Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Oh dear, second grade math

LOL. Same here. DS7 remembers any date or number you put in front of him. I, on the other hand, still don't remember my own cell phone number DS5 doesn't share DS7 number obsession.

Good luck at school with all the math knowledge your son already has. His math abilities remind me of DS7 when he was 5.

Ok my DYS is 10 and does not know her address. Trust me that these details are not dependent on intelligence, just what interests them!

Oh, my. I know you said you thought it was fine, but I find this rather sad.


Has anyone read Liping Ma's book? I've been reading it lately and find myself absolutely horrified at regular intervals. It's truly shocking how poorly the American teachers she studied understood very basic elementary school math. They didn't just not understand dividing by fractions or similar topics (which would be horrifying enough), but many of them also seemed to not really understand the concepts behind our standard multiplication algorithm or even the fundamental concepts behind addition with what we once called carrying.

Reading this book has helped confirm my belief that we've had such trouble getting math accommodations because his previous teacher couldn't understand DS's level because his conceptual understanding had surpassed hers.

I just read the table of contents and the first few pages in the excerpt on amazon.com. Very interesting.

The really sad thing about it all is that the topics she discusses should be taught in schools of education instead of the fluffy garbage that gets pushed in them. Courses in children's literature (involving the actual reading of books and not discussing how social justice is best promoted through children's literature)* would also be wonderful additions to M.Ed programs.

Or they could just keep focusing on fluff.

Oh well.

Val

*Yes, I actually read a course description on children's lit that used a phrase similar to the one I wrote. It was taught at Stanford a couple years or so ago.

Hi - all this talk on maths levels has got me thinking about what DS6 is up to. I've always considered his strengths to be reading/spelling, verbal etc but the last few days have really got me wondering. He has been off school again (another allergy episode!) and to get him to take a break from the computer/tv etc I asked him if wanted to look at the maths books that he was given last year (I thought they would be too hard for him).

There was a year 3 and year 4 book which are Australian written and on it stated for ages 8/9 and 9/10 respectively. Well I flicked through the yr3 book and thought no way - he's done harder than that on the computer so started the yr4 book - it started off quite basic add 10 to a list of figures, add 100, minus 10 etc, then there was 2 pages with rows and columns of numbers and he had to pick out all the multiples of 3 and then 4. I thought this would be a bit more of a challenge but wow he sped through it in seconds. OK on a roll... move on, the next section was factors, after I churned the wheels back a few (ok lots) of years I explained to DS how to work out the factors - again wow - out of about 50 numbers he failed to get 1 factor on 2 of the numbers. We went on to do perimeters and areas which he said he'd never done before and he whizzed through it in seconds. Even the speed he did the mental calculations impressed the h... of me.

Should I be impressed or in your experiences is this pretty basic stuff for a gt 6yr8mo old? And should I be taking more interest in the maths side - I knew he could do long multiplication and division and knows his times tables but had no idea what this meant in age terms (on the back of these books it has year 4/5 times tables = age 10/11 - really do they not learn all their tables till this age?) Hearing all the comments on here is making me a little nervous now - its true what they say about ignorance...

My 2pworth is that you should be impressed. I think there's often a lot of arbitrariness in when a particular topic gets taught, so a child doing a single thing at age X that is normally taught at age X+4 isn't necessarily impressive. However, when a child can do a whole range of things normally taught at a higher age, especially picking them up "in seconds", something unusual is going on. My guess is that there are a lot of children of people on this board who can do the actual things you listed (factors, area, perimeter etc.) at that kind of age, but many of us have consciously introduced these things - given that your clever DS's maths seems to be a bit of a surprise to you, an interesting question is what else he may be able to tackle, given the chance! Is he still thriving at school? What does he think of school maths, is he being adequately challenged there, do you think? As you'll have seen, there are several threads here on online things for mathy children to enjoy, many of them free, so maybe he can explore some more while he has to be off school. (Sorry about that, btw - having a child with serious allergies must be so worrying.)

Oooh. DS5 was Mr. Narrative from a very early age. (Like 1-2yo.) He's now my math whiz, and it was a total shock to me because I'd always thought of him as highly verbal.

Thanks, kcab. I'm off to read the article...

In a gifted math class for 3rd graders you have all shapes and sizes. The fact we are moving nicely into more complicated topics daily, and that my son is happy and challenged is a wonderful thing.

I posted a little about this in another forum, but DS5 just started first yesterday. Today he said the teacher gave everyone worksheets with single digit addition on it. I don't know if this was a test to see what they knew or what because he often leaves out details. But he said that he went to the teacher and asked for something harder. He then said that she threw his paper away and wrote out some double and triple digit addition while she went to print out a harder things. He said she could only find ones with up to triple digit multiplication and addition. And after he did all of them she said he got them all right. I was very impressed that she did this on day 2 and didn't make him do his worksheet. I am convinced this is because she had an evaluation on him which she did read, and she seems like a really good teacher. I hope she continues to do things like this...and that they can actually have some sort of curriculum for him. It does give me hope though, I didn't have tons of hope before especially since our school doesn't have any GT programs at all.

That's great! I'm quite impressed at how your son was able to advocate for his own needs. We were not as fortunate when DS tried to advocate for himself at school last year, so hearing stories like yours gives me hope. Maybe I'll encourage my DS to try again this year.