Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School missing subjects

We are currently moving my DD6 from half kinder/ half grade 1 to fulltime grade 1. And anticipate more grade skips later in the futre. My question is what do you do about the subjects/topics that your child misses when they skip a year? In particular I'm thinking about social studies stuff that is done in one grdae but then may not be done again later, but that the kids are expected to know. I'm not really concerned about this, more curious as someone asked me and I didn't have an answer for htem.

Maybe you could incorporate those topics into summer reading. Most kids don't remember the details of the things they do in social studies anyway. If they have the big picture about historical events then that is probably enough since they can look up details later as needed.

I wouldn't worry about social studies in Kindergarten. At this age they are building the foundation for later on and a lot of it is stuff your child probably just naturally knows. I live in Texas so I looked up the TAKS requirements for Kindergarten and there really is no set curriculum but more a building block for later on. Such as holidays:

History. The student understands that holidays are celebrations of special events. The student is expected to:
(A) explain the reasons for national patriotic holidays such as Presidents' Day and Independence Day; and
(B) identify customs associated with national patriotic holidays such as parades and fireworks on Independence Day.

I would say look up your states standardized criteria for Kindergarten and look through it. If there is any specifics you can add that in for extra work but the building blocks your child will probably naturally understand that and it won't be much of a transition for him/her.

What I mean by the building blocks is stuff like this:

History. The student understands the concept of chronology. The student is expected to:
(A) place events in chronological order; and
(B) use vocabulary related to time and chronology, including before, after, next, first, and last.

Chances are he/she already understands this and even more so naturally does it. I know my 2 yr old already does it and has for a very long time. It really is an interesting read.

I hope that helps.

I am not worried about her missing anything from Kinder, I was more curious about later grade skips and what others have done. Colorado's requirements are similar to yours, and yes, she does know all of them and has for quite a long time.

Kinder does vary from school to school. We were in Austin (TEKS requirements also) and all our students (at our specific school) advanced one grade level in reading during Kinder. Strangely enough, we are now in Colorado, which does not have set standards (or very few) and are set locally.

I am curious as to where you are in Colorado (and Texas). This was my fear and I did not skip my daughter. She is now in 6th.

We are in South Eastern Colorado in Lamar.
We've decided that we can help her make up any material she misses in the summer. Which could be helpful since she needs something to do in the summer.

In anticipation of DS6 big skip to 4th we checked the standards for grades 1-3 to see what he would miss. There were surprisingly few things and they will be covered over the summer. The big thing is cursive writing which is taught in 3rd grade here.

If your DD is anything like mine, they tend to fill in the gaps with what they pick up by materials available to read, and in a lot of cases they just seem to know. At this point with my DD6 (We moved her from K to 1st in January and she just had her birthday) and DD4 they have their toys, but I also lay around activity books that range from grade level 1st to 5th. I want to give them the option to play or learn whatever suits them. For right now that seems to work for us.

Just in case people are questioning you on the wisdom of grade-skipping, here is a quote from an article on the subject at the following link:

http://challenging-gifted-children.suite101.com/article.cfm/grade_skipping_misconceptions

"Another meta-analysis by James Kulik and Chen-Lin Kulik of 26 long-term studies of accelerated students found that gifted students who skipped grades academically outperformed gifted students who were not accelerated without negative social or emotional outcomes. For most highly gifted students exhibiting indicators of probable success, acceleration obviously does not result in either meaningful education gaps or damage to the social and emotional development of the gifted child."

I would also point out benefits of grade-skipping. It seems common sense that children who are never challenged throughout their 13 years of school grow used to everything being easy. A 5th grade child would never be asked to spend a year doing first grade work, so a 1st grader who is performing at a 5th grade level would naturally suffer if asked to do only work at the 1st grade level. The experience of being presented with challenges is necessary for children to be able to develop coping strategies necessary for success at later, more challenging experiences such as at college or in a career.

In my mind, I divide elementary education into a few catagories:
Skills: Telling time, Being able to do long division, penmanship
Fund of Knowledge: Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?
Social/emotional: Gaining the skill to balance my needs and the group's needs.

With skips, I think that the Fund of Knowledge area is the least worry, because most gifted kids are 'alert' to their environment in ways that ND kids aren't. At our house, DS used to hold the remote control while watching simple TV shows, and pause anytime he didn't understand why something was supposed to be a joke. He got a lot of cultural history that way. Also he spend at least on whole school year (4th) reading during class, and really got a lot of general knowledge that way.

I was at a lecture by Deb Ruf, and she pointed out that in the achievement test areas that don't depend on actually being taught, that gifted kid's achievement scores actually go up during the summer, when they have more free time for learning.

The problem areas we had were when physical and emotional maturity that only really come with time were so outstripped by intellectual development.

I reccomend that you spend some time in the classroom that your child will be missing - I think you will be suprised at how little goes on from your perspective. I don't mean to imply that the classroom isn't 'just right' for the ND kids, I think that it is, just that we Gifties are so used to ourselves, that we assume that the rest of the world has the same pacing needs.

While you are there, look at the level of repetition. I expect you will think that there is a lot of it.

Best Wishes,
Grinity