Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Grade skip? DS way ahead but not bored (yet)

Hi Everyone,

My DS6 just transferred from a Montessori School (grade 1-3 classroom) which was not meeting his needs. He is now the youngest member of a 1st grade class in the regular public school.

Here are his results from a recent screening...
1. Raven's: 36 (>98th percentile)
2. For reading: DRA2 -- 28 (end of 2nd grade/beginning of 3rd). This would have been higher but he had difficulty completing the written work.
3. For math: GMADE: aced the 1st and 2nd grade exam and knew some of the material for the 3rd grade exam.

And yet, despite all he knows, my son seems to be very happy and never complains of being bored. He loves the specials (art, music, etc.) He demonstrates pretty classic intellectual, emotional, sensual, and psychomotor overexcitabilities.

I am torn as to whether I should advocate for acceleration to 3rd grade next year. He is obviously not learning very much, but he is happy (at least for now). He is scared of the unknown and would might be resistant to the idea of skipping a grade. And yet, loves to challenge himself -- he completed an entire 2nd/3rd grade Singapore math workbook last weekend just for fun.

Do you accelate a kid who doesnt seem bored but who isnt being challenged? Any thoughts or insights on this situation would be greatly appreciated.

-Ultralight Hiker

Edit: DS is scheduled to take WISC soon, and I'm thinking of getting the Iowa acceleration scales... not sure if he's taken all the assessments necessary to complete the Iowa form.

We just received DS6's WISC scores:
FSIQ: 139
GAI: 143

[He ate too many brownies during the superbowl, woke up at 3:00 AM, couldn't get back to sleep, and read 6 books before school even started. Unbeknownst to us, that was the day they administered the WISC. Not sure how lack of sleep might have affected his scores]

It looks like he's reading and doing math at at least a 3rd grade level now. The Iowa Acceleration Scales say that he is a good candidate for acceleration. I guess the writing is on the wall for some form of acceleration, but I'm still worried about his maturity level/resistance to the idea.

Does anyone have experience with acceleration for a kid with a 140-ish IQ, which I suppose is smart but not absurdly/scarily smart?

ULTRALIGHT HIKER

No, that really is unusually smart . My oldest is grade accelerated and she's no brighter than that. She's a straight A student who still tests in the top 1-2% of the grade nationally and locally on grade level tests and above level tests. We're 3.5 yrs post skip now so I'd say that I can reasonally call it successful.

143 should be around the 99.7th percentile if I recall correctly -- maybe 99.8th. That is well out of the norm. General contentment and not appearing to need harder work on the surface isn't reason not to accelerate, though. A good reason might be a disability standing in the way such that the child would struggle post-skip even with a very high IQ.

Oh, and I did want to add that my dd was in the same spot before she skipped. Her bd made the K cut off by two weeks where we live, so she was also usually the youngest in grade.

Thanks for all the thoughts everyone. We will have several months to decide on the grade skip for next year.

In the meantime, DS6 will be accelerated in math only. The gifted support team at the school has presented two options: he can move up to 3rd grade math right now or he can stay in the 1st grade classroom and do ALEKS during math time.

ALEKS would be the least disruptive, but I feel like it is the modern day equivalent of giving a kid a workbook and putting him in the corner.

What would YOU do?

I would move him up to the 3rd grade math - that way he'll have his work officially overseen by a teacher and there won't be any question re is he capable of the work, completing it, etc plus there won't be any question of keeping him on track etc.

OTOH, if you are going to be watching over his progress in Aleks and he wants to work at home too and/or you think he wants to move faster than the pace of the third grade class, then I'd consider the Aleks option. My ds' one complaint about working 2 grade levels ahead in math (at school) is that even though he's moved ahead, that doesn't change the pace of instruction, and there are many times he'd like to move faster and doesn't want to repeat concepts that some of the non-accelerated kids in the class need to have repeated.

polarbear

I'd put him in the class.

My DS did so much ALEKS that there's literally no appropriate placement for him: he got further and further out of sync with peers, and yet ALEKS is not really a complete curriculum, so there are some weird gaps in problem-solving skills.

He would have done better to simply be grade-accelerated from much earlier in his career, had that been an option.

DeeDee

My youngest DD7 sounds much like your DS. She is one of the youngest in her class, and is currently not grade accelerated but is in a 2nd/3rd combination as a second grader but doing 3rd grade reading and math. Either her FISQ or GAI (I can't remember which) was 139 and she loves math.

If I had your options, I would definitely do the 3rd grade math. If you are worried about gaps, I would just keep handing him math workbooks and let him go to town as long as he wants to do them for fun. Good luck with your decision!

When I told my DS6 that we were considering letting him go to the 3rd grade classroom for math he literally jumped up and down for joy. He was not so hot about the ALEKs idea. That seals the deal.

Now back to the grade skip issue. The gifted team seems to be divided. The psychologist pointed to the positive effects of grade skipping. The gifted support teacher said she thought DS6 could handle a 1-2 grade skip but expressed her belief that you don't grade skip kids unless they are miserable.

I worry about his sense of belonging, especially if he enters the 3rd grade classroom next year but is not wholly a member since he will go to 4th grade math. Maybe I should just ask him!

I'm glad the decision was clear to your DS. The new mantra in our house is that my kids deserve to be taught by a teacher in a classroom of academic peers. ALEKS has not been a successfully implemented tool for my daughter.

On the skip, can he do the accelerated math immediately and then decide on the whole grade skip at the end of the year? It might highlight unexposed misery. In our house, I suspect DS is pretty miserable right now in kindergarten, and that we won't see it until after we make a change in retrospect.

Update: DS6 LOVES 3RD GRADE MATH.

So far this is a success story.

In a few weeks he will be taking the WIAT and then we will resume grade skip discussions.

Ultralight Hiker

So happy to hear that it is working out well!

Yay!!! I'm glad things are working out

polarbear