I'd look at the curriculum and even talk to some teachers/kids/parents that are at the middle school about the curriculum. Depending on what they teach it could go either way. My DD is in 5th grade taking a 6th grade class at the middle school this year and it is great. While not super challenging, I have seen her mature in process/thinking wrt multi-step problems. Things she could do before she is learning to do more efficiently, etc. While I could potentially test her to skip the 7th grade course and take algebra, I decided that actual 7th grade was soon enough. Mainly based based on the fact that even though she gets it easily, she didn't test out of the comprehensive unit pre-tests. Since everything builds and I saw her maturing, I decided to leave it alone. Also, anything after geometry isn't offered at the MS so we'd be back to switching buildings and bad schedules. Also, in our district once you hit algebra you take high pressure end of course tests to get high schools credit. I figured there were enough other transition things for MS. We're adding band which should be a good challenge.
Just saying my eyes have really opened to how much different (and likely better for us) to be out of the elementary grades.
Good Luck
PS (Mine's still getting 100 in the class but is doing different interesting things each day. Not the same thing for 2 weeks-pace is better).
Just realized that maybe it sounded like I meant to not accelerate. I just meant depending on the curriculum you might not want to go all the way to Algebra. My kid is one that could likely muddle her way through a lot of problems and get answers right but not be efficient at a solution causing difficulty later on since everything builds in math.
Last edited by lilswee; 04/13/12 09:19 AM.
