My son is in kindergarten and he’s very strong in math. He’s at a small STEAM focused private school that has an interesting, project based math program that tends to be about one year ahead of the public schools (and other local private schools). The classes are small (16 kids with two teachers, one of whom is a math/science specialist) and the kids do most of their work in small groups. The teachers track which kids are in the high, middle and low groups and claim to differentiate the kids’ tasks. My son, however, reports that he spends most of his time doing group games and activities with assorted kids (not just with the other “high” kids). They also do some open-ended work, like math talks. The only real differentiation that I’m aware of is giving the “high” kids larger numbers to work with. There could be more; my son doesn’t report much about what happens during the day.
The math specialist for my son’s class says that his level is higher than any other kids in the class (and, I believe, his grade). She sometimes works one-on-one with him to provide additional attention. She believes that he is being challenged daily but I’m not sure. One thing she has focused on is speeding my son up, which I disagree with as he’s a deep thinker with average processing speed. I don’t think lack of speed is a sign of any fundamental weakness and I think the focus should be on providing challenging concepts. This strikes me as a lack of understanding about how gifted math kids function but I digress.
Here’s my question. My son has been complaining that math is too easy. He said it’s starting to make him “feel bad.” He even approached the head of school and asked for more challenging math opportunities. This week we asked the teachers about exploring a subject acceleration. The next day they had the head math teacher for first grade meet with my son to start assessing where he is at. I assumed that this was an attempt to gather information to consider an acceleration. Today the teacher emailed and told me that she is still gathering information. She also said that the math in first grade is highly differentiated and that some students are currently working at a third grade level. She said she is gathering information to figure out how to meet my son’s needs next year and to ensure that he will be challenged. I am interpreting this to mean that the school intends to try to differentiate in class instead of doing a subject acceleration.
On one hand, this sounds good because if my son were to be accelerated he would find himself without any math class in fourth grade. Fifth grade/middle school is far from the elementary school (a couple of miles). Once he gets to fifth grade, the math classes are combined with other grades and kids can work 2-3 years ahead if they are in the “high” group. So maybe in-class differentiation for a couple of years is okay because then he can radically accelerate once he hits fifth grade. On the other hand, my son’s math level is so far above the other kids’ in his class that he doesn’t have any peers who are even close and that’s not ideal, either.
For what it’s worth, my husband has a Phd in math and he can do extra ‘enrichment” stuff with my son so he’s not in danger of lacking opportunities to do fun math. But I’d prefer that he also receive challenging material during the school day, especially since we are sacrificing to send him to private school.
I feel like we are at the early stages of gathering information and that we may be able to influence the school’s decision about how to proceed. I’m at a loss about what is best here and hope that some of you will have some valuable perspective.
