Hi All,
I have two daughters (age 14 and 13) who are very good writers. They got in Davidson Young Scholar mostly based on the merits of their writing portfolios (and test scores, of course).
I believe that writing ability is usually developed much later than reading ability. Both of my girls read very early. By age 6, they are reading unabridged version of such classics as �Secret Garden�, �Alice in Wonder Land�, etc. The writing side is a different story. I kept a good record of their writings. But in first and second grade, there was little sign of excellences in writing, with daily diaries and some short essays. Then their writing took off in 4th and 5th grade when they were in a self-contained GATE class. They had chances to do research on many topics and write many long essays (3 to 5 page, single space).
In 1st and second grade, students usually write about fairy tales and imaginary stories because that is what they read. They don�t have much real world experiences to write about. Good writing has a lot to do with experiences, accumulated knowledge and the ability to understand complex issues which all take time. I don�t think that you can really rush it.
Subjects like Math is relative easy to accelerate, but accelerating Language art is much tougher to do because reading and writing are deeply connected. As a result, I would be cautious about accelerating a student (grade skipping) just because of reading. He may not be ready on writing or social study side.
Another point that I would like to make is that a student can read at 10th grade level does not mean we want to let him read the books for 10th graders. I remember that my daughter asked me �What is crush?� when she was about 4. She was reading �Babysitter�s Club� in which a girl was having a crush on a boy. After that, I don�t allow them to read those teen/preteen series anymore. I limited their scope to Newbery Winners and classics. That seems to work well.
Hope this helps a bit.
