Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Still frustrated with math instruction

Dd is 8 (149 FSIQ), in 3rd grade, and going on her 2nd year in a gifted class. (FWIW her PRI was 151 and WMI was 141 but her VCI was only 124). Last year they used Everyday Math (accelerated one year so she did 3rd grade math as a 2nd grader) and the kids were basically given a math journal and expected to work/learn independently with maybe a lesson at most twice a week for about 15 min. They also did khan academy in class when they were done with their workbook pages. Dd likes and does well with khan academy. Everyday Math was a bit of a disaster. (FWIW dd is more of a visual learner and is stronger in math than in reading and writing)

This year (same teacher) they are switching to several different math resources. One of them is Project M3, which they haven't yet started, and a website called Ten Marks. Ten Marks is another disaster. She's not doing well on it (only at a 3rd grade level).

Thankfully I can actually log on and see the assignments and see what she misses. Often times it's because I think it's too wordy and she just picks an answer (they are mostly all multiple choice questions) and only reads the first part of the answer. FWIW she's careless and rushing through the assignments. Other times I find the questions aren't very clear... i.e. There is a box with an array filled in and the question reads "Which array would have the same number number (actually reads number twice) of shaded squares as the given array of shaded squares?". Other issues are that it relies on kids accurately counting arrays with small items or a splatter of dots and counting the total and telling whether or not the number is odd or even, which dd gets wrong because it's really hard for my 8 year old to count large numbers of tiny objects spaced closely together on a computer screen accurately.

I'm sure anybody would probably look at her results and think this kid is probably not gifted and doesn't need acceleration. However, after working with her a little through the summer I know she's capable of much more. She can do long division with divisors that are double and triple digits, multiplication of numbers such as 248 x 395. She can reduce fractions and find the GCF with fractions such as 17/51 in her head very quickly. She loves to look at the clock and reduce the time (if possible) as if they were fractions while riding in the car. And currently she's adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators in her head and often times in one step... including reducing and changing the improper fractions to proper fractions (this is without visuals and just looking at the numbers). The way she can work numbers in her head in one step amazes me and I'm usually 2 steps behind her. She loves this stuff, and tells me she wishes she could do this at school. However, based on her Ten Marks results that won't be happening any time soon (She's scoring mostly 60-75%, sometimes 100% on ten question assignments).

I'm really struggling with what to do. On the one hand I feel she does have areas of weakness (i.e. reading carefully, comprehension of story problems) that she should work on. But I also feel that this program doesn't work well, for her anyway. She hates it, and would rather do the math that I give her or Khan academy. How do I get the teacher to see that holding dd to the assessments/assignments on Ten Marks is probably not the right level for dd in math when dd doesn't even do well on them? I wish I could just homeschool, but dd struggles socially and really needs a classroom environment to help her with that.