Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy HG 5th grade - What should we do?

Hi,

New here, and would like to get your input.

Our 10yo son, a fifth grader, took WISC-IV test in Sept. and his score is as follows:
VCI 132
PRI 139
WMI 132
PSI 121
FSIQ 140
GAI 143

He also took SCAT in Nov. and his score is 463 (Verbal) / 490 (Math).

We're now trying to decide what to do next ...

Recently, we found a private middle / high school that is really good in working with gifted kids. Our son has shadowed there during Thanksgiving Break, and he loved it! He was very excited that he's learning something new at school in those two days. In his own words, "The math was hard but it was the right level!"

Now that he's been back at his old school in the last two weeks, he's changed his mind about moving to a new school. He really wanted to finish elementary school and go to the new school in the Fall.

His current school is a public parent participation school K-8. We love the community feel of the school. The problem is that his needs in math and science are not being met.

In August, we've informed his math teacher that our son had finished Singapore Math 5 last January and has been working on Singapore Math 6. The teacher assured us that he would not hold anyone back, and yet there was absolutely no differentiation. After our son spent 3 months doing review (despite us asking the teacher and the principal numerous times), we've finally decided that it was not working.

Armed with the SCAT results, we requested to have our son work independently during math time. The plan is to let him finish Singapore Math 6B, and then to continue with either CTY online course, or I can always work with him to continue Singapore Math / NEM.

So what should we do? Any input on what else we can do?

1) You are allowed to send him to the new school if that is what you feel is the best choice for your family. You are the parent, and you are in the best position to evaluate risks worth taking.
2) You can hire a tutor for Math, perhaps the school will even allow the Tutor on campus during regularly scheduled Math time. Or sign up for afterschool time at a tutoring center.
3) Look into Art of Problem solving for Independent study when you son is ready for it.
4) You can strongly ask for your son to be sent to an older classroom during Math class - you have taken all the right steps, and been patient, so now it's time to state your case in writing and strongly ask for subject acceleration.
5) You can consider asking for a full grade skip. You can offer your son a grade skip at the current school vs. same grade at the private school vs. an hour of afterschooling each weekday.

Thanks for your input, Grinity. We've been including him in the discussion because we believe that although ultimately we - the parents - will be the ones making decision, it would be much better for everyone involves if he buys into it, too.

I've been working with him on math. We're using Aleks math to help with assessment and will use NEM and AoPS.

Today I spoke with his teacher. She didn't think he was ready to be grade-accelerated. His science and math are definitely above grade, but she felt that his reading and writing are not. It's not about the reading comprehension and getting the facts, but forming his own opinion and making connection. On the other hand, his SRI in 4th grade was 1137 and he got 88 percentile on his verbal SCAT.

We're meeting with the Principal tomorrow. At this point, we don't really care about the grade level, but we do care about the school meeting and accommodating his needs.

The other he said that he didn't know that being smart would make life so difficult...

I agree with Grinity. You need to look at it from all angles and decide what works best for him. Some kids do well with subject acceleration, for others a full grade skip works best. A lot of it depends on the childs personality.

I think that you are absolutely correct in including your son in the discussions. Transitions of any sort are much easier if your child feels like he has input into the choices being made. My DS is 7 and has commented on how hard it is to be smart as well.

Best of luck to you and your son moving forward.

To me, keeping a kid with agemates while meeting their academic needs is always better than a full grade acceleration - better, but if the costs of homeschooling or private school that might be able to do that are just too high for a particular child or family, then full grade acceleration is a totally reasonable choice. The needs of the whole family, including the Parents, count.

Some kids can never get their academic needs with agemates, and there is no private school that could pull off this cool trick. If the tradeoff is stay with agemates and don't learn good work ethic, then gradeskips become more obviously needed.

I don't know what a SRI is - but it would be good to get him to take some, locally used end of year test that is used for the recieving grade and see how he stacks up against kids in the recieving grade. The goal of a grade skip isn't to put a child in a situation where they are average in the receiving grade - the goal is to put them in a situation where they can make As if they put in a reasonable for their age effort. There is a great book called the Iowa Acceleration Scale Manual for about 40$ that turns this into a mathmatical prediction. But you can tell from looking at the classwork. You can ask that your son be given a few English assignments from the one-year-older class and ask that he be graded anonymously on them. If he's doing B work without any help already - that's perfect!

Do you see you child having trouble forming his own opinion and making connections when you discuss movies and TV shows or books? Gifted kids can be quite literal, and it's wise to look around for any family history or indications of AS, but in some ways it's harder to make a personal connection to 'See Dick Run' sort of material.

Some gifted kids just don't even read fiction for pleasure. Does your son ever choose fiction for pleasure reading? If so, does he seem to relate personally to the work? If so, perhaps you could ask the teacher to 'chat him up' about his favorite book and subtly evaluate his ability to form his own opinion and make connection. Or better yet ask a teacher from the recieving grade who doesn't have a preconcieved notion to do the chatting.

But remember that most teachers think that getting As without effort is a fine thing, and feel 'bad' when they project what it would be like to go from 'Easy As' and academic domination to 'Easy Bs and just being one of the gang.' They are aware that this can be a painful transition and are loath to impose that on someone else's child. You however are taking the longer view. Better to feel the pain now and have several years of good work ethic before college than to go through this experience while on one's own at College, when the support is less and the stakes are lower. If you ask many teachers about this, then they would say, 'Of course, you can always transfer to an easier College. What's the problem?'

There is almost no way to explain that the pain of having all that excess potential rattling around. The folks here could tell you about it in great detail, but it isn't such a vital part of the ND experience. As a co-worker once told me in my first years of work, "I can see that you are experiencing a lot of stress because you care so much, don't worry, in a few years you'll get used to it and it won't bother you anymore."

He thought he was being kind and wise. I was mortified. What actually happened was that many years later I became a parent and had a fabulous distraction!

Back to you - I ended up taking the non-verbal approach when this subject was raised, I'd say something criptic like 'he does best when he has heavy rocks to carry, I'm sure you've known kids like that' and project a wise, confident, fraternal tone. This doesn't always work, but there are some expectation differences that are best left unexplored. Like the time in 3rd grade when I told the Principle of local el that I expected that at age 12 my DS would be taking the SATs as part of a talent search. She turned white as a sheet. I thought I was going to have to catch her in a swoon.

Hope that helps,
Grinity

So we've met with the Principal. He will talk with DS' teacher and the middle school teacher who has expressed interest in mentoring DS in science. We requested a more formal way of mentorship. We'll see what comes out of it... We figure that if we can get the science and math instructions to match his level, this will enable him to stay with his agemates and while meeting his academic needs. Best solution for now

In any case, Grinity, I'm wondering if you can tell me more about the Iowa Acceleration Manual. Do you use the manual yourself, or is it something that has to be done together with the school / teachers?

SRI is the Scholastic Reading Inventory, also known as Lexile score. The info can be found here:
http://www.lexile.com/about-lexile/grade-equivalent/grade-equivalent-chart/
It's been discussed in this board before. There's some controversy about it, too, since the way it only takes into account sentence length and word frequency.


What is 'AS'?
DS is very literal. He would get all the facts out of what he reads, and then moves on on his quest to collect more facts

DS actually enjoys reading fictions and comics for pleasure now. He started reading fictions in 2nd grade with the Magic Tree House series, although he preferred the non-fiction books from the series. He then got into the Warrior series, and read everything that has been published (thank goodness for library!). Now he's reading the Guardians of Ga'hoole series. Of course, he still prefers non-fiction books.

BTW, does anyone ever get the "Gifted Kids Survival Guide" for their children? I'm thinking of picking up a copy from the library and reading it together with him. Two days ago DS asked me if he was gifted and what that meant. His best buddy who is now attending HG school asked him if the kids in the new school (that my DS has shadowed) were all gifted. I haven't answered his questions and have started looking for answers in this board (thank you to all that have posted and shared your experience! It really makes such difference knowing that we're not alone!). He knew that he did well in the two tests that he took (WISC and SCAT). I don't think he even knew that the first test was IQ test. After I told him that he did well in his SCAT test, he asked me if that means he has to go to another school.

The other day, we had a conversation with the Principal of the new school. He was trying to convince DS that the new school was the one that would help him to grow the most. DS agreed, but he was very sure that he wanted to finish what he has started (i.e. finish 5th grade) then he would go to the other school in the Fall. The Principal finally said that you could bring the cow to the water but could not make it drink Maybe DS would change his mind once he understands more about "giftedness" and how it means he needs to get the appropriate challenge to make sure the 'gift' does not go to waste?

I think of it a bit differently. I don't think it is the child's responsibility to be sure their 'gift' doesn' 'spoil.' That is the parent's responsibility. (As an older teen that will shift.) Just like I believe that gifted kids don't have a special responsiblity to cure the world's problems - I believe that everyone has responsibility to do what they can to cure the world's problems. It's the parent's job to develop the child's character so that they will want to make a contribution/to be able to make a contribution without oversacrific of self.

There are ways to motivate a child, such as 'think of all the X grade homework you'll never have to do' (for a grade skip) and 'my job is to put you in situations where you get to develop yourself in a way that's right for you, which is why I'm changing your school' or 'I think that more of the kids at the new school will get your jokes' or 'I want you to learn what it's like to be with lots of kids who are as smart as you before you get to college - your Uncle Bob had that happen to him and it totally freaked him out' or try a flat out bribe.

These kids can be tricky to parent, my son was for me, because in 5th grade my son looked, to me, to be better able to reason than most adults I know. This led me to over-rely on 'explaining situations' and getting his agreement. And an under-reliance on 'trust me - I've got years of experience and your best interest at heart.' The truth is that most gifted kids, even highly gifted kids can't really understand the whole situation in an adult-like level. My son was so invested in being treated like he understood more than he did that he became very convincing in nodding at the right times and appearing to capitulate to logic. 'Luckily' when puberty hit he just couldn't maintain that pose anymore. Now I think that the point of talking to kids is to give them words to use later when they look back with a deeper understanding. "Mommy just wants you to have the chance to be in a classroom where you learn how to work at learning." He might hate it at first, but the younger he is exposed to an appropriate challenge, the fewer bad habits he'll have to unlearn.

Another approach is to draw a sort of graph showing what a child is ready to learn. Maybe a baby would be down at the bottom, ready to learn to walk and talk and use big kid underpants, a teen ager could be on the graph ready to learn Calculus and to drive a car. Then you son and his classmates and some kids from older grades and the private school could be placed on the graph, with you child suggesting individual kids and telling you what to write about what they are ready to learn. You could draw in a band of what kids in his current grade/school are doing, and another band across the graph to show what the kids at the other school are learning. Better yet, draw the band to show the current school classroom, and ask your son to draw a band to show the private school classroom. Does he draw the second band with a lot of overlap, or way above the current band.

The main thing is to concentrate on what his classmates current abilities are, and try and dodge, if possible where the paths will end up. This is because the 'late bloomer' is a very real path. And because a full person can't be summed up by a point on a graph - only their learning readiness level!

My .02!
Grinity

http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10053.aspx

Read it yourself first, and then give it to the school folks. It's a great basic introduction to evaluating giftedness.

It should cost about 40$.
Smiles,
Grinity

So schools who aren't meeting the needs of gifted kids are sometimes very quick to jump place the blame on a diagnosis, to distract from the idea that they aren't really providing a particular child with an education, only daycare.

The common diagnosises are ADHD and AS (Asperger Syndrome)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociol...syndrome_and_interpersonal_relationships

Active boys get a lot of attention paid to their activity, and literal little boys get a lot of attention paid to their lack of social understanding. When the school pointed out that he wasn't able to draw conslusion about reading, I jumped to the conclusion that they are gearing up to see if you'll buy an AS diagnosis.

That is so unfair of me, but as they say: 'Forewarned, forearmed.'

Huggs,
Grinity

I've got a 5th grader who is profoundly gifted. We are not grade accelerating because doesn't want to. We are working with ALEKS and home direct instruction.

Listen to your child's opinion. One thing I've learned from DI is that they need to be part of their own advocacy.