@ Platypus, you articulated my feelings/fears precisely.
I met with my son’s teachers today. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. They said that at this point they recommend that he stay in first grade math next year. During assessments he was able to do everything the first graders are currently doing but he made lots of errors. For example, I saw a “mad minute” quiz that my son had taken. It was his first worksheet/quiz that he had ever done. The sheet was covered with subtraction problems but my son added every time. His addition was flawless but, of course, he got every problem wrong. He declined to do a second row of problems because he hated “all the writing” but was happy to give verbal answers. He correctly identified the times on a clock worksheet but wrote “3:50” on one instead of “3:05”.
The math teacher tried to reassure us that the first grade teacher is currently working a couple of years ahead with some students and that she would be able to differentiate enough to meet my son’s needs. I feel conflicted. On one hand, I agree that he would struggle with second graders if he makes basic mistakes like this. But I also know that he was doing basic addition like the problems on the mad minute quiz when he was three and getting them right. He also spent choice time today computing medians and making sets of prime numbers.
On a more troubling note, the math teacher reported that they are giving my son more challenging work and that he often refuses to do it, saying it’s a waste of his time. Today he refused to do some problems with money, saying “I’m doing a private study of fractals.” (He was, indeed, covering pages with fractals and math trees.) The teacher is frustrated because she is trying to provide challenging material and, from her perspective, my son is rejecting it. I suspect that what she considers “challenging” is still so easy that my son has decided that he’s going to challenge himself. Is this the start of “checking out” and misbehaving that all the books about gifted refer to?
Apparently my son has also had a bad attitude since he started to meet with the first grade math teacher for assessment. He has decided that he doesn’t need to participate in activities that others are doing and has announced (in front of classmates) that he is the best mathematician in his grade and doesn’t want to waste his time doing the same stuff they are doing.
We talked to my son and said that the teachers are trying to provide challenging material, that he must demonstrate mastery instead of bragging about it and that if he wants to move on to more interesting material, he must first show the teachers that he can do the work they are providing. We also explained that while some concepts don’t seem particularly advanced/sexy, there is plenty to learn about those concepts if he goes deeper into them.
I think I’m open to keeping him in math with the other first graders next year and seeing how things go. I’m also trying to figure out if we can work on these issues over the summer in a way that challenges my son conceptually but gives him some practice that will help to remediate some of the basic issues he is experiencing. The first grade teacher will reassess him in the fall and I suspect that if he shows improvement on some of the basic/processing stuff then she will reconsider her recommendation to keep him with his grade. Does anybody have recommendations for addressing these challenges? I got the Primary Challenge book and thought about working on that over the summer. Any other ideas?
