Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Language Arts acceleration.

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We initially asked for this, as this area is our dd's strength. The school said no due to scheduling. Although I was initially opposed to a full grade skip, it became clear we should consider it and do the IAS, which said dd was a strong candidate for a skip (from 5th to 7th). It was the best decision and she has thrived. It still isn't totally sufficient, but she is happy. We are enriching with things like Shakespeare camp.

But for subject acceleration, check out Michael Clay Thompson. Maybe your ds could do it on his own during LA time.
http://www.rfwp.com/pages/michael-clay-thompson/

Yeah, I use MCT for supplementing our charter. Luckily we have at least one homeschool day a week. DD adores the books. I know people say they are parent-intense but while we love reading them together, DD can read them solo and learn a lot that way. So a few books (sometimes you can score cheap used ones online) might be good for extension/replacement at school?

DS12 is in 6th grade in a charter school and I was wondering if there is a way to assess his level so that we can determine where to start in the MCT ? He has always done well in English/Language Arts but I do not think his ability to write is that great and have similar concerns about grammar/vocabulary.

The Magic Lens Series might be a good place to start. You could also try some Caesar's to get an idea of how it flows. Caesar's might be to easy but it gives you a good foundation for the rest of the series. It can be as rigorous as you want it to be.

For a child that started MCT in the 3rd grade and does one level a year, the 6th grade texts will be level 4 ones. Since your DS is in 6th grade you can start there, download the sample PDFs for the relevant books (including the teacher manual) and ask him to do some of the work for your to review. This way you can go backwards or forwards in the series according to where he is at.

Magic Lens starts at level 4

My 2E (profoundly LD) DD's neuropsych eval the summer between 1st and 2nd grades made clear that high level audio books were an absolute necessity so at the public she would take 2 "enrichment/anxiety" breaks a day to listen to middle school/high school level books. There was no curriculum and no one ever discussed the books with her. She would just listen to a book like "Great Expectations" and then skip down the hall to her 2nd grade classroom and work on decoding her K/1st level reader and answer comprehension questions like "can you identify the beginning, middle and end of the story." It wasn't a great solution but at least she got to listen to the books and over dinner we would discuss Miss Havisham's motivation for inviting Pip over...

In 3rd grade she started OOD at a special Ed school. They placed her in an 8th grade reading comprehension class using an audio version of the text. (The school goes to 12th grade but we didn't really want our 8 year old in a high school classroom so happily took the placement.) DD "didn't want the other kids to feel bad" so never really gave full answers during discussions. She would give a partial answer and then see if anyone added to it. They rarely did so she didn't either. She was so happy to have the opportunity for discussion it took most of the year to get her to admit that she found the class "painfully slow".

This year we tried 2 days a week in the 8th grade group and 3 days a week doing research based on topics from the readings. A) no one really wanted a 9 year old in a high school class and B) no one at school realized she had hit the ceiling on their placement testing and 8th grade wasn't really the appropriate level for her. A couple of months ago she was listening to "Lord of the Flies" on her own so they decided to pull her from the 8th grade group and have her work on a 9th/10th grade curriculum for that book instead. She now works 1-1 with a teacher. More interesting but she still misses the give and take of a classroom discussion.

At our IEP meeting next month I am going to ask that she either be placed in a high school class or that they have 1 or 2 high school students join her 1-1 group. I am guessing the latter is more likely.

I'm not sure how much of this will apply to your situation but hopefully it will give your some ideas. A friend with another 2E kid who is radically subject excelerated tells me that he loves to show off to the bigger kids so YMMV depending on your child's temperament.

Our solution looked a lot like Pemberley's, in terms of dovetailing (er-- or not) with the grade-level curriculum.

LA was DD's area of strength, too-- she should have had about a +6, maybe +7 acceleration there, and not the +3 to +4 that we wound up with across the board.

Providing DEEP, DEEP enrichment and enough wiggle room in the assignments for the regular curriculum (other kids are reading Shel Silverstein for a project? Can DD do Langston Hughes?) was the key.

OTOH, her writing skills were among her weakest. So there was a lot of scaffolding and hothousing happening on that front while she was treading water on the literature one.

Following. LA enrichment is always hard because it's less...definite somehow.