Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Is it really that unusual?

My DD's teacher today told me that they don't normally see kids advanced in math, it's normally reading. And she doesn't really have any materials to use for her. She's been teaching for 30+ years, is it really that uncommon? I'm freaking out a bit, I was hoping for at least another child in her grade level (about 80 kids) to cluster with. Is it just that they don't arrive advanced, even if they have the talent? Will there be more and more working at her level each year?

Here's my gut reaction - not scientific, and perhaps says a lot about my gut. Sorry I can't remember your DD's grade/age.

Calculus in 1st grade - unusual.
Algebra in 1st grade - unusual.
4th grade in 1st grade - not unusual for gifted kids with some exposure.
2nd grade in 1st grade - there should be 15% of the kids who are ready for this.

If the school uses MAP tests then they will know exactly who needs to learn what in Math. It might be cheaper to just screen some of the brightest ones on an 'end of next year' test and see where they stand.

People don't see it if they aren't looking for it, and many elementary teacher just hate math.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

I can only answer from my experience - my son is 7 (June birthday), in 2nd grade - and goes to 3rd grade 4 times a week for math. He got 96% in 3rd grade this 1st quarter, and is placed in a group of 4 at the "top" of the class. I think there are about 60 kids in 2nd grade, and he is way above any of them. So - yes, in his school, he is "unusual" Fortunately, the school recognised that last year, and have been wonderful at helping him out.

She's in K, sorry, I forgot to mention that. So not too unusual next year, then?

In 1st through 4th grade the teachers that were able to identify my giftedness really pushed my reading. I was placed in higher grades for reading class and books. I was never exposed to math though. So I don't think it could have been identified. I found that as I got older though I was very good at math, despite not liking it very much. I do believe if I was exposed to it at an earlier age that it would have been advanced development. In my experience alone I would think that just early exposure to math is unusual, not a gifted child being advanced enough to grasp it and run with it.

My DS7 had a lot of algebra concepts by pre-k/k/1st grade but wasn't actually ready for Algebra. I think it is so hard to really assess an actual grade level at that age.

On the WJ-III at the age of 5 years 1 month (pre-K)my DS scored grade equivalents of grade 3. He is VERY good at computation but has less of an interest (or talent) in geometry and measurements.

My son is also "unusual" at his school. (Sometimes I feel the teachers are afraid of his math ability since he learns at such a rapid pace) I don't think he has had real math instruction since the age of 5 unless he learns it on his own or I assist him in the evenings.

My gut reaction says a lot about my gut, too.

A kindergartner spontaneously ready for 3rd grade math is much more uncommon than 2:80. And most parents won't teach their 5yos multiplication and division (other than as a one-off - I once demonstrated long division to DD-then-in-first as a tool for factoring, but she clearly wasn't ready for 4th or 5th grade work in general), even if the kids are capable and interested. Whereas they will let their kids read harder books without even thinking - I was shocked to see that the Rainbow Fairies books are 4th grade level in AR!

I'd say it's likely there's at least one other kid in K who would be able to do first grade math, although writing skills might limit any advanced work to oral practice / manipulative work.

As she gets older, it becomes more likely that fine motor skills will be less of a hindrance to otherwise-advanced kids, it becomes more likely that some of her age-mates will have a sudden skill-spurt in math - and it becomes more likely that she'll be farther and farther ahead *anyhow* due to pacing issues, if you're continuing to enrich her at home.

My DD is up a grade from her agemates in math, but a fair percentage (I agree with Grinity's 15% estimate) of her agemates could have handled being a grade up in math. A lot of that has to do with the grades in question - in our district, 2nd is mostly review of addition and subtraction facts. An end-of-2nd grader who hasn't been exposed to significant multiplication and division practice at home is unlikely to be spontaneously ready for 4th grade math in the fall.

I think you've hit the nail on the head, particularly with a mathematician as opposed to an arithmetist (love that invented word!). Spontaneously inventing long division is rather unlikely, even for Terry Tao.

I agree with Grinity. Many elementary ed teachers are better at language arts. She does not want to recognize the math because she is comfortable with kinder math.

Good principals are forcing these teachers to look at math instead of only reading.

My son's teacher who had taught grade 1 for 30 years finally went out and purchased new books at my son's higher reading level a 6 months into the school year. He was still required to read books with one word per page for the first half of the year.

I have never even considered him gifted in language arts. His strong point is math.

He is now in grade 9 and so frustrated with his math teacher (because he claims she knows nothing about math and makes tons of irritating mistakes) that he is now refusing to go to school.

I don't know of any gifted programs anywhere near where I live. I am so jealous of all the advanced programming I hear about on this board. This forum is really opening my eyes to what is out there.

My child's school is still unwilling to accommodate him with any advancements.

It just sounds like she really doesn't know what she's looking for. Growing up I was always more on the math side of things. I remember being very upset at my K teacher for telling the class that you couldn't subtract bigger numbers from smaller ones (I remember thinking, duh, that just means you have negative numbers!) and in 3rd grade the school tried to higher an algebra teacher for me (who rarely showed up... ugh). Despite that I definitely had some teachers who questioned if I should be in the gifted program (even though I had an IQ test in 1st). One in particular kept threatening to have me pulled out because I was always a bad speller and never put any effort into grammar related homework (I HATED grammar). There was definitely this idea that to be gifted you had to be perfect in everything.

I'm assuming verbal kids are just going to be more obvious by how they speak. Obviously, it also depends on a kid's personality (if your kid doesn't volunteer info or ask questions then the teacher just might not notice) or it could very well be that the teacher doesn't notice the kids' advanced questions in math and then the kids shut down and give up on asking them.

However, if she's been teaching 30 years with and average of 80 kids in K every year that means 2400 kids have been through that school during that time. If 1% are gifted you have 240 kids and I have a really hard time believing that ALL of them were verbally gifted!!!! That would mean if your kid is the only kid that's advanced in math that means in your school you have only 0.4% of kids that are advanced in math vs. verbal, which sounds very, very unrealistic (clearly there are always statistical outliers but this one is just insane)! Now I could believe that the kids were not as gifted in math (I have non clue where your kid is at...) so they didn't get noticed because of that but still...

I think this is true. Early exposure to reading is much more common for preschoolers than math, and it's not as easy to take off on. My son as a preschooler understood conceptually multiplication, division, fraction operations etc. You could give him word problems and he'd solve them in his head. But if shown a word problem on paper or mathematical notation, he would have been lost and possibly not tested much ahead. While in reading, the reading doesn't necessarily need to line up with other skills for kids to be able to "show their stuff". He's doing algebra as a 4th grader after I stalled him the past couple years while his writing skills came to the level where he could carry out multi step problems on paper.

My son been to pre-school nearly a year, and today, pre-school teacher just told me how shocked she was when she found how advanced DS4 is, even she knew he loves numbers, time, calender..etc, but last week, DS 4 was talking squre root totally amazed her.

I think the teachers had not much experince with kind of gifted children expecially come with math, and she told me DS was bit slow thinking and has hearing problem when he just entered pre-school, while he was already reading, knew mutipulcation ,divison etc

Mathmatical gifted children have their special way to figure out math problem.

I used to teach DS4 the normal way to do long division, which he hated, then he got his own way to work it out

like:

845 divided by 5

85/5=17, so 850/5=170 therefor 845/5=170-1=169

I guess it makes sense that they don't 'see' when a child is mathematically gifted as easily.

My DS6 was doing 2nd-3rd grade math last year in K and my DD5 is capable of doing 1st grade math with no issues in K. I know many kids who are ahead of the K math here but not necessarily gifted in math just had parents who helped them learn. It seems easy to be ahead of K math at least from my exposure to it anyways.

DS6 dislikes long division -- but he enjoys the short division way they taught him in k12 3rd grade math I have to make him do the long way occasionally so he doesn't forget it.

That's exactly what makes me think that dd10 has a gift in the mathematical realm. While she doesn't likely have all of the stuff memorized that the other kids do, she is really creative in coming up with new ways to do things in math and she intuitively sees things like where the distributive law applies and where it doesn't (multiplication like area of a triangle, which I had to think about myself when she said that it was easier to half either the base or the height and then multiply rather than half the product of the two.)