Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Need honesty...EXPLORE scores, how far to advance?

Hello friends! Me again, needing your wonderful advice! I am bound and determined for next year (6th grade) to get my DS11 the placement he desperately needs and wants! I believe Mr. Principal and g/t coordinator will support whatever we choose, so I want to go for it. Okay, so got the EXPLORE scores back with an 18 on both reading and science (his passions)I don't have the exact percentages in front of me, but his scores (I think) in those areas, are above 80/90% of U.S. Fall 8th graders...I picked up the Middle School science textbooks and DS knows the material inside and out. Actually cried (real tears) of joy when I mentioned there might be a possibility of taking high school science classes (for an audit) My question, with these EXPLORE scores (also shown plenty gifted with SB5 & school's WISC) would you go for the high school classes or first try a middle school science class to "test out the waters"... I picked up the high school course list. It looks like he can take biology, geology, environmental science, and astronomy/meteorology without any prerquisites. I know he can handle the material, but his executive functioning skills are the pits. What to do, what to do....Thoughts???

I would suggest looking through the high school textbooks and talking to the teachers to find one high school science class for him to try. Without good executive functioning skills, I think more than that could be overwhelming.

My dd also took the Explore test this past year. In learning about it here on the forum it was explained to me that the Science section is much more a critical reasoning test than a Science knowledge test.
Depending on how well the principal, etc, know the Explore, this might not be enough ammunition to get him accelerated in Science. Is there a way to "prove" that he knows the concepts in the textbooks? For example, in math, you can test out of classes...

If you go with the high school curriculum, I would talk to the high school about whether they would recognize classes taken in middle school. High schools in our area often won't honor classes taken in middle school. So, if the high school requires Intro Physical Sciences as a prereq for taking Chemistry, they have made kids take IPS again once they get to high school to meet that requirement. Talk about a demoralizing year of boredom for gifted kids. . .

Thanks MidwestMom and herenow for replying so quickly! Great idea to get my hands on the high school textbooks....Duh, why didn't I think of that? (Lol) I'm sort of at a loss here, because I just don't know what the next "best" step for him should be. The kid clearly needs and wants more. I just don't have the knowledge base or lab (haha) to keep it going at home (I'm partial homeschooling him now) He has devoured all the Khan Academy and Hippocampus science videos, subscribes to about every science magazine possible and reads them like a sponge etc...etc...I found an old microbiology college textbook that he read and found absolutely fascinating, thrives on science museum outings etc...etc...He's taking a dissection class for gifted kids this summer, but it's only for a week. What's the poor kid going to do when the fall comes around? I honesly don't know what to do. I'm sick aout it. It would kill me to see a loss in his curiosity and enthusiasm. Ugh..................................

Thank you for your thoughtful response, Dottie. He's good at math but not great. He's in 5th grade and currently scores like an average (in our district) end of the year 6th grader. He doesn't love math. Thank you also, Knute974. You bought up a good point! More to think about.... A big problem with my DS is when he knows the material, he becomes a huge behavior "issue" for the teacher and class. Will this distruptive behavior ever stop when he's older but subjected to material he already knows? How often do these kids end up maturing, recognizing limits, and just "adjusting" .... Do they ever?....

I suggest reading the book "Developing Math Talent" for a discussion of educational options appropriate for children in various EXPLORE score ranges, in particular the page

http://books.google.com/books?id=L5...e%20EXPLORE%20score%20ranges&f=false

and following.

Great! Thanks Bostonian!

It is wrong to go on to high school science textbooks. Those thick and heavy bricks are the sure weapons to kill his interests.

Go to amazon.com to find some light science reading materials with typical kitchen table science experiments. Many good recommendations exist in the resources forum here. One of the things come to mind is the electronics sets they sell at Amazon, my children enjoyed those very much.

Try to keep pushing his reading comprehension. Only in such a way will he be able to start his own journey in science.

I'm not sure about that, but alternatives are the Manga science books http://nostarch.com/catalog/manga , the Larry Gonick "Cartoon Guide" series, and the Dummies series (Physics for Dummies etc.).

interesting Bostonian!

What Dottie said.

My daughter is not particularly well-served by high school science offerings, and the reasons are well-explained by what Dottie's posts reveals (but doesn't necessarily SAY overtly); that is, the OUTPUT demands are quite taxing (cost), but the level of instruction (benefit) isn't correspondingly high.

For the average high schooler, of course, this is as it should be. For a PG pre-teen, however, it's far from ideal, because it doesn't offer quite the 'benefits' that would make all that work feel worthwhile.

Then again, what's the alternative-- and is it better?

For us personally, the answer was "not much, and no, not really." So here we are. But it means that what DD is really "learning" is executive skills hothousing, courtesy of much teeth gnashing and cajoling on our part as parents (and on her teachers' parts, I might add). She's also very strong in math, so that isn't an additional barrier in any way. Her executive skills are actually pretty good-- for an 11yo. But that means that they are also "pretty bad, but not exceptionally so" for a fourteen year old, which doesn't exactly set her up to be very autonomous in her high school courses.

She earns top marks, for sure-- but it would be much better for her if she had to work harder at the material itself to earn them. In other words, I don't know that I would expect the difficulty level of the material itself to be all that different from middle school offerings (at least, GOOD middle school offerings). There will be the occasional chapter that is novel, but most is going to feel like review of concepts with a sparse sprinkling of new twists thrown in.

My daughter feels like she's being asked to walk barefoot across the Sahara for the occasional canteen of warm stale water. (Her analogy.) Not to put too fine a point on it or be negative or anything... Some of this is LOG dependent, and it probably depends on the type of learner your child is. Mine is one of those kids that tends to see big picture stuff the first time through the material, and therefore the 'synthesis' stage of the spiraling pedagogy leaves her yawning and irritable.

I don't know what I'd advise in your situation since so much is variable on a local level and with individual children.

In our experience you need higher math to adequately complete challenging high school science. We adapted my DD's formal science goals for this year and next while she is focusing on math so she can move into more challenging Biology and Chemistry the following year. If the math isn't there and the executive function skills are poor I'm not sure a high school science class will help his love of science. He may do better homeschooling that subject and following his interests until his other skills are there, and by then he'll probably have most of what a class would contain down anyway. It's a really difficult balance.

(My DD likes the Magna books too.)

One great equalized for my son was his Typing skills. If you DS11 hasn't become a proficient typist already, you may want to hothouse that a bit.

For the Math, I would ask that he be given 'end of year tests' for 6th and 7th grade math - ideally with someone looking over his shoulder to see how he does it and what kinds of mistakes he makes.

If he's allowed to 'audit' the high school science courses, then I'd be a lot less worried about the organizational skills. It would be ideal if he had an opportunity to sit down with the teacher once every two weeks to 'adjust' the output expectations. You might want to start with a science that has fewer labs, since who wants to be a lab partner with someone who is only auditing?

It might be that your son's assignments could be framed to be more along the lines of 'create a power point to introduce 6th graders to this week's subject.'

To me the ideal thing is that he get the interest level of high school science without the expectations to 'earn the grade' that are appropriate for high school aged kids but not for 11 year olds who aren't very synchronous in their giftedness. If the principle is game - why not give it a whirl?

Love and more Love,
Grinity

I'd start my own thread but I wanted to quote this and just quickly hijack. Sorry!

Dd10 has both in 4th and 5th grade fallen into the "C" range on that chart. While I've always thought that math is an area where I see some ability in her, I've never thought she needs as much acceleration as that chart would indicate. She just passed the district tests for subject acceleration in math in 6th grade, but barely. She was right at the # needed on the MAPS and just slightly higher than the requisite # on the 7th grade math pre-test (they needed to get a 70% or higher on that and she was a few percents higher but not like 90%). Would you really accelerate more than one grade in math for a kid like that? I'm not even positive if her middle school is going to put her into the accelerated 7th grade math given that she just made it. She could wind up in non-accelerated 7th grade math which I am likely fine with.

Yes again to Dottie's post; some of the very courses that my daughter has begged to take have turned out to be the slowest and most obviously 'remedial' or 'fluff' courses. We've since learned to be wary of those.

Part of our problem is that the classess that my daughter is in are "honors" courses, certainly-- but the definition and practical application of that term varies significantly by location and administration. In this particular instance, what that means is that she (and the other 6-10 brightest of the 100+ students in each 'section') are the "honors" registrants.

She is generally, like Dottie's DS, in the top tier of THEM...

but the problem is that it's a mixed-ability class. DD is problematic here because she really does NOT tolerate repetition with any kind of grace at all. It's that mixture which is bad news. It might not be if she were more internally driven the way some kids are-- but she's not. She does what's required of her unless someone lights her fire; and most of the high school courses she's had, the teacher is (rightly) a lot more focused on the 80% of the class that doesn't get it so well, and less on 'engaging' my daughter, who is tuning out because it all feels plodding and uninteresting.

The way that "honors" works around here is that it isn't a different class-- it's the SAME class, but with extra work piled onto the regular workload. Jump all of the standard hoops and THEN we'll get to the stuff you're here for. In other words, yet again, increased output expectations.

We, too, have always maintained that if DD is to be accelerated like this, she simply has to be "any other student" from the teacher's perspective. She doesn't get special accommodations due to her age or asynchrony-- except in a few instances where, physically, something is simply impossible (some laboratory set-up or design procedures are physically impossible because of her size, coordination, or strength, for example). We make sure that if her physical limitations impact how much SHE is able to do independently, that she makes it up cerebrally instead; by extending conclusions into a thought experiment, evaluating basic statistics, etc.

It can be an uncomfortable balance sometimes, because she isn't actually a fourteen or fifteen year old the way her academic peers are. I've at times wondered if her graceless, obvious disdain for material she already knows isn't a maturity issue at its heart. She can come across (to teachers and classmates) as insufferably arrogant at times, I know, because she is often fairly outspoken about her complaints.

I recently purchased DMT and have been wondering about this. The authors give a LOT of weight to those talent search test results. If my fifth grader scored very well on the Explore 8th grade test, then she has managed to learn at least 8 years of math in 5 years. So she should be able to maintain that accelerated pace for the next 6 years? I don't know. It seems like a big jump from speeding through elementary school concepts to being able to speed through trigonometry. Does anyone have a long view on being able to maintain the acceleration through high school, or not? Is it dependent on LOG?

You're welcome. You may be interested in a new program by one of the authors of the "Developing Math Talent" book, Susan Assouline, called IDEAL Solutions:

http://news-releases.uiowa.edu/2011/february/022111math_online_resources.html

Two new online resources recently developed by University of Iowa experts will help educators and parents know if students are on track to develop their full math potential.

One resource, the Inventory for Decisions about Educational Acceleration and Learning (IDEAL) Solutions for Math Acceleration, is a Web-based system that provides student-centered feedback to inform decisions about academic acceleration in math for elementary and middle school students.
Co-developers Susan Assouline and Nick Colangelo from the UI College of Education Belin-Blank Center for Talented and Gifted Development led a team in developing the Web-based system. Both educators and parents can use the program at http://www.idealsolutionsmath.com/ to assess whether students are in a math program that is best matched to their potential.

Many middle school students do not understand some basic math concepts , such as what the equal sign means http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2011/05/equation.html and cannot solve the equation

4+3+2 = x+2

for x http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100810122200.htm . A child who understands such concepts may be better prepared for algebra than most middle school students.

I agree.

A few people have commented that the "Developing Math Talent" (DMT) recommendations seem aggressive to them, causing me to reread this section of the book.

The link I posted was to the 2005 edition of DMT, with score ranges for grades 3, 4, 5, and 6 of

A: 1-8, 1-9, 1-11, 1-14
B: 8-11, 9-12, 11-15, 12-19
C: 11-25, 12-25, 15-25, 19-25

The 2011 2nd edition of the book (no link, I'm referring to my copy) has slightly stricter criteria:

A: 1-9, 1-12, 1-14, 1-16
B: 9-12, 12-15, 14-17, 16-19
C: 12-25, 15-25, 17-25, 19-25

The median math scores for grades 3 to 6 were 11.6, 13.9, 16.2, 17.3 . The qualifying math scores for Davidson Young Scholars (DYS) are slightly higher: 14, 16, 18, and 21 (the actual criterion is that the composite score plus two subject test scores must meet the minimum score criteria).

These numbers refer to the math scores, but all the scores must matter. Certainly colleges look at all the scores on the ACT, even for prospective math/science/engineering students.

The authors do not cite a formal study to justify their recommendations of educational options, writing that "The program options we considered were based on 20 years of experience in creating programs for the range of talents demonstrated by the gifted students who take EXPLORE". I think DMT is a great book and respect the authors' judgement, but these are judgement calls.

Some of the recommendations pertain to middle school and high school. Students who score in the C range of EXPLORE should take the ACT and/or SAT in 7th (or even 6th grade). I wonder what the A, B, and C score ranges should be for 7th graders taking the ACT or SAT. The DMT thresholds for the C range on the EXPLORE are above the medians of talent search participants in each grade. It is plausible to identify students scoring well above the median of talent search 7th graders on the ACT or SAT as being in the C group. The ACT and SAT scores needed to qualify for Johns Hopkins summer courses are at http://cty.jhu.edu/summer/iselig.html , and according to http://cty.jhu.edu/ts/faq.html#Courses_1 about 30% of 7th and 8th graders get these scores.

The DYS thresholds for EXPLORE scores are slightly higher than the DMT book's thresholds for the C group, as described above, and DYS thresholds for the ACT and SAT for kids in higher grades are at http://www.davidsongifted.org/young...holars___Qualification_Criteria_384.aspx . For the sum of SAT math and verbal in grades 7 to 10 they use 1220, 1310, 1350, and 1420 . Parents who think the DMT recommendations are too aggressive could consider these thresholds as guidelines.

Again, thanks for all of your kind replies! Bostonian, I took your suggestion and bought the developing math talent book. Thanks! Wondering...Would you use the same A,B,C level score ranges to determine programing options for the other subjects as well (reading, science, English..)??? Hmmmmm.....

I find the DMT suggestions a bit generous in advancement, so I'm not sure I'd extend them fully to the other subjects. Each subtest has a different mean and range of scores too, so a high science score is much more common than a high math score.

English mostly tests grammar and sentence structure. It doesn't follow, for me, that a student who recognizes poor structure in a multiple-choice format can write very well when asked. If the score matching writing, then acceleration would make more sense.

Science doesn't really test science knowledge, but rather science reasoning -- whether a child can interpret a graph, understand what an experiment would test for, etc. Scoring well there doesn't mean that a child is ready for high school science if you think that there is meaningful content in middle school science. I never thought there was meaningful science content in middle school since my child read science texts all the time and had self-taught anything relevant already.

And for reading, scoring well indicates a level of close reading and vocabulary that seems more like math to me. Once you've got good skills in inferencing, understanding point-of-view, high-level vocabulary, etc., then I'm not sure what benefit 5th or 6th grade literacy would provide. There are always more books to read, but it is much more satisfying to have higher level concepts for someone capable of higher level thought and appreciating subtlety.

I read through this thread a couple of times and may start my own thread to further the discussion. However, I'd like to ask those who have responded: what are your thoughts about PG middle schoolers taking community college classes instead of honors High School classes? If you can only advocate for one option, which would be best? I hear you speaking about some high school classes not really having more content--but the output level is huge. Would college courses offer the content as well as a "grouped" environment. Would "Marine Biology" at a college level actually be a class that a PG 12 year old would benefit from? I homeschool and am seriously looking into these options. Thanks for the thoughts.

Take this with a grain of salt b/c my oldest dd (12 -- 13 in the fall) is just starting high school in the fall so I don't have experience with high school courses. She is HG, but not PG (would have just barely made the DYS cut on the ACT for a 7th grader this past year, for instance, but she was an 8th grader). It's funny that you mention marine biology, though, b/c that's my dd12's passion! I do very much think that she could pull off college science and language arts courses and do very well in them. She could not do math courses and probably some other courses at a college level yet.

If I was looking @ primarily homeschooling her through high school, I'd probably be more inclined to have her supplemental courses be through a community college rather than a high school. I'm saying that b/c high school AP classes purport to be at a college level and I think that the college courses and students would be a better fit for the depth a HG (or, in your instance, PG) teen would want/need.

And, not in response to your post, but I just noticed this older one...

My dd10 still hits the C criteria for math even with those stricter guidelines and I still don't think she needs more than single subject acceleration in math. If she were at the high end of the C criteria, not already young for grade, someone who fit the mold of a school system better, etc. maybe I'd feel differently, though.

I guess that we're going with having her do 7th grade math in 6th grade and seeing how she does and whether she moves fast as she moves into higher level math. We can adjust from there. Maybe she'll need more; maybe she'll need less.

Covenantcasa,
I think the answer about whether high school honors or AP classes or community college classes would be a better fit depends to a great extent at what the high school and the community college are like. Our local area is full of professionals and tech people, and has lots of high-performing kids aiming for Ivys and top-20 schools, and has a high proportion of students who take AP classes making top scores on the AP exams. AP classes here are very likely at least as rigorous as an average CC course. We also have a strong articulation agreement with the CC system, and have a lot of students doing dual-enrollment for high school credit, so whichever option we chose, my child would probably have a fair number of the gifted high school kids in the class. In an area where the CC is not drawing heavily from the local gifted high school population, CC classes might be even less challenging than the corresponding tracked high school course.