Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Math acceleration

Long story short, it looks like DS7's school is going to accelerate him about 1 1/2 years in math (about the middle of the third grade). He just started second grade.

Simple background: We left DS's former school last year because of the lack of a coherent differentiation strategy.

Now, DS has gone from having no required homework to coming up with about 45 minutes per night, most of it math. I know I can't have it both ways- if he's accelerated in math, he must complete the curriculum and homework, end of story. I completely get it.

The thing is, there is this asynchronicity issue, where DS responds to homework like a seven year old, not a nine year old. I'm trying to figure out how to get him through this homework each night.

First, has anyone faced this issue with acceleration-- kids are able to handle the intellectual side, but have maturity issues regarding work expectations. Care to commiserate?

Second, proactively, does anyone have a good ideas to keep my DS focused, organized and not a burnt out shell of his former self (tongue in cheek) while meeting work expectations?

Reading assessments occur next week- I predict that (with the exception of reading aloud anxiety) that DS will do well, and may also be accelerated in language arts (more homework?!). Yikes.

Thanks

Which math curriculum does your school use? Is it different from last year's? How many pages of math homework does your DS bring on average? Who proposed this acceleration?

I'll commiserate! But I don't have any solutions.

My son went to a private 6-12 school for the last two years where he skipped from 4th to 6th the first year and then from 6th the 8th the second year. He was in Algebra I the first year and geometry the second year (so two whole grades with an additional grade for math).

There were two main issues with the skip(s). The first was that, except for math (where he was properly placed), the two skips weren't enough from a cognitive standpoint. But from an executive function standpoint, they bordered on too much.

So we are back to homeschooling this year.

We're homeschooling. It's true that children don't automatically do the schoolwork you want. But at least we don't have to worry about any external expectations.

Does his current 2nd grade teacher expect that the 2nd grade math homework should take so long each night? Is it just a lot of work that he already knows how to do, or is it work that he's actively learning and that's why it takes awhile to do?

Have you asked about the math homework requirements in 3rd grade? Is there a general expectation that math homework should be x minutes each night, increasing with grade? Or is it possible that his current teacher is a teacher who gives out a lot of homework, but the 3rd grade teacher might be a teacher who doesn't give out much homework at all?

If he's taking as long or longer than expected by his teachers *now* to do his math homework - at this point in time - I'm not 100% certain I'd accelerate him. If it's just an issue of the teacher assigning a ton of problems there are ways to work around it. If the problems are repetitive, ask that he only have to do a small # (1-3 or whatever) to show that he knows how to do them. Or ask that he be allowed to have a set time that he works on math each night, and once that time limit is up he is done with math homework for the night.


Our kids have, for the most part, not had issues with work expectations when subject accelerated, but otoh, our kids also weren't at a school that required 45 minutes of homework a night in 2nd grade - our school district guidelines are 10 minutes total homework per night per grade. I will also admit that in early elementary, I didn't worry about my kids not completing a homework assignment - as long as I knew they understood how to do the work.


I'm sure I'm known as the mellow-about-acceleration parent among us, but if subject acceleration meant putting my child into a situation where they had to do what I perceived to be an excessively large amount of homework, I'd keep them where they are at and instead of acceleration offer after-schooling *IF* they wanted to.


Keep in mind - some of that "more" homework might actually be fun, depending on whether or not your ds likes language arts, what books the higher level class is reading, what type of homework assignments he'll get etc. What I'd do is ask around among parents you know what their experience has been with 3rd (or whatever) grade Language Arts.

Good luck with your decision - let us know what happens!

polarbear

master of none, thanks for the tips. We're pretty much doing what you suggest.

To answer questions:

1. His math curriculum is Singapore math

2. The school had the students complete a math assessment and placed him based on the results.

3. Last year was a Montessori math curriculum- prior to that he was at another school that didn't work out, especially in math - so most of the new material that he learned came from me.

4. He brings home about 6-8 math sheets per night + one language sheet + a reading requirement

5. He seems to be doing okay with doing the homework so far, but I notice that he is very tired after a full day of school, homework, and a few nights of extracurriculars. It doesn't leave much for playtime and downtime- which he still needs a lot of.

6. Most of the math (so far) is not difficult for DS. I suspect the middle of the 3rd grade is where he landed because of learning gaps- if he fills them in quickly, it's possible he could be accelerated quite a bit further, which could increase the load. I need to clarify his trajectory with the teacher.

7. It's still early days, but right now, I need to participate at a low level with the homework. The maturity issues extend to things like "read the directions, look at the examples," or "show work to increase comprehension and/or prevent silly math errors."

Thanks for the input- I may need to conference with the teacher and sit tight for a few weeks. He hasn't been in school for long this year and I want to give the teacher a chance to weigh in on homework expectations, etc.

I have not had those issues, however, the homework requirement in our SD for early elementary is supposed to be 30 minutes per day, all subjects combined, max. If it was taking your child longer than that, the teacher wanted to know so they might make adjustments.

Also, you could consider asking if he could work on his homework during the school day when he is done with the regular classwork.

ETA: I just saw your update, and 6-8 math sheets a night seems like far too much, IMO. I would want to know why so much???

over 3 years we've tried 3 different "solutions" to math acceleration which were each various degrees of failure (1st grade -- extra puzzle homework (useless but sometimes fun; 2nd grade -- independent worksheets while the rest of the class was doing math (not challenging or engaging); 3rd grade -- joining the 5th grade class (OK but had to miss other classes due to the timing not being aligned. Also still was not sufficiently challenging).

This year the school is as frustrated as we are and they are letting us homeschool just for the math portion but take the tests in school when he's ready (do homework on his own while the rest of the class has math; Im hoping this cuts down on the too much homework problem too)

there's no easy solution! Good luck and keep us posted

Thanks howdy. Doing it during the day may be an option. I would like the teacher to weigh in on the challenge word problems- maybe that's what he could work on at school. DS needs to learn to show his work- the problems are getting harder, and doing it in his head may not cut it for much longer. He does not want to hear that from "mom."

It may be that he will need to make some adjustments to the Singapore method, too. I started my #1 on SM with book 2B (it sounds like your son is on 3A or 3B), and noticed that the first year was markedly harder than the year my #2 (who started from kindergarten with SM) did the same levels. There are terms and strategies that he may not be familiar with, that he would have encountered if he had gone through the earlier levels. And patterns that he already has, which SM may require him to re-learn or adapt. In our case, we did not see any need to go back to catch those, it just made our initial foray into SM a little more uphill than it would have been otherwise.

I would echo the general rule of thumb about homework, which is 10 minutes for every year of grade, all subjects combined. In addition, I would point out that homework at the elementary level is valuable solely as a means of building work habits. The research does not support any academic benefit from doing homework, if classroom instruction is effective. (In fact, there is some negative correlation between amount of time spent on homework and academic performance, past a certain point. At the secondary level, the volume of reading and content to be covered does support assigning some homework, but no more than 2 hours.)

Some possible homework adjustments: complete only sufficient problems to demonstrate mastery; hard time limit of 30 minutes on homework, with parent signature to indicate that this is what was completed as of the time limit; first x items written by child, remainder scribed responses; odd/even items only; circled (priority) items only.

I also notice that the SM teacher's guide lists most days having 2-5 pages of homework from the workbook, extra practice, or CWP books, plus 1-3 pages of in-class practice from the textbook. It sounds like the teacher may either be assigning in-class practice items as homework (not advisable, as that removes opportunities for guided practice and discussion), or possibly doing two lessons a day.