Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy First grade update

DS has been in first grade for about a month now and I see signs that he's getting a little too comfortable there, do you know what I mean? I went in for mathlab and I saw how he daydreamed through "morning opening" which is, admittedly, a mindnumbing exercise in repetition about the order of the days of the week and why we capitalize the names of the months, etc. I think it's a good thing that he only has another month and a half of first grade to go! He is beginning to tune out again. His handwriting is much faster now but sloppy.

Oh, and he did poorly on a spelling test--see if you can figure out why. Here is an excerpt:


He also missed several questions on a math test about time because the pictures of the clocks didn't make any sense. For example, the time 3:30 was pictured as the minute hand on the 6 and the hour hand on the 3 (instead of between the 3 and the 4.) He was asked to draw what the clock would look like one hour later. Since the hands didn't make sense, he only drew the hour hand one hour later and didn't draw a minute hand at all...

Okay, I admit it, other than possibly substituting correctly for right, I'm stumped. What's the answer?

Same problem here several years ago:-)
Can't figure out the spelling though ???

I'm guessing it's D. Not that underlined is spelled wrong, but that the answer is that all the words are spelled correctly above. The underlining means different things in the different questions--tricky. Am I right?

I got the spelling! First, there are NO cirles to fill in. Second, since none of the words is spelled wrong, there is nothing to mark on the paper. So, naturally, the teacher doesn't know that he knows the spellings are correct.

Cathy, am I close? And, yeah, we get the clock thing as well. In addition to the fact that the teacher wants the hands exactly the lenght that she draws them and the arrow at the end has to be filled in completely instead of just an open arrow. Eek!


Oops, sorry, ACS, I double-crossed you. No, that doesn't sound right - posted over you? whatever, sorry

I believe the answer was d, but it didn't correspond to the question because none of the UNDERLINED words were spelled incorrectly. Plus there were no "circles" to fill in. But clearly that is a stupid question, designed to confuse rather than to test knowledge/mastery. I hate that.

I doubt it was designed to confuse; it just wasn't well thought out or piloted in the classroom before published.

Well, there actually were circles to fill in on his paper (I just couldn't type them in my post), but he said none of the underlined words appeared to be spelled incorrectly--including the word "underlined"--so he figured he was mistaken and just randomly guessed.

By the way, this is from SRA/McGraw-Hill.

Personally, I don't like this approach to spelling anyway. I think reading misspelled words just confuses kids and then they remember the misspellings.

The questions says find a word that is not spelled correctly. Of course he didn't choose anything because everything is spelled correctly. For him (d) was just a sentence not another option.

Cathy, we posted at the same time. I am glad he is almost done with 1st grade. I am afraid that you will be in a similar situation next October though

One way I think really helps with spelling is dictating a paragraph, stopping once the child makes X amount of mistakes (I usually do 10 mistakes), having them study the words by writing them 5 times each and then retesting them again on the same paragraph a few days later. You can obviously go farther each time because hopefully they will remember some of the words they missed the first time.

Cathy A,
My heart goes out to you, because I do hate it when grade skips 'dry up.'

I'm praying that he gets an intelligent and understanding teacher next year. Individual teachers make a huge difference.

Best Wishes,
Grinity

Grinity, it's still better than where he was. I still help out every Friday in his old K class. I didn't want to leave his teacher high and dry without a Friday helper. Anyway, I am still in there talking about how we Hear with our Ears and that the letter H says, "hhh", etc. They are still counting objects (up to 25 now!)

His teacher now is very good with him but there is still a LOT of repetition and he ends up tuning out. I am worried that he will get in the habit of tuning out all the time and miss the few new things that do come along.

DD was always engaged in class and eager to share her knowledge (even if it was a repeat.) DS doesn't seem to care as much about sharing his knowledge during class. But he has been taking it upon himself to do extra work, like a page of multiplication facts. She told him he should practice his 2s and 5s (because they keep coming out backwards) and he came home and made a worksheet for himself. He drew boxes with a ruler and wrote numbers (frontwards!) in the boxes. He was very proud of his work.

Hmmmm....I think I will talk to her and ask her to suggest other projects to him....

Just talking about this stuff gives me ideas

From what I've seen, you're entirely correct, Dottie. I don't know if it will get better in the upper elementary grades, but it's hard to imagine that it could be worse than the lower ones!

That's my conundrum. Do we try one more year, 3rd grade, and see how it goes? But what if that's the year that does him in? Do I HS 3rd grade and maybe 4th, put him in 5th grade which is the year before he'd move to a new school for 6th? Or HS 3,4,5th and start at Middle school along with everyone else (3 schools coming together so everyone will be all mixed up).

Dottie and Kriston, I'm not thinking of any more skips for a while. But I do think that it is good to encourage him to do his own projects because ultimately that is what is going to save our bacon. If he responds so well to teacher suggestions, maybe she and I can take advantage of that to keep him interested and engaged in school.

His K teacher noticed the same thing about him. She suggested that he needed to learn how to skip so he practiced doggedly at home for several weeks until he could do it. Same with dribbling a ball and tying a shoe. The school considered those things to be strongly in his favor in terms of approving the skip. They said he "takes instruction well." He doesn't take instruction as well from me, LOL!

I have high hopes for second grade, I know all the second grade teachers (six of them!) from my mathlab volunteering and they are a great group. They share their resources and ideas and they are still excited about teaching.

I found out that my dd's whole grade skip was actually initiated by her teachers (she has one homeroom and 8 specialty teachers). They all got together and went to the administration to suggest/ask for a grade skip for my dd.

I agree, the right teacher can make all the difference in the world. My dd has been extremely lucky and so far has only had excellent teachers. We are lucky in that we already know who her homeroom 4th grade teacher will be and she absolutely adores her (mutual feeling).

Also, I just found out today that the school has hired a Math Specialist for lower school for next year.

And Dottie, before you DOK, remember that I have had to pay for my dd's good fortune by having to deal with DXH. He is many times over worse than any school administration.

It seems like it can't be a smooth, easy ride for any of us, can it?

Wouldn't you love to hear from someone who had no barriers whatsoever to getting a fabulous education for her kids? Everyone around the kids understood LOGs and met the kids' needs without need for argument or advocacy.

<swoon>

Yeah, back to the real world, dreamer!

I have to say that getting the gradeskip for DS involved a lot less anguish on my part than getting DD's 504 plan for food allergy. But maybe that food allergy advocacy smoothed the way for DS because now the school administration knows that I am persistent and it is just easier to give me what I'm asking for!

I'm sure I'm one of "those" parents, LOL. I do try to make myself useful around the school though, which makes me fairly popular with the teachers.

I have hopes that I will be there someday... Hopefully before my dd starts college.

I informed my XH that I would no longer try to persuade him in regards to my dd's education. I would simply inform him of the decisions I was making and he could either like it or not. I wasn't going to loose any sleep over it. His response was to inform me that he was attending my dd's open house (he did not attend last year to protest her being there).

Maybe all I had to do was use some reverse psychology from the beginning

I'm lucky that my DH agrees with me on these things. He's supportive but I am the one who does all the research/legwork and negotiating with the school. He was seriously underchallenged until college which was an unpleasant shock to his system. He understands the danger of just letting the kids coast through school.

My DH gets it, too, thankfully. His attitude is that I'm the one home with the kids most of the time, so I should be the ultimate decision-maker. He make observations, listens as I hash things out, offers opinions and raises objections if he sees them, but he sees me as "the boss" of the kids and himself as more of a consultant.

It makes life a lot easier for me.

I don't know about that Dottie. Two days after telling me son needed to be accepted by the other kids and needed to "fit in", teacher left him in charge of the classroom while she took two of the kids to the principal's office for misbehaviour. He had to write down names of kids who acted up while she was gone. Not just on paper at his desk, no, he had to go from his desk (back of room) to the front of the room and write the names on the whiteboard. Yea, that'll help him fit in. Errgh (oops, another vent, carry on).

Hey, squirt, I've had teachers who did this sort of thing to me, too. In one case, I believe it was malicious but mostly they just start thinking of the gifted child as an adult and they forget what the effect of these things will be.

I think it also reflects on the staffing in our schools. I remember one day when I was helping out in a 1st grade classroom with 28 kids. One of the little girls was clearly about to throw up and needed to escorted quickly and calmly to an appropriate place. If I hadn't been there, the teacher would have had to decide whether to leave 27 kids unattended or let a frightened miserable kid find her way to the nurses office (in another building)on her own. Bad options, either way.

Acs, in our school the teacher would phone the office and they would send an adult to escort the child. Sick children should never be sent to the office alone--huge liability! What if she collapsed on the way there or something? With the older kids, another student accompanies the sick student to the office.

I understand what you're saying, that the teachers come to rely on the GT kids in their classrooms as helpers. And that's not always a bad thing.

As a kid I enjoyed being the helper and having special privileges. I'm sure it did not help me fit in, though (I didn't fit in at all). But I also remember feeling shortchanged at times because the teacher spent very little time actually teaching ME anything. And that was just the benign neglect type of teacher...the malicious teacher was a completely different scenario.

It might be fun for the kid to be the teaching assistant, but I'm not sure it's good for the kid in many ways. Not just how the child is accepted/not accepted socially by others--although I don't think that should be easily dismissed--but in terms of learning time (as you mention Cathy), perfectionism, and self-concept, to name the ones that pop into my head right away.

If the child is the "second teacher" in the class, what does this teach the child about herself? How does he see himself fitting into society?

I was the TA when I was in school, too, but I don't think it was very good for me. It's better than sheer boredom, I guess, but not by much. And I think it causes just about as many problems as it solves.

FWIW...

Ok, file this under baggage, but I still feel the pain from being mistreated by my high school calculus teacher.

Here's one of the things he did that made me feel especially bad:

I was a junior when I took calculus and at the end of the year the seniors had a week off. So for a week I was the only person in the class. This teacher spent that week in the teachers' lounge leaving me alone in the classroom. To me it felt like he was saying I wasn't worth his time.