Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments School options -Optimizing learning rate and level

First time poster - hello board!

Macro question/topic...

Our kids (DD13, DS11, DD7) are very bright kids who have, since Kindergarten, been enrolled in our (good, not great, IMO) suburban public schools.

Our kids are significantly above the average for their schools in both learning speed and current knowledge level. i.e. They read, do math, etc above their level, AND, in my opinion, can absorb new material significantly faster than their school peers.

This situation is probably rather typical for most gifted kids.

What I struggle with is shaping a learning environment that accommodates both their learning speed AND level.

i.e. Two common recommendations for gifted kids are:

1) Group the high ability kids together, have them learn some extra material.

2) Accelerate specific kids - have them grade skip or at least skip within certain subjects (and thus learn with kids one or more years older than them).

But...

IMO, neither of these two scenarios are ideal.

In the first case, the PACE of learning may be a bit faster, but overall learning level is largely clamped at the top by the fact that the more advanced student(s) must [EDIT: generally], every year, start classes with others who did NOT learn that extra material the year before.

In the second case, skipping ahead to learn with older kids may put my kids in classes with others closer to their current level of KNOWLEDGE, but not necessarily their learning SPEED (for new material). It sorta kicks the can down the road.

I realize that what I just typed comes off a little muddy. Here's another way of putting it...

If my kids are capable of learning at a rate 50% (or more) faster than the average of their peers, then they could learn 1.5 (or more) grade levels of new material, per calendar year.

But that depends, to some extent, on a classroom environment that progresses at that speed, and even if it DID, the faster learner would quickly be out of synch in terms of knowledge level with peers who learn at the standard pace.

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OK, moving away from the theoretical a bit...

Our schools do offer some ability grouping (faster pace), and some ability to skip (our DS11 is taking Geometry). But I think what is offered is still not optimal for our kids (they could probably go faster, and the level skipping is imperfect in various ways).

I understand the schools' dilemma - they have limited resources, and bending over backwards to accommodate our kids can strain those resources.

I'm aware of at least SOME of the alternatives:

1) Private school
2) Move to an area with stronger public schools
3) Homeschool
4) Supplemental instruction/resources outside of the school
5) Lean on the current school, within reason

So far we are doing #4 and #5.

Homeschooling would solve both the pace and level issues - the kids could learn at whatever level they're at, at whatever pace they're capable of. But for a variety of reasons, I don't think homeschooling is an ideal option for our kids and our family generally.

Hmm, I've got more thoughts and such on this, but this post is quite long already. I suppose it's mostly venting, but a bit tossing it out there for others. I assume our situation is fairly common among parents of gifted kids...

Anyways, thanks for reading if you've made it this far.

The pace issue has been a problem for us, particularly considering we have the added angst of inattention... DS8 has an ADHD dx and DD10 probably could have one as well. DD10 is not as bad... she'd be borderline if ADHD at all, but DS8 is quite affected (there's definitely a difference between just gifted Vs. gifted/ADHD - you can really see it when you meet my son).

Anyway... things have to be fast, concise, without excessive repetition. Got it? Next... Got it? Next... etc etc.

Then, you have to go back a few days later... Remember? Good. Or... remember? Ok, here it is again... got it now? Good. Next...

Without the "next" (ie WITH repetition), the behaviours start.

It's tricky though - the fact that they both learn so effortlessly makes it easy to gloss over things... I have to make sure that I check in to see if they remember it later. DD10 is pretty good - it's DS8's ADHD that creates a problem in this regard.

(Btw, I do #4 on your list ) Also my two are in French Immersion, which helps a little.

I don't think there's a perfect education solution... you just do the best you can

I think this is very similar to our situation. I agree that homeschooling would probably solve some of our issues, but it may also cause other issues since DD9 really does need the socialization. That being said - I would really like to keep DD in public school, but don't think she is getting the right mix of accommodations. IMO (but I could be wrong), I think this is causing her to have behavior issues and be extremely apathetic to school in general. I recently posted under the Parenting/Advocacy Forum about all this asking what we should be doing differenly.

What supplemental things are you (psteinx & CCN)doing?

I've been looking a lot on the Hoagies site lately and been taking notes on curriculum compacting, subject acceleration, and differentiation since these options (or a combination of these options) seem to be something that could be helpful to DD. I'm hoping to make some GIEP suggestions for next school year, but as you mentioned I understand that the school can only go so far.

psteinx - sounds like you have a school that at least is willing to make some accommodations, hopefully they will be willing to make some more/different ones.

CNN - you are spot on with the fast, concise, without EXCESSIVE repetition - that is torture to these kids!

Some of our supplements:

Much of it is during the summer.

In years past I have taught/pushed some math on our kids (with little rewards systems that increase their interest).

My wife has been teaching our youngest math above her grade level at school.

This summer our kids will be taking various summer school classes, including a fairly aggressive pair of science classes for our middle (science focused) kid. There was also a math program basically for highly advanced kids that our middle child took last summer and part of the school year, before dropping out (the course material for this was, IMO, dated and underwhelming).

Music lessons.

General encouragement for their interests.

Etc.

I think it's had value, but I would still like to see them progressing IN school at a faster rate.

(Previous response was in replay to 1frugalmom's question about what supplements we do. As a new forum member I guess my posts are delayed a bit pending approval, so I can't see exactly what I just posted.)

Also, re: homeschooling - I share the concerns about socialization, and think my kids would resist. (I haven't really broached the topic with them.) Plus, my middle kid, who would probably benefit the most, tends to butt heads with my wife when she does significant teaching/academic pushing with him.

Not at all.

As parent to a HG+ kiddo, we've pretty much tried everything on Hoagie's lists of strategies.

The bottom line is that you HAVE to do multiple strategies at once with kids who are at higher levels of giftedness, or the fit is unbearably bad. But that doesn't mean that-- short of an ideal child being ideally homeschooled-- you can get a "good" fit for some of those kids.

Won't happen. CANNOT happen, probably, because to do so, you'd have to have an actual classroom of kids who are operating at roughly the same set of needs-- for material, for pacing, for learning/instructional style, for repetition. Oh, sure, if you're in a highly urbanized setting, you might be able to get a child into an HG+ magnet setting, which is better by far... but even so, these kids have asynchrony as a primary feature-- and that asynchrony is inherently idiosyncratic. So there IS no such thing as a learning environment of "peers" in the full spectrum of dimensions which matter in a classroom.

Does that make sense?

From a practical standpoint, then, what you (meaning, as a parent/advocate) are stuck with is choosing the least-worst option available to you.

For us, that has been education at home for our DD13. In spite of the fact that my DD shares some of your middle child's oppositional tendencies when it comes to being "taught" anything.

It helps to have an outside agency the "authority figure" there-- for us that has been our virtual charter school. They are a better fit than the local school because they aren't as constrained re: acceleration or pacing (we can have DD do ALL of her math in one day, for example, to increase the RATE of delivery to better match what she finds ideal), and it is better than homeschooling because it doesn't make ME the bad guy re: requirements that my DD doesn't feel like meeting (Hey, it isn't MY assignment... but you'd better get to writing that essay if you don't want an F).

On the other hand, there is a LOT about it that is non-ideal:

a) large volume of material stands in for actual increases in level or quality of instruction, which is basically the dreaded M.O.S. differentiation (in other words, it's NOT differentiation),

b) it's difficult to decouple subjects from one another sufficiently to actually match readiness levels, so students like my DD are learning WAY below their level in most subjects, and only really "on-level" in one or two, and even then, as you noted, it's not really at a pace that suits them well,

c) none of the 'pluses' of school exist either-- the social side, the sports and other activities are all "outside of school" in this model,

d) it doesn't eliminate the contentious environment of DD + me completely, because I'm still holding the whip and chair most days.


But it's the best we have.

OH yeah.

Remind me to tell y'all about the wide-eyed look my DD gave me after her first geometry class meeting... when my then 11yo informed me that one of her classmates had to leave early to take care of her BABY.



Yes, we also abandoned homeschooling because we really didn't want to have a 9yo college student, but all the 'drag' we've been able to introduce has still only been enough to slow the trajectory by about 20%, I think.

In MN, we have across district open enrollment, and one of the results of this is a bunch of self-contained GT programs are popping up in the greater Twin Cities area to keep kids in district (or attract out of district kids). Many are school-within-a-school type setups, where the GT kids are housed in a neighborhood school but have GT for all their core classes and share the specials teachers (music and phy ed, e.g.). In my son's school for HG kids, the curriculum is at least one-year advanced, and they use a lot of curriculum designed for GT kids. Generally more engaging to GT kids and faster paced. When they finish the main curriculum, there is time to add cool and interesting units that most kids in regular classrooms don't get because the slower pace of the regular curriculum. Even though there is a range of abilities in the classroom, it is an all-GT range, easier on the teacher, and easier for the kids to make friends (lots of choices).

The trouble comes when the program ends. Most of these GT programs are only for elementary, and then parents scramble to find a good fit for middle school.

ETA: Welcome psteinx!!
Edited again to add: note re: Twin Cities area. Unfortunately, I don't think this is happening all over MN.

Math worksheets and language stuff, like reading, "word of the day" vocab building, graphic organizers to try and develop written output, that kind of thing.

I could have written the OP, this is exactly what we are bashing our head against at the moment... It's not going to happen to skip DD every other year, for many reasons, one of the many reasons being that her knowledge start point isn't super advanced in every area. But her pace is way beyond what school can accommodate, even in her weaker areas (which may simply be the areas that have yet to fully take off, she's only 6)... We have no idea what we are going to do (virtual school not really an option here).