Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Mathy VS. Wordy

Oh my gosh, yes! I think this is what is missed so often in meeting the needs of gifted readers. The gifted reader so often has observations and connections that are completely beyond the rest of the group. The gifted reader shares a comment and....nothing. No response, no feedback, no one to take the idea and either run with it or challenge it. It's a very lonely place to be, and one that leaves the gifted reader feeling like the one who doesn't know anything.

I also think that there is a lack of thought put into "next steps" for gifted readers. At a certain point, "harder books" is not the next step. Thinking about high school english classes, for instance, the goal isn't to give students progressively harder books, it's to change the way in which students interpret and communicate about the books.

I'd add that sometimes because there is no obvious next step or specfic level of proficiency required for verbal kids, I think it can be harder for schools/teachers to get just how far ahead of the curriculum they are. Math curriculum is set up as much more "first this, then that"--which is not necessarily a good thing, mind you--but it leads to a much clearer trail of breadcrumbs through the curriculum. Mastery can be easier to demonstrate as a result.

Yes, absolutely. There may also be a question about which children we're talking about. I read somewhere that very early fluent reading is actually better correlated with later talent in maths than with later talent in English, and that makes sense, precisely because of the shift you're talking about. In the early years, English lessons are a mixture of symbol decoding (reading) and fine motor skills work (writing), mostly. So a program to identify, early, the children who most needed extension in English (most of you say "language arts" I think, which is a better term perhaps but not one I'm familiar with) would need to do something different from looking for children who shone at the age-typical curriculum.

Dottie- I was wondering about the perks... Was your son ok with all of it?

My ds9 wants no special attention to himself in class. I made a donation to his class and the teacher had all the students sign a thankyou note to me. He said never do that again. He wouldn't bring in a little pumpkin for his teacher for Happy Fall.

My dd6 loves to be a helper and bring in things for her class or teacher.

Dottie - thanks.

That reminds me of a book I read related to learning styles/dispositions. I was familiar with styles (e.g. modalities: auditory, visual, kinesthetic) but not with dispositions. What you're describing sounds a lot like either the inventing disposition or the thinking/creating disposition.

There's a brief synopsis of the dispositions here:

http://www.homeschoolmarketplace.com/choosing/learning.html

When I read the longer explanations, it seemed like producers were the kids/adults who people hold up as "ideal", but it seemed to me that the truly gifted were more likely to be amongst inventors and the thinkers/creators (certainly there are probably truly gifted amongst all of the categories, but maybe more false positives amongst producers and more false negatives amongst the other categories).

One of the big distinguishing factors between producers and other areas seemed to be an interest in actually finishing projects and assignments. As I recall, the thinkers/creators and inventors were less interested in final product, and were likely to leave a project behind and move on to a new interest once they had satisfied/explored the aspects of the project that were of interest. Hmmm. Does that sound familiar to anyone else? Of course, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should say that everyone in our family came out with extremely low scores (some negative number scores!) in the producer area, so perhaps my viewpoint is a bit skewed....

Love the info on the link. I have ideas about how DS learns, but am not always sure how to tune-in to it and just allow it to happen.

It saddens me, however, to note how many of those dispositions (half, maybe?) are potentially seen as having ADD/ADHD "in the classroom". There seems to be very little understanding and acceptance (in general, of course) of different and varying learning styles.

One thing that I will say re: the actual book. I thought the quizzes and the descriptions were very helpful, but the suggestions for educational strategies and materials I just skimmed over and didn't find applicable to my kiddos. Still, I was fascinated by the descriptions and how well they matched the outcomes each of us got when we took the disposition quiz. Also the book had the best breakdown of learning styles I've ever read. For the record, I don't necessarily buy into the idea that instruction should always be geared to learning style, but I do think it is empowering to get insight into what makes us tick.

As to the ADD references: I had the same reaction. However, I think that that is part of what I found empowering. The conversation changes when a child is described as distractable and we can counter with different vocabulary to describe the same behavior. Schools are definitely designed to reward the producer style. We talked about all the cool things in the areas where DD scored really high--and we pointed out that knowing that the producer area was a weakness for her didn't mean she couldn't learn to meet external deadlines, etc..., but rather that she was going to have to teach herself those skills because it wasn't going to come easily for her like it does for some other people. We still have a long way to go in that area, but she is able to articulate that she isn't a very linear kid and that she needs to keep working on that. Because the weak area was juxtaposed with the strength areas, she didn't see it as a criticism--more as the price for getting to be the cool thinker/creator that she is

My father was a mathematician -- well-known in his field (modular forms was one of his research fields). He was also "wordy" but approached it in a very logical way . He liked to watch TV, and if a word was used dubiously, liked to look up its precise meaning in a thesaurus. He also also wrote poetry, and loved Shakespeare.

However, I would have to say that math was his outstanding gift; I guess at a certain point you will want to concentrate on one subject or the other. I'm sure Noam Chomsky was very good at math, but after a while, he made the move into linguistics, and this is what he's known for.