Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments hurried vs. gifted

oh, that's such a good point about the open-ended project! we had a funny one recently that kicked open the door a crack with the teachers. DD suddenly started refusing the readers that she was pretending she couldn't do (again with the paradoxes!) so they decided to send home flash cards for sight words she's known forever. she resisted doing them till i flatly told her she had to show them she could... so she grudgingly blew through them and then got even grumpier because it was clear they weren't varied enough to make a meaningful sentence. so we got her a sharpie and some construction paper, and when she was done, she had a paragraph/story, complete with a beginning/middle/end - and complete punctuation.

i took photographs and sent them in with her. they asked for her cards (so she could prove it wasn't just me rushing her, i guess!) but the next reader that came home was 50 pages longer than the ones they were doing with her literally two days prior - so i feel like the school is reasonably responsive when shown an academic problem, but quite prepared to dig in its heels on the emotional/social side.

early days, yet, though - and i feel so much better prepared already. thanks again!

Amen!

Sometimes the teacher makes all the difference. But you can't always select just the right teacher. In the end though, I think at this point, that 99% of brick and mortar schools cannot provide gifted kids' needs. They are not set up for individualized instruction. How can an overworked teacher possibly make a completely different set of homework or classwork for every student; they have a one-size-fits-all strategy that just doesn't work. I would literally have to make up my daughter's curriculum myself(might as well homeschool her?)!

I have been looking into online (virtual) school lately and I like what I hear but I'm not sure if their standards are as high as the brick and mortar they are currently enrolled in. (a teacher I've talked to said she doesn't recommend virtual school because some of the skills did not seem adequately provided for, like speaking and social skills, etc...). I guess I would have to keep that in mind and find an activity that I can include that would provide speaking and social skills.

In my experience though, I did not learn social skills until in the workforce, so I do not think I learned that in school anyway. Personally, I think that if she is allowed to find her own friends (whether they are 2,5, or more years older) would be a far better alternative to being stuck with kids she has very little in common with. Incidentally, I had a conversation with the same teacher and she expressed concern about placing my daughter in fourth grade because the kids in 4th were too rowdy. My daughter seems to show more maturity, in school, than kids at least a year older than she.

As to what doubtfulguest was saying, I totally agree. I have told the teacher and school academic councilor that I never had to work at getting good-enough grades, I never studied like other kids had to, therefore I had no study skills and very rarely failed at anything I tried, so consequently when I was young, I refused to do things that I had to struggle with. Now I wish someone had made me stick with them. The councilor also said that they have to do review work and I told her that review is redundant, I very rarely lost information once I understood it. Sad thing is I know I did not convince her; she still will not recommend my daughter being accelerated.

So here she sits in a school environment she does not like and is refusing to go to school. I am not sure what to do. I know I can force her, but is that what I should do?

Yeah, I'm getting discrepancies between what the staff is saying and what my daughter is saying; my daughter tells me she can read level M books but her teacher is saying she's testing out at level K. Anyone have thoughts on why? My thought is that maybe they are looking for complete mastery rather than introductory skill levels.

Another thing I noticed when I had the meeting with the academic councilor, she seemed to think that only 100% means mastery. So, if my daughter receives a 98 on a sheet, that she has not mastered that concept and must do more homework or study in that concept. Whereas, looking back on my school experiences, I remember many times looking back over a test that I missed one or two and thinking- "Why did I put that answer down?" I knew the right answer but somehow put in the wrong one. Other times the question had two 'right' answers and I could have verified that fact, if I'd been allowed to. Or there were even times where I saw that the answer they were looking for was only correct in certain situations and I could have listed the correct answer for each situation. So to me, getting 100% does not mean much about whether a child understands the concept or not.

unless the tests are multi choice I wouldn't expect 100%. People make mistakes when taking tests - it is just how test are and as another poster said we often remember just too late what we did wrong.

Eta. even with multi choice an error rate of a few percent seems reasonable.

i've noticed when my kid goes over a mistake and sees that it's silly or figures out how it went wrong - the next time it's no problem. your daughter may be doing that, too, and wondering why the teachers are so slow to catch up with her! our kid's teachers truly believe every kid needs a certain amount of repetitions - it drives her nuts, especially with reading because going over the same book more than once allows her to rely on her memory. she knows she's not reading - and she (quite correctly) finds it pointless.

it's really frustrating, but we've had some success in the past few weeks getting her to "manage up" - she will now patiently work through the "baby" work to prove her mastery to the teachers. she is still really irritated, but at least it's getting her to the real work in the end.

oh, wow, Bluestar - i feel like we have the exact same kid! i'm so glad i found you all.

we have definitely decided to move schools - the independent school where she is currently enrolled is a total disaster for her and we've been shut out by the administration and teachers completely. i had a fantastic conversation with our neighbourhood school principal (of all places?!) who told me his plan for my kid included carefully selecting the teacher (and kids) she would be with each year. i am still in shock...

i have no idea if this will help enough to make her stop wanting to quit school, but it does feel miles better than what's happened this year. we, the parents, are making this decision, but we did ask our kid to make lists of her pros/cons about changing schools, and what might be different/same in each environment. i think it really helped her feel some level of control over her experience.

we also started actively talking to her about the limitations of school and how it might never meet her needs completely, and we've asked for her ideas on how we can make up the difference as a family. she came up with some great stuff and she does seem more at ease since we had a brass-tacks conversation with her about it all.

i would homeschool or follow the online curriculum in a heartbeat if i didn't also have to pay the mortgage (hee) - although since i work from home, something tells me we may head in that direction as she gets older and can be more self-directed. as you say, requiring a kid to actually work hard when they generally don't have to is quite a challenge, isn't it!

It may also be the rubric. DS7 can read a chapter of Dr. Dolittle he's never seen before (okay, he did get stuck on "fishmonger"), get to the "Bridge of Apes" episode and throw the book down because THOSE CAN'T BE APES, MOM, APES DON'T HAVE TAILS. He can narrate the story back to me, albeit with some editorializing on migration patterns.

But on the testing material (very easy readers) he whips through as fast as possible, doesn't slow down for punctuation and doesn't read with expression. (This is particularly funny, for my very emotive DS.) So according to their scale, on last week's report, he tested out as 9/12 of the way from "beginning" to "developing" reading.

Nevertheless, he is reading chapter books in the classroom (plus we just sent in a middle-school paleontology book, at his request) and the librarian just gave him permission to take out extra books every week, anything in the library as long as he can read her two sentences out of it. So I am trying to learn to let of the ridiculous assessment, as long as his actual challenges are appropriate.

My ds6 in kindergarten has had this problem. I think some teachers want a child to do "A", then "B", then "C". Yet, the child is so far beyond, he/ she can't perform a,b,c as the teacher asks. I decided to stop doing those easy readers with my ds because he starting fighting me every time I tried. I did try to explain this to his teacher and ask if she could try something harder with him. There was a small compromise, but basically we're seeking outside guidance and hoping we can hang in there to the end of the year.

My ds6 in kindergarten has had this problem. I think some teachers want a child to do "A", then "B", then "C". Yet, the child is so far beyond, he/ she can't perform a,b,c as the teacher asks. I decided to stop doing those easy readers with my ds because he starting fighting me every time I tried. I did try to explain this to his teacher and ask if she could try something harder with him. There was a small compromise, but basically we're seeking outside guidance and hoping we can hang in there to the end of the year.

It might not even be as much as "complete mastery" but they were (at least in our schools) looking for a basic rubric (as mentioned by another poster) met at each level. That didn't necessarily mean students were only allowed to choose books at that level, that was simply the level that they were documented to be at when tested.

The scientist in me also wants to add - K isn't that far away from M (unless you've got a different alphabet than the one our school uses ). I wouldn't be bothered much by the teacher and my child disagreeing by that amount - it might be something as simple as your dd had a slight cold on the day of the eval and wasn't performing at her best, or your dd is telling you the level she's allowed to check books out at and her teacher is telling you the level she's mastered.

Best wishes,

polarbear