them in person. We have only been emailing so far. So, my question is what do we do now? At the beginning of the year they were saying that they were prepared to modify math, but I'm not sure what to ask for, if anything at this point. I just feel like he could be learning more if they would let him go at his own pace.

    Do accelerated kids still get all As or is that a sign that there still isn't enough challenge?!

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    Debbie, I am going to repeat my mantra - when you accelerate your kids they are not going to be in a class of smarter student, they will only be in a class of older students.
    My DS (sorry for repeating myself) was placed in Algebra 1 for his 5th grade. He was taking that class with a few 6th graders, but majority of kids were in grade 8th. He was still getting A and was the only one in the class being able to answer challenge problems. Was he being challenged? Yes, he was challenged to learn more but I do not think that this is necessarily the way to go. When you have time, read this http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/AoPS_R_A_Calculus.php
    I have always known intuitively that going faster and faster is not as good as going deeper. But what can you do if the system is only offering faster? I am thankful for that and am supplementing at home with challenging problems.
    It is much easier to challenge and supplement at home a kid who is in elementary school. In middle and high school things become way more structured, there is more to do, even in regular easy classes, there is just less time.
    Our son has already fallen into calculus trap. He will be done with pre calc when graduating from 8th grade and ready to take AP Calculus BC in 9th grade. Is it good for him? - of course not. But there is nothing better being offerd at this time.
    He earns As accross the board. It is absolutely not relevant to his learning.
    I am really exhausted in spending so much energy on educating my kids - just making sure thay learn according to their ability. I had much more wind beneath my wings when they were younger, thinking that by improving things for my kids I will also improve things for others. But it is so difficult to change anything, and time goes by so fast, that by the time any changes are put into the system it is more often than not too late for your own kids to take advantage of it.
    But probably the most frustrating thing about it is that most of the time I feel like the only crusader (not on this board of course :-), like other parents do not get that in order to learn you need to be challenged.

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    Yes!!!! Ania, you hit the nail on the head for me! This is so true for us, even at this early stage. I had been warned about the cons of acceleration with that exact caveat: the pace of the instruction will still be the same. And I guess this is what we are running in to, not only in math but in everything else. He just is not getting the DEPTH he craves - that's it!

    Some examples (me thinking out loud):
    last night he started a "game" of us giving each other problems like this: "If the movie starts at 6:00 and is one hour long, what time is it when the movie is half over?" He gave me that one, then asked me to give him one ("but not the same, Mom"). After a few of these I asked if this is what they were doing in school and he said no. It was from the 2nd grade level math puzzles and games book I bought last spring at the teacher store when we were homeschooling (but that he is just now doing for "fun" at home)!

    When we read his 2nd grade reading text stories at home, my husband and I have him answer the "Think and Respond" questions at the end, we talk about words he didn't know (definitions), and we talk about the type of story it is, the characters, etc. He now goes right to the "Think and Respond" questions on his own. They always seem new to him, he says they don't go over them in class. They apparently just read the story. He is starting now to "dissect" other stories we read at home and want to talk about the plot, the characters and expand his understanding of the story.

    There is a little social studies and science stuff going on and he was thrilled with an experiment they did to create stalagmites (or is it stalagtites?!) in a jar at school. He was so excited to tell me all the details - but this is the first such experiment he's told us about since school started.

    Sooooo.....what do I do???!!! How do I ask for, and more importantly, GET more depth in instruction????? I don't just want to keep accelerating him through classes. That doesn't seem to make sense to us. Has anyone succeeded, in the public schools, to get the depth needed?


    Last edited by dajohnson60; 10/23/07 09:53 AM.
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    I'm wondering, too, what do you do if even grade advancement doesn't cut it? How do you avoid the calculus trap?

    I don't want to sound overly dramatic, but honestly, I just despair of figuring out what to do for the next 11 years. Is there nothing but disappointing compromise? Or should I just stop reading these posts about older kids so I don't lose heart?

    *sigh*


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    I would probably address it, but I do agree with some of what the others have said about going faster versus deeper. Deeper seems to be better.

    I teach math, so I will agree that Saxon is awful. It's way too repetitive and skips around a lot. I don't know many teachers who actually like it.

    I can sympathize with you as a parent. My two daughters both only missed 9 SAT questions out of 220 in kindergarten. Neither one of them is adequately challenged in their current situation.

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    This will not solve the bigger math problem, but I wanted to share the name of a book that my son and I enjoyed together which we used to supplement the more cook-book math. We loved working with the big concepts and where the math ideas came from. And the chapter on infinity saved me from those endless questions like "can one infinity be bigger than another?" that were driving me nuts. It's called "The Heart of Mathematics: An invitation to effective thinking" It's college level, but it worked well for DS at 10/11.

    Apologies if I've posted this before; I just liked it so much I want everyone with a mathy kid to know about it.

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    Cool! It sounds like something I should read! smile


    Kriston
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    <sigh>
    I appreciate the responses and the suggestion of the book (although my kiddo won't use it for awhile). I really do. But what the heck do I do *right now*? <second heavy sigh>
    I have a couple of books at home that I guess I'll go through again - about educating young gifted kids in the regular classroom. Maybe there's some suggestions there. And maybe Developing Math Talent will have some suggestions. But I sure would love to hear from anyone who has dealt with this and came up with stuff that worked. That "Calculus Trap" article has both hubby and I worried about the next 12 years!!!!!!

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    acs Offline
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    I had completely forgotten how many "fun" math books we read to supplement what was happening in school. I was very worried that DS would think that math was *just* about calculation and not about the big fun ideas. One book we liked was called (I think) , The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat. We used it as a bedtime story and then would work the problems together.

    Another thing that kept DS thinking was that the state standardized test auto-leveled, so when he got a question right, he would get a harder problem. The test was not timed. He was definitely getting algebra questions by 3rd grade (which resulted in his desire to learn algebra) and would take as much time as he wanted to try to figure out how to do the problems, usually problems he had never seen before. He'd be in the test room for hours and often missed recess. I thought it was cool that he liked to try to puzzle out things he did not know how to do. It seemed good to let him try to work on things he hadn't been taught; it gave him a chance to look for patterns and come up with novel approaches rather than just following the rules.

    Based on this I wonder if it would work for other kids to present them with above level challenge questions and then give the kids time to work on them without giving them direction. In this case it seems right to then reward (however you want to define reward) them for their thinking and attempts, rather than correct solutions. It seems like this might foster creative mathematical thinking, which is not what the school is doing.

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    I'm still loving what Ania said,

    "when you accelerate your kids they are not going to be in a class of smarter students, they will only be in a class of older students."

    So well put!

    I think I worried about the Calculus trap too long and was patient with teachers/admin who kept wanting to put off algebra for that reason. I guess I'm coming to the realization that my DS13 is in high school because he needs to grow up before going to college--not because he's not able to do it. He's interested in graduating a year early and maybe do a foreign exchange program or language institute with "time saved".

    My answer to the question about if you still get As are you challenged? Sure. I'm not an educator, but I would think the process should be that you introduce a new topic, do some problems, review what went wrong if there are errors, then test. That intermediate step of review should mean that a kid can make mistakes, learn, and then still get As...don't you think?

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