Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Dd just shared something with me

I agree! I don't see how it is helpful, but probably because I just get the relationships, I guess for those who don't understand it intuitvely need it spelled out, and maybe it helps them learn the basics easier.

My son enjoyed the fact family homework sheets... done in like 2 minutes! lol. More than once I had to make him erase and re-do them because they looked like chicken scratch he was in such a hurry.

He did NOT enjoy the reading comprehension homework, lol. I am hoping for more of that this year... he actually has to think hard and focus for that!

Well, I guess there ARE things like AR. Reading comprehrension quizzes on out of level books. It may be what we ask for for DS5. But really--it's pretty limited, and those questions are often so surface-level, and...wrong, even, a lot of the time. I have some Hate for that stuff.

I'd like it if my boy could talk about themes and ideas in his beloved chapter books with other kids. With a teacher who was great at leading discussion. That would be cool, and he's more than capable of it. But it wouldn't produce written PRODUCT. The horror.

I saw my DD producing some pretty good short answers in response to pretty good questions about books she read in her magnet last year. I mean, it wasn't AMAZING, but it was decent. The books were 5th grade level or thereabouts (she was in third). Questions might be something like, "Why do you think X character did Y, even though it might have seemed to make sense to do Z?" or "What do you think was the hardest challenge X character faced?" That was okay for me, in terms of 3rd grade reading instruction for bright kids. But DD is a great writer and did beautifully with this. For kids who are more asynchronous with comprehension/production, it would be a poor fit. And obviously, DS5 is nowhere near able to do this yet. DD was ready for this in 2nd, but she is really capable with writing.

Pretty sure this wasn't a mention of math instructional pedagogy, er-- at least to me it wasn't connected.

Thus my confusion.

I've been following this thread and it has touched on something I've been wondering about--now that DD can read at a 3-5 grade level (I think her guided reading level is like Q or R, and all summer she's read books at 3-6, but also Shakespeare) what should reading instruction look like? Obviously she can read, so just getting lot of reading with new variations of syntax, punctuation, vocabulary, etc will help her. But then is it discussions about character and theme? Her school talks about "big ideas" and "frames" from Sandra Kaplan that students can use to break down the text, organize ideas, find patterns... It'll be interesting to try to catch a glimpse of reading time this year. I also got a few books from the library about gifted instruction so maybe that'll help (I'm responsible for about a fourth of her instructional time, part time homeschool). Anyone have experience with what else students might find beneficial at this point? Otherwise I'm going to keep pulling out my simplest high school techniques. But I do wonder if they'll get any good discussions going in first grade!

In schools that do ability grouping, it's not unheard of to start 1st grade with books like this one:

http://www.scholastic.com/browse/book.jsp?id=2310

The quality of discussion varies year to year. When they have a few shining starts, they get into pretty sophisticated stuff.

St. Margaret - I'd work on order of events and working on being able to summarize what she's read. That's what DS did the last 2 years (2nd & 3rd grade.)

Yes-- summarizing skills, pulling the main idea (which CAN be made surprisingly difficult in a nuanced or complex reading selection-- the SAT and ACT both use it).

Those both lead into more sophisticated literary devices like foreshadowing and theme later on.

I suspect this would be somewhat unusual except in cities with a lot of highly able kids, but I could be off base. DD read books like this one (approx. 4th grade level) in 2nd grade in her GT class. They didn't ability group, though, which I didn't love.

I was rather surprised to see how high functioning these students were because I suspect most of gifted/bright children in our medium size city are not in the public school system. This particular public school at the time had the second highest reading score in the entire state and it does ability grouping for reading and math from K all the way up to 5th (except for 2nd for some odd reasons) so I think some parents who opted out of private school sought out this school for that reason. Our district allows area exception and this school is located at a highway exist that is closest to the downtown area so it makes commuting easier for many parents.

I've shared this previously but in our city, there are two well-regarded K-12 prep schools and the competition to get in at K is fierce. So children start working with a tutor (or tutors and coaches) since age 2 and as one of them also does achievement tests in addition to cognitive, parents try to get their children to function 3 to 4 grades above their age. Since both schools screen behaviors, if the child wasn't a perfect little angle with impeccable social skills and charming personality, he won't get in. So these first graders could have been rejected applicants with very disappointed tiger parents who were already aiming at 6th grade admission.

Many of these students are eventually referred to their GT program and most of them test out to be around 125 to 135. So what it is worth, MG children can read 3 grades above by 1st grade if they have been prepped for GT Pre/K admission process since birth.