I'm not sure what I'm asking, this post may ramble as I put my thoughts down.
GS8 was referred by his teacher for the gifted pullout program. Officially it is called "
Extended
Total
Curriculum". Students must meet Ohio's standard for 'gifted', GS8 met the standard. So, I looked into their program. The website says this:
I teach the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade ETC students at each school. Both programs involve in-depth thinking, creativity, and problem solving activities. The children are encouraged to work independently or in small groups with the teacher's role being a guide to learning instead of an instructor.
Sounds good, right?
I emailed the teacher before the class started, to get an idea about the class and how she communicates. This is what the teacher said they would be doing beginning in January(last month).
To begin the semester we're going to focus on aviation. Our activities will include making Delta Darts (wood and paper airplanes), flying them, collecting data about them and analyzing what we've collected. These lessons will take until sometime in Feb. After that we plan on on building toothpick bridges.
Wow! That sounded like just the thing for GS8!
The first couple weeks he came home with stories about doing problems involving 'bleems'(?) and 'dwarms'(?), and I figured they must have been doing some logic problems. I found a couple on the web from one of those free IQ sites, and he said that's what the problems were. OK, not the same as building planes, but mind challenging at least. And he was a happy camper in his regular classroom.
Then he asked me to be taken out of ETC. They have been doing worksheets of multiplication problems, things he already knows.
Do these things sound like a gifted program curriculum? He is so unhappy with ETC now. So, I emailed the teacher and asked how things are going in class, and let her know he is not happy.
She emailed back this:
Would you be able to come to a conference? I'll be at school tomorrow all day up to 7:00PM. I've had to sit on Joe kind of heavy because of talking, etc. and I thought maybe we could discuss some things or you could offer a few suggestions.
Not a word about their planned activities. And, she has had to "sit on him kind of heavy because of talking, etc" arghhh
I had envisioned this small group of students actively involved in making things, testing their models, measuring their accomplishments, and vocally sharing their excitement. This is obviously not what is happening.
GS8 said if he didn't go to ETC he would have more time to read in his regular classroom; that's something he'd strongly prefer over doing worksheets of problems he already knows. I don't want to pull him out of ETC if they are going to do new stuff, but I don't want him getting a bad attitude waiting on them to really do a gifted program.
I'm meeting the ETC teacher tomorrow. I just can't think of a nice, non-accusatory way to say, "Why aren't you doing the things you said you'd be doing in ETC?"
The little guy is going to talk, he just can't keep quiet. We work on that but I've about come to the conclusion he's going to be a politician or trial lawyer when he grows up.
