Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments fraternal twins in same gifted class

Need thoughts!! My 7-yr old fraternal twin girls have been in separate classes for K and 1st grade. They have both done well. When in preschool together (Montessori) they did well, but I noticed that if one accelled in an area (reading, art, motor skill) the other would not even attempt it. I just learned that the school plans to put them into the same class this fall to prep them for the gifted program in the third grade. The class will consist of all potential gifted students and students struggling to make grade level--research supported idea, supposedly. I am concerned they will become competive again and argue more at home than they already do. Thoughts?

I'd love to see them show you the actual research, or even give a reference to the book that says this is recommended.

One one hand if all the potentially gifted students are in the same group, I would hate to have one sister in it and the other sister in rooms designed to have no peers!

On the other hand, it's quite possible that they haven't changed enough to make having them in the same class a good idea...they are older now, but do you still see the same pattern? Will they do the same activity at home?

Handling competition well is a big part of learning, so in some sense your girls have an advantage - healthy competition can spurt them both on to learn more and give them lots of chances to learn to handle the difficult lesson of competition...afterall - both of them are sure to met lots of people over their lifetimes who are stronger in an area than the other.

It's possible to take a step back and wonder if they are both showing perfectionistic behavior because of lack of academic challenge, and this having very little to do with the twin thing. How would you deal with this situation if it were happening to one of them and some random child from their classroom?

Do you have a sense that they are 'about as gifted' as the other kids who will eventually get into the gifted program, or that even in the gifted program that they will be 'unusually gifted?'

I wish I had more BTDT experience...good luck!
Grinity

In my brief reading on the subject, I remember there being a welter of different ideas of how cluster grouping, cooperative learning, etc. should be implemented and how well such strategies would work. I know that there is at least one model out there where underperformers were recommended to be placed with high achievers, but I can't find it right now. I have the "Encyclopedia of Giftedness, Creativity and Talent" by Barbara Kerr on inter-library, inter-spouse loan right now, and will see if I can find anything in there. The third link below suggests that gifted kids clustered with low achievers suffer no ill effects, but the self-concept of the other kids suffers.

http://www.nagc.org/index.aspx?id=162
http://www.susanwinebrenner.com/handouts/schoolwide_cluster_grouping_model.ppt
http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/kennarch.html

My DD has fraternal twins in her gifted class but they are different genders. By all accounts, they treat each other as if they don't exist. I think that this would be much more difficult with two who are the same gender. In my DD's class there are only 9 girls and they have all been together way too long (5 years now with the same kids in the same gt class). They feud and bicker like siblings. I think that it would be hard to have a true sibling in the mix as well.

Whether it happens this year or next year, it sounds like your kids will be grouped together. I would approach the teacher/school admin with my concerns before the beginning of the school year. Do you have any research that you could share about how to handle twins in the same class?

As for the mixing gifted and struggling learners in the same class, I agree with the others -- ask for the data.

I was placed in a classroom like this when I was in sixth grade. The theory was, I think, that we could tutor the other kids and the teacher would have more time to work individualy with them since we could pretty much teach ourselves. In practice, it worked out that the gifted half of the class had a body of assignments that we had to complete by the end of each grading period, and we had relative freedom on how and when we completed them, with lots of in-class time allowed for working on independent projects and on the school newspaper, which the combined class published (somehow, all the gifted kids ended up in editorial positions...hmmm). So, nearly all of us ended up turning in a stack of 6 weeks worth of assignments each grading period that we all had completed in class the day they were due, and spending the rest of the time talking, reading, drawing, and working on the paper. I think that was the only year they did that particular educational experiment at my school.

I have taught in classrooms set up that way, and it has been my experience that the students who were struggling students to begin with gained the most.

I'm not an expert on the topic, but FWIW -

My 9 year old twin boys were in the same K and Grade 1 class. That was fine, but by the end of Grade 1 the teacher to make a specific effort to keep them separated in class. When they were bored they tended to get really goofy, which was very disruptive.

Grade 2 we finally had an opportunity to separate them. This was fine for one, who had another child he could at least talk a little bit to about some of his interests. My other son had an absolutely miserable year. He had friends in his class, but no one to really talk to about the things that interested him.

Grade 3 they were together again. This helped in some ways, but they found a third musketeer and were horribly disruptive as a trio. They'll have to be together again this year, which I'm not thrilled with, but it is the only way to keep them in their current program.

Competition between them hasn't been a direct issue, or at least not any more than keeping them apart in the first place. When looking at papers that one brings home, I do have to actively send the other one away and tell him it is none of his business, or he will get his nose right in & that causes problems.

As for the other point. My son's don't face this situation, but my own elementary school had a class and a half of my grade, so it was always one split and one full class. We had extremely low mobility in our little community, so with the same group each year, they were able to tweak it each year. We had a fairly large group of very good students, most of whom worked well independantly, and three specific struggling students. During the last two years they divided the group as follows:

Full Class: high achievers and MG students, plus the three struggling ones.

Split class: average students and the lone PG boy.

I heard talk that the point was to allow the teacher to give advanced work and still be able to work with the stragglers. ... Cut to after high school. At least 80% of the full class went on to complete post-secondary education. A couple of the split class did. The PG boy dropped out of high school. (He had been allowed to go ahead and work at his own pace in grade 2, and it took a full month before he burned through all the material in the school. They seemed to have pretty much given up at that point.)

Take from it what you will. Both my experience with twins in the same class, and that form of grouping is just a single example. Maybe not the best one.