Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Still underchallenged?

Let me preface this by saying that DS still seems happy in his 2nd grade class.

However.

2nd grade math seems to consist of addition and subtraction facts to 18. DS already knows multidigit addition and subtraction with regrouping. He knows multiplication and division (although hasn't memorized those facts yet.) DS can count, add and subtract money, make change, tell time to the minute, understand fractions and is currently learning about exponents, roots and prime numbers at home.

Reading is not much better. I was excited to learn that he had taken an Accelerated Reader placement test. But we haven't heard what his AR level is. Yesterday for homework he was assigned a book called "The Big Box" which started out: "The kittens see a big box. It is a big, bad box. Can the kitten hop on top of the big, bad box?" etc. DS self-selects Secrets of Droon and nonfiction books of at least 4th grade level. He can read these aloud to me easily. He told me he asked the teacher if he could read a chapter book instead but that she said he had to read all 20 of the "baby books" (his words) first, and that he could only read one a day. He could read books like that when he was 3. Now he is almost 6... <sigh>

He always seems to know all the words on his spelling list as soon as he gets the list. They are things like: off, this, was (and the challenge words...) puddle, puppy.

Is this a typical 2nd grade curriculum? I guess if he's happy, we'll just continue what we're doing, but part of my motivation for skipping him was to provide some kind of challenge to keep him engaged and hopefully prevent perfectionism and underachievement. I'm not sure this is enough.

Are we living parallel lives on opposite coasts? I could have sworn you were talking about our DS...

JB

I think there may be an administrative issue when it comes to "differentiation" here. Here is the stated district policy.


So even if the teachers want to provide differentiated material, they have to follow the core curriculum first. At least, this seems to be how they interpret this.

I guess the grass isn't any greener over there...

<sigh> Yes Cathy, unfortunately this is typical second grade curriculum. Schools typically do not start multiplication until 3rd grade, and may start the beginnings of division by the end of 3rd.

Your little boy sounds very much like my son, who is now 8. DS understood multiplication and division before kindergarten, and has been reading advanced books since 1st grade. I know how you feel. It is a very hard call on what to do next. You can teach them material at home after school, in order to keep the love of learning alive. But that just makes the gap between what they know and what the other kids know even greater, and leads to increased boredom at school. You can advocate that they be accelerated again, in order to reach more challenging material. But I can say from experience that even with multiply grade skips, the material in the classroom just moves at too slow a pace for these kids.

The only thing that I can suggest from our experience, and this probably depends on the personality of the kid in question, is that our son can handle some non-challenging work at school as long as there is one (or two) areas where he is challenged. For instance, DS does not seem to mind that they just spent maybe 8 weeks reading a book that he read several years ago. Somehow he doesn't get frustrated with primitive reading assignments, as long as he can read more challenging material at home. However, DS has less patience with non-challenging math and science assignments, since they are subjects that he lives and breathes for.

So our compromise has been a whole grade acceleration, and then subject acceleration in math and science. This lets him stay with a good group of social buddies who are about 2 years older than he is for over half of the day in his 4th grade class. I think of this as his base camp. He is then challenged in the two areas that are most important to him by subject acceleration. This strategy seems to be working for the moment. <keeping our collective fingers crossed>. But even being 8 years old and in a 7th grade science class, we find that the pace of the new material is slow. But... it is way better than being stuck back in 4th grade science!

I don't know if this helps, or if the lack of a perfect solution is just plain depressing! But we are making due with a patchwork kludge. Our individual education plan (if we had one) should read, "Copious amounts of duct tape needed!"

But seriously, you described our exact scenario. So we still do a lot of enrichment activities at home. We did just start to work on spelling lists. And of course there is lots of fun math problems (thankfully he's starting to get interested in that again). And of course Biology, his continuing obsession.

And no, he's not academically challenged at school either.



JB

Hi Cathy

I agree with Dotti, you can add to the program. Our DS6 is in a very good gifted school, and he is happy with it. However they are still doing the basic standards. They did move him to higher math, but it still seems easy to me. Just like the spelling words 8 regular and 4 challanging. He could spell all but 2. It only took a couple of trys to get it. They will test on friday, so we will review once on Thursday. The one thing I did notice is that on math, we need to work on speed. Also word knowledge needs to get better. We just started on Droon and on the Merlin series of the magic tree house. He has never been exposed to a number of the words (exp. Solstice)These have given us opportunities to add to his base. We also just started times attack (Thanks JBdad) he loves it. The pressure of time helps to see that although he can do it, it's not intuitive. I guess what I am saying is that even in a very good gifted school we need to add things at home. We make sure that he does have some challange, and we fight the perfectionism. Hopefully the teacher will help you and add to the program.

Thanks, ebeth. Actually, it does help to know that your family has found a way to patch things together. Right now, our school refuses to do subject acceleration due to "scheduling difficulties" but I haven't really pressed them on it. Maybe that's next year's project...

This whole process seems to move plainfully slowly.

Edwin and JBDad, I'm right there with you! At least DS is excited about doing a science fair project this year. He wants to test the pH of some household substances using a homemade (from purple cabbage) indicator solution.

Dottie: I think it is a priceless analogy! More side dishes please! In fact, sometimes a whole meal can be made just from the side dishes! Now there is an educational idea! Throw out the meal plan and just devour the extras.