Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Third grader NOT leveling out

Really all we did was point out really good logical thinking or mathematical thinking that he would do all the time. And point out that most 4th graders were not computing percentage of savings when walking through the grocery store or figuring out mathematically if one "deal" in the store was actually a "deal" or just a fake promotion to make you think it is a deal. And then when he would use math at home to figure something out or really good logical thinking or algebraic thinking. We had to make our comments not sound like fake praise but really had to just continue the conversation in a genuine way or expand the math to the next level or conclusion. I don't think he realized that he looks at life as a big math problem until we started pointing out that... he looks at life as a big math problem. Reminds me of that book called The Math Curse by Jon Scieszka.

Doing that consistently finally helped him not say negative things and then I think actually getting into the pre-algebra class and Algebra I having actual hard math to do, to have to work hard at it made him see the light. Especially when he is getting perfect and near perfect scores (with a few B's thrown in every once in a blue moon) and seeing that other kids aren't. Yeah, maybe I am good at math.