Just thought it might be useful if I updated on this in case the experience is useful to anyone else. Background: I started this thread to ask about people's experiences having a child working independently on their own maths in a classroom, since for DS-now-7 we really had no alternative to making that work. It's been going better than I had any right to expect.
As expected, he didn't find it easy, to begin with, to deal with getting stuck, and there was rather too much staring into space! I made him a laminated card (business card size) headed What To Do When Stuck, which he really liked; he says he's now internalised that and doesn't need to consult the card any more, and indeed, he seems to do well.
He always has two strands of work on the go, one problem-solving and one learning new material. It feels easiest to keep it simple and have just one resource in each strand; he's worked through
Challenge Your Pupils (very nice, multiple choice so minimal writing!) and done a selection of chapters from
a textbook (short chapters work well). Typically we read through the introductory material from a chapter of the textbook on the bus, and he does the questions in class. Everything he does in maths comes home to be marked and gone through (even though the answers are in the backs of the books - his teacher seems to feel happier handing the whole thing over).
He and another child are taken out of class once a week for problem-solving sessions with the head, and occasionally he has written work to do relating to this, in class - I'm happy about this for several reasons, especially that it means someone in school does actually get to be involved in his maths. (The head remarked the other day that "he really shows insight, he isn't just parroting advanced maths that he's learned" - good to have that noticed :-)
The problems he does at school are not that stretching - he needs to be able to do most of them independently without too much struggle. At home he does more challenging things, mostly Alcumus and Descartes' Cove (which is nearly over, sadly... I wonder whether he'd like to go back to the beginning and go through without any help next time?!)
He doesn't seem to have had any problems at all with other children's reactions to his doing different stuff: "they don't take any notice".
Anyway, so far, so good! Thanks again for all the comments when I was anxious about this at the start of the year.
