Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Help me help a student...

OK, I teach third and fourth grade in a language immersion school. One of my third graders shows signs of being gifted, or at least VERY academically capable. He's reading two or three grade levels above third grade, which isn't overly impressive until you consider he's only had instruction in reading and writing in English for the past week and a half (up until third grade they read and write in the target language, and English instruction is strictly oral).

He still needs grade-level spelling (he's a crack-ace at phonetic spelling, but has never had instruction in English spelling. He doesn't do much reading for pleasure, so he hasn't picked up a lot of words just through osmosis, though as bright as he is, he might start just "picking it up" as he does more reading and writing in English. His math skills are in the "advanced proficient" range, but closer to his age-peers (partially, I think, because of our district's chosen math curriculum, but that's not my place to decide; I have to teach what they give me :S) and easily accommodated in the classroom.

I want to have a few well-thought out options before I call the mother to meet with her. This is, as I said, his first year with any English language instruction of any real rigor. While she obviously knows he's bright, she might not yet know just how far beyond his peers he is, academically. In the target language, he has been a bright kid, but since language acquisition takes so many other factors into consideration, he has never stood out in the classroom beyond "hey, this is a pretty bright kid." He has, without instruction, gotten himself to a sixth-grade reading level by the beginning of third grade... and that's with having learned to read in the target language, which uses the same letters to represent different sounds.

A few things that I'm considering and their up/downsides:

• One-grade subject-level acceleration: He'd come to reading with my fourth grade group. He'd still be working at a higher level than all of the students, but the "advanced" materials from the fourth-grade reading curriculum would be a little closer to meeting his needs. HOWEVER, my "other half" teacher (has the third graders for the target language while I have the fourth graders for English instruction, and vice versa) is not gung-ho about this option. His language skills in the target language are below those of the fourth-graders. So he'd still be above the rest of the class for English reading, but may struggle (or rise to the occasion???). My "other-half" teacher would likely fight having him in the fourth grade; I don't want her taking grumpiness out on him. I'm also the "new teacher" at our school, and she's pretty entrenched.
• Two- or three-grade subject-level acceleration: He would go to either the fifth or sixth grade classroom for reading, whichever grade has English the same half of the day as we do. He'd be pretty on or above par academically with these groups, but... um... how to say this nicely... these two classes are kind of notorious. I've been told, repeatedly, how lucky I am to have started this year rather than last year, because bullying in the fifth grade is an issue, and the sixth grade is just generally kind of non-academically-focused. If he ended up in the fifth grade classroom, I'd worry about him being a target, and if he ended up in the sixth grade classroom, I'd kind of be wondering if he wouldn't be one of the few kids actually attempting to be academic. One advantage to the fifth grade classroom: there is a child in that class who is working several grades above *his* grade level. So while they'd be working at different levels, they'd be peers in a certain way. Their target-language teacher is great (he wouldn't have her), but their English teacher is a long-term sub as the regular teacher is out on bedrest with a messed up back until her baby is born, and then on maternity leave. HE's a great guy, and WONDERFUL at "teachable-moment-life-lesson" stuff, but not really an academically rigorous teacher, if you catch my drift
• In-class differentiation: Well... This would be me. Advantages: I was a gifted kid in the regular classroom myself; I know what it's like. I have coursework in gifted education and have done a lot of self-education on the matter. Disadvantages: Over half of his class is still functionally illiterate in English. Only three are working "on" grade level. FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder) is rampant out here. This is a group of students who have been together since kindergarten. I don't want to sit him in the corner, by himself, with a totally different book than the rest of his class (this is a VERY social bunch of kids and I love them for it), but I also can't justify letting him read things that are far too easy for him for the entire year.
• Sped/Gifted services: Nonexistent. Don't ask; see above re: FASD epidemic and lots of struggling students. I had a discussion with our SpEd teacher, and he basically said that he could help me figure out some in-class differentiation options, but that's it. He's kind of an old grouch.

So... WWDGIDFD (What Would Davidson Gifted Issues Discussion Forum Do)? Or, more specifically, what options do you as (for the most part) parents, see that I'm not seeing? His parents, for cultural reasons, REALLY want him at the language immersion school... and honestly, for as struggling/troubled as our students are, the local all-English elementary school has an even more troubled population.

You have a ready, willing, and (somewhat) able teacher wanting to meet the needs of a (probably) gifted student. Someone wave your magic wand and make the perfect solution appear before me. Or give me more stuff to consider.

An important part of the answer is going to be talking to this kid about what he wants to do. Do you have any sense of that already?

Skimmed your post on the way out the door. Would say if the parents main goal is cultural immersion, and it's a social group, can you give him special assignment homework for either extra credit or trinkets? Introduce the topic of giftedness, whatever you think would apply, to prepare the mother that maybe accomidations may be necessary in the future. Sounds like they want to be informed and make their own decisions because the sound like involved parents already.

From my perspective as a parent, there is absolutely no way I would accelerate for reading alone, primarily because you can't accelerate reading as a stand-alone in any meaningful way. A verbally gifted kid who likes to read can gain 4 or 5 grade levels a year, without any particular instruction - no matter where you place them at the beginning of the year, they aren't going to be reading challenging-to-decode material at the end of the year. As kids get older, language arts becomes more about writing (and the spelling and grammar needed to support writing), and less about decoding words. For instance, in 3rd, my DD's reading assignments were primarily multiple-choice questions demonstrating comprehension and retention. In 4th, she's being asked to journal her thoughts about each reading assignment.

Presumably there are opportunities in class to read material of the child's own selecting. Make sure there are books he likes to read, which is not the same as "books that match whatever reading level you've assessed him at." My DD tested at something like 10th grade equivalent at the midpoint of 3rd grade; it's rare I find a book much higher than 5th or low 6th grade that's interesting to her.

I would concur that reading is easier to challenge oneself independently (I'm having trouble making this sentence work, leaving it for now). Although math is more my forte, since I never had acceleration (aside from being in an "advanced" math class from 4th through 7th and taking honors/compressed classes in high school and skipping precalc), it took much longer for me to develop my mathematical knowledge base and skills just having to teach myself. Sure, I learned some calculus when I was somewhat young, but I didn't have a rigorous understanding, and had many gaps (it was easy enough to pick up on polar coordinates and certain functions, but I lacked understanding beyond plug-n-chug type problems in calculus, even though I taught myself formal proof writing from a college number theory book). In English, however, I learned very rapidly without much assistance, primarily due to the existence of libraries and the Internet. I got to discuss things like philosophy (epistemology is a favorite) and any other topic that piqued my interest, like psychology, sociology, etc.) Once you reach a certain ability to read, the options to learn about the world widen dramatically, and since language is a form of communicating information, it is useful for learning about many things independently.

Now, I'm not a teacher, but when I was in school, 5th-8th grade seemed notorious for bullying primarily because of the age group. But this situation may be more so than normal or have more to do with particular students who will graduate in a year or two, so that's tough to weigh in on. Also, since you have personal and professional understanding of gifted students' needs, you may be best suited to provide useful differentiation - if not much in instruction, due to educating the other students, then through having alternate assignments - recommending a list of books that are more at his reading level, but with multiple books to choose from, so his interests can lead him to want to exercise the reading skills.

This sort of set-up worked fantastically in my 7th grade language arts class, where we had a long list of books from reading levels of 5-6 to reading levels for late high school and college. So students got to choose their books from a number of the levels (though to discourage a high ability student from trying for an easy A reading an easy book, the further below your measured reading ability the book you chose, the more work you had to do for the project to get the same corresponding grade). It wasn't terribly formalized, or strictly numerically calculated, but it was more of a guideline to encourage students to challenge themselves by reading something interesting while discouraging slackers (like me).

As long as it isn't a lot of extra work, and it seems interesting, it'll probably be at least all right, if not a tremendously enlightening experience. In teaching, as in medicine, the principle of "First do no harm" is very apt, so even if you struggle to meet his needs, that's the really important thing - if you can help keep his work ethic and interest in learning alive, that's a job well done IMO. For basic tasks that might frustrate him for their basic quality, perhaps you could use a system where after a student has demonstrated proficiency in a task, they don't have to keep doing assignments on it and move on to something else (whether reading, a worksheet on a different topic, some other activity, many things would work).

That way, he could be excused from repetitious exercises but not draw the ire of other students who think you're just making a special case for him to not do the work. A little formalism probably wouldn't hurt - like, after you do X amount of this type of thing correctly, you don't have to do the rest of it, and can instead work on one of these activities. That sort of thing may work better for math, where the specific tasks are segmented a little more clearly, but depending on the level of English and the type of activities, something like that may work.

Sorry if I'm just saying things that are obvious to an experienced teacher or if what I'm suggesting is utterly impractical - but some good ideas have eluded experienced teachers before, and I am known to advocate for impractical things.

If you asked nicely, would your school do IQ and achievement testing?

As far as being ahead in reading English, are his parent's English speakers? If so, it's hard to know how impressed to be - most gifted kids don't get much out of their classroom experiences in reading in the first place, so I would guess that for majority of gifted kids, they are self taught in reading.

I think if you see something then it's good to say something - for example he's very far advanced from his classmates and you think he needs accommodations more than he'll find in his classroom. Testing is a good step to confirm this. Maybe if the advanced 5th grader and your student can go to 6th grade for reading this year?

Does your school teach reading to the whole classroom or to group by level? I think that this child deserves to be taught reading with readiness-peers.

What about having the advanced 5th grader come to your room to mentor your advanced reader? As long as it didn't make the 5th grader more of a target.

Bestwishes,
Grinity

Well. Be a mentor. Light a fire. Ignite his passion for learning. Connect. Be a resource for his parents. Advocate for testing if the school will pay. What kind of brainstorming can we help you with? I've read (online) that advancing in education in one language while you work on another enables more advanced levels in either language. I don't remember the context except it was an article about ESL kids in the school system. Eg they should teach the Mexican children in Spanish while they give them the English lessons. Your story is reciprocal but ironically supports their conclusion.

We have 4 language immersion schools a stone's throw from us and I know many kids that attend them. For bright kids that have an involved family that speaks and reads English in the home, I wouldn't consider this that remarkable. Most of the language immersion kids I know are reading English well by the time their school gets around to introducing it. If his family are not native English speakers, that would make a big difference.

I think it's wonderful this child has such a dedicated teacher though! If he is surrounded by kids not as high achieving, it would definitely be great to find something to challenge him. I would definitely talk to the parents and feel out that situation. If his parents are happy and he's happy in the classroom, maybe they are doing additional enrichment at home? I'd perhaps lay all this out to them.

Wow, thanks for the replies. My "fun" internet time is pretty limited during the week, so I kind of started the thread and then abandoned it.

To answer a few questions: the student is technically still an English Language Learner according to the state. I think both parents are educated, but that he was identified as ELL in the first place means that one parent or the other (or "another significant adult," like a live-in grandparent) speaks or spoke a language other than English. If I had to guess, I'd guess that this child, when he started school, was fluent in neither language, which is fairly common around here. I think mom is a native English speaker; I'm not sure about dad or other adults.

Our SpEd department is a hard nut to crack; they're up to their eyeballs trying to serve a high-needs population in a district spread across a (roadless) geographic area the size of West Virginia. I'm interested what their response would be, in a selfish kind of way, because if we stay around here we might have to go that route for our own son. BUT, I don't want to use this kid as my own personal testing ground; I want to make sure he gets an education this year (and next year, since I have both third and fourth grades). A few colleagues have suggested I "let him be a helper," and while I haven't said much in response, that just doesn't fly for me. I mean, ALL students are expected to help their peers in my classroom, but not as a semi-permanent differentiation strategy.

I'm calling the mom tomorrow. *sigh* Calling parents stresses me out. I became a teacher because I deal better with eight year-olds . I asked him today if he'd like to have more difficult work, even if it meant doing different stuff, and he seemed excited at the prospect. So now I need to find him some different stuff. Me and my big ideas creating myself more work .

Well....think of it as a self-train for when you will have to deal with adults to advocate for your own child...that day is coming.

I'm guessing that you are going to like this mom. Just remember that she is likely an unidentified giftie herself.

Remember that if when she 'tests' you that it isn't that she doesn't like you - she just NEEDS to know if she is dealing with someone as smart as her or someone NOT as smart as her/ and she needs to gauge how you deal with gifties - do you get defensive when she knows something you don't know or delighted?

It's ok if you don't have all the answers. The more you can stay relaxed and confident in what your expertise is while being delighted with the prospect of learning more, the faster you'll get over the prickly protective outside coating. At work I get along with folks that no one else can stand - and my co-workers jaw drops, because we actually seem to be enjoying each other. It's one of my show off tricks at work. Basically I recognize that essentially my ND population wants to be reassured, and my Giftie population wants me to stay friendly and interested even when they ask questions that can't currently be answered. Most unidentified Adult Gifties are treated like they are a bother whenever they interact with any kind of 'system.' Because we are!

Also, if you met with the mom to collect information about the child, and don't feel pressured to 'have a plan' you'll be more likely to be able to be able to relax and get something out of the meeting. You might even give her a copy of
Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom
Book with CD-ROM
Strategies and Techniques Every Teacher Can Use to Meet the Academic Needs of the Gifted and Talented (Revised, Expanded, Updated)
Susan Winebrenner, M.S.
http://www.freespirit.com/gifted-ed...he-regular-classroom-susan-winebrenner//

http://www.susanwinebrenner.com/

And ask her to go through and highlight what she thinks is particularly true of her son so that you can focus on the top priorities. The mom may have her own 'wish list' of what parts of school need to be harder - or be willing to provide enrichment help - even if money is tight, libraries might help.

For Math - a wonderful free resource is
http://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard?k
If the house has Internet, perhaps a parent would be willing to supervise at home and print out practice work to do during Math time in school?

Remember that you don't have to get it all perfect. Kids are very adaptable, just keep trying to figure out where he is and what might be a good next step.

Meanwhile - let us know what your curriculum topics are and this boy's interests and see if we have any ideas for differentiating.

love and more love,
Grinity