Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments it's april .. can we speed up 6th grade math?

Channa which teacher stayed with her after school? And did they teach her anything or was she just administered unit tests during those 3 weeks? I wish I had thought of that myself in September! In contrast the principal and counselor had politely expressed that I should chill out because he will have enough on his plate merely "adjusting" to the bells and changing classes. As predicted, he was miserable in math by end of September!

Our DS11 (he was 10 at the start of the school year) is twice-grade-skipped in 7th grade, and he was in 8th grade math for the first half of this year. He's never had any problem being with the older kids -- in fact, it's better with the older ones than the ones his own age.

For the second half of this year, he went into the second half of Algebra 1 in our e-school, and it didn't bother him a bit to miss the first half of Algebra 1. He's doing better (97% so far) in it than he was in the regular 8th-grade math class, because he doesn't have any problem remembering to turn stuff in online.

I'm not sure I would have bothered, for only one quarter, though.

Cee, I administered all the tests myself and taught it all to her myself. I bought the test book and the 5th grade book for the curriculum. We would go through the book and ask her what she knew and didn't know. If she said it was easy, we skipped it. If she said, she knew it but not easy, I had her do a problem just to make sure and then I would give her the test for the Unit. I graded it and then we moved on to the next Unit. We did 1-2 tests per day. In the beginning, may have done 3. I stapled them all together, put a sheet on the front with all her grades and her 97 average and handed it to the principal.

She has had about a 99 average on her tests in Math this year after that "skip". We are bringing her home to homeschool for 7th Grade, but i intend to go through pre-Algebra over the summer and Start her on Algebra when the school year starts. She is really tired of being held back by repetition in Math and is so ready for real algebra.

Chana, my son feels the same. He's been asking for algebra for 2 years. Today at school there were worksheets. Then, more worksheets. 6th grade level stuff. It's so sad to see his expression, that doesn't hold that same innocent excitement that it used to, about school. He used to look forward to Mondays with joy, right after the grade skip when he was 6 years old. It has changed a lot since then.

When a parent decides to pull child out to homeschool, in some random year, what is the reason they give to school principal? Is there ever resistance? Chana what did you tell your daughter's school, and how did you know what math book to buy. There are SO MANY...

My DD complains because they use the spiral method, which is great when in 3rd grade because it introduces concepts earlier than most, but to her there is no difference between 2-digit and 3-digit division. So, there are very few new concepts each year.

Last year, I had the WISC-IV and EXPLORE test results and said the options were grade skip or we are taking her home. There was much resistance until I walked in 3 weeks later with her math tests. There was still concern until she had straight As at the first 9 weeks and "Excellence"( 96+ average) in all but one subject. Given that we are at the same place as last year and we took our younger one out of school last year to homeschool, they are not surprised. Last year I told them that she was bored out of her wits and I wasn't going to do that to her. We had the support of her teachers with the grade skip because she would finish her work in 10 min, when the time to finish it was 50 min. before approaching the principal, I made sure that I had ample evidence.

On the Math book, i bought the 5th grade book that her school used after they gave the slightest ok to a grade skip. I knew they were waffling. So, as soon as I heard anything that sounded like it could be interpreted to be a yes, I bought the curriculum that they use and got it over with and the next time they saw me, I had graded tests in hand.

Next year, we will use Art of Problem Solving. It seems to be the one that people on here are fond of and it looks like it will work well with my DD. To keep it fun over the summer, I will use Life of Fred and some worksheets to fill in some pre-Algebra gaps. I think there are 2-3 things that she hasn't learned at all yet before jumping into Algebra.