that I wish I had known back when she was in 1st grade.

Apparently her reading group, which was the highest group in the class, only 'read' as a group with the teacher a few times all year. So I'm guessing b/c this group was above grade level and had already reached the end of the year benchmarks the teacher didn't feel the need to work with them and just had them sit at their desks and work on fact families.

How is it okay that my child isn't allowed the same amount of time to work on her reading with the teacher as the rest of the class just because she is above grade level?

Utterly unacceptable.

This is a good example of why "They all even out by third grade" has some element of truth to it.

It is sad, but I think it happens way too often. The ones that are behind get extra time and the ones who are ahead get less time. They already know it so what are they supposed to be taught? The worst thing I have heard is if we teach them more this year what will they learn next year? 8-|

...aaand this is why we homeschool now.

I have an even "better" story from my own childhood. My brother was already reading in kindergarten, and none of his classmates were. The kindergarten teacher wanted to have him do reading in the 1st grade classroom, and my mother said no, because she didn't want the other kids picking on him. (I think this was not a great decision on her part, or at least not the one I would have made, but I'm sure she was doing the best she could.) So their solution was to put him in first grade for reading anyway, and swear both him and me (in first grade) to secrecy. She didn't find out about it for years.

Yeah, by the time they get to 3rd grade they have given up learning anything at all, and their brains have turned to mush sitting and "learning" the same thing over and over again.....

Sorry, I should be more positive but I have been watching it happen with my son, and it is hard to try to understand why teachers think that way.

I don't quite understand why it would be so hard to group by ability rather than age. Or maybe a combination of the two - ability within an age group. If everyone in the classroom was at about the same level rather than spanning the whole gamit of levels you find in an age group you would have a group of kids that were at about the same place. There would be fewer children who were bored because they were ahead, and fewer children who were lost because they were behind, and less time "wasted" for the majority when the last 2-3 still hadn't gotten it and the rest had. I don't just say this to help gifted children but to help all children. I can't tell you how often I got in trouble trying to help or explain things while I was in school because I upset the other children because I "got it" quicker than they did. They felt stupid, which was never my intent, and I don't think it is good for any child to feel badly about themselves because someone else processes information differently/quicker. I think in that type of setting there would be less issues with kids moving "up" or "down" to get to their own level as well. We could have a system that actually worked towards teaching to the level of the student rather than what an age group "should be" learning/know. Not that it would be perfect either but I think there would be less issues.

That's an appalling waste of your DD's time. I am fuming on your behalf.

My first thought when I read this is perhaps even more cynical - are you sure the other groups are actually getting any more of the teacher's time?

Only one of my children's teachers ever seemed to be very actively engaged with her students during reading group time... and to be honest, if a teacher is stressed for time and has high-needs students who are struggling to read, I'm ok with her spending more time with those students. I've had both extremes in my family - my EG ds who seemed to learn to read through osmosis - once he knew how to read there wasn't really much of anything (from my perspective) he was going to pick up from being "taught" reading - does that make sense? And my HG+dd who does struggle with reading - kids who struggle really really *need* one-on-one or small group attention to further their reading skills. As long as my EG ds was able to select books at his level to read from and wasn't being held back in those selections, I wasn't really concerned about his teachers not spending time working with him on reading - and it doesn't seem to have hurt him in any way.

Please know I'm completely in favor of all of our kids having the opportunity to work and learn at their ability levels in the classroom - I'm just not sure this statement would have bothered me much. What would bother me re reading would be if my child had to work with a group that was a lot lower than her ability level, was told she had to read books much lower than she was capable of, or had to do a ton of phonics worksheets when she was way past that.

polarbear

Horrible. My own story to add: throughout the entire year last year I brought about 100 books to my son's first grade classroom. (I am a master at finding really cheap used books.) Of course, I brought a wide range so that every child would have something to read - including my own child. I spent the entire year thinking that my son was reading the books I had brought to school. Towards the end of the year, I discovered that the teacher kept all books that were below or at grade level. She kept NONE of the above level books. Not one.

Now, the bright side of this is that my son had been taking books from home every day in his backpack to school. So, he WAS getting access to above level books. But I was disgusted when I found out that the teacher hadn't kept any of the above level books.

Of course this is the same teacher, when asked what my son should do during first grade math time, when he was already working on and mastering third grade math, she replied that he could just do the first grade math over again with the class so that he "really understood" all the concepts.

I actually agree, but I wonder if my perspective might be warped. By school age, neither of my kids has needed to read aloud to anyone or be actively taught reading. I'm not sure, though, how many classes of first graders have whole reading groups in this category.

I got sent to the library for about 6 hours each week from third through 9th grades-- you know, once I ran out of elementary (K-6) reading material. It was slightly better than the storage room option, I'll say that for it.


As I reported earlier in another thread-- this is now what passes for "empowering" children to own their own education. That is, since they've given up trying to actually fix this problem, apparently the solution is to call it desirable instead. WOW.


Doesn't your DD feel tremendous "ownership" after being ignored all year? I thought so.

{/sarcasm}

This would be "exhibit A" in Why My Daughter is not Taking Advanced Mathematics from her Cyberschool.

It's a point which I've sometimes struggled to adequately explain to others. I think that they may feel that I'm exaggerating or that it's not really THAT bad. Well, it is.exactly.that.bad.

I just don't think that not HAVING a teacher in any practical sense is any way to learn calculus. It was not much of any way to learn algebra II or geography, economics, or HTML, either.

At best, DD gets about 32-40 hours of instruction from a live teacher.... annually. In any subject. It certainly gets WORSE from there, however.

Sure. That oughta work.

At one point in elementary I was given a separate room with a camera setup and instructed on how to make a stop-action animated movie about a foreign country I was studying. That was empowering and absorbing. And fun.

I don't know what to do about advanced readers in elementary; OTOH there is a fraction of the reading instruction (things like identifying a "theme," metaphor, etc.) they can benefit from; OTOH so much of what's on offer is a shoe on the wrong foot, regardless of grade level. We will face this again this year with our younger child. Getting anyone to see that it's a problem will be a challenge. I cannot imagine what accommodation would improve things, really.

DeeDee

This may work better because it is a highly gifted cluster program, where they expect to have a wide range of (high) reading levels, but DD's class did monthly book reports this year where not everyone was reading the same book. Instead, they had to pick a book of a chosen genre and have it approved by the teacher. The book report questions were designed to work OK with advanced and basic books from the selected genre. In addition, there were books that they read together in class and discussed.

The school library seems to have books with a suggested reading level up to about 8th grade - not as high as DD would like, but still pretty adequate for now. (The school goes up to 5th grade.)

By third grade, when most kids can string together some sentences into paragraphs, I think it's possible to teach "reading" to gifted readers. K, 1, and 2? Really tough, since there's absolutely no guarantee that they can produce any kind of output to match up with what they are capable of reading and processing. I don't know what I'd do with my son, either. He can probably read at the sixth grade level now, but he can only write at the first grade level or so. Slowly.

Last night, DD8 reported that she was the only 4th grader in her gifted class that could perform multiplication with large numbers. This is the school that wouldn't skip her.

UM, that gap doesn't seem to dramatically improve until adolescence. DD's writing lagged her other literature skills until very recently. Truth be told, she still only writes like a gifted 11th or 12th grader, and not the way that she reads and can discuss literature.

It's not really very easy to accommodate that in a standard curriculum. Charlotte Mason methods work much better than most public school pedagogy with this particular asynchrony.

"Reading group" time with my DS was basically him reading aloud from a book for the teacher and a couple of other kids... he enjoyed it, sure, but I'm not sure anyone learned much of anything. The books were far below his reading level.

So long as he isn't bored and causing trouble I don't worry much about reading instruction in school. We read a ton at home, together and alone. At night I typically read to him - a book well above his reading level and we do it quite slowly, defining words and discussing what's happening each chapter. He really enjoys it, and I'm pretty sure he's learning more this we way than via school.

Math class is FAR more concerning to me. The only differentiation anyone can seem to do is additional problems... or subbing in 2-digit problems for single digit, things like that. It's not been a major problem, but I do feel like he's lost some of his love of math as a result. I really hope we can get him into the G&T program this year, then we can actually leave the class for appropriate math instruction.

... you'd hope so.

We discovered that the GT option in math was "look, MORE problems! Yay!"

Took much of the shine off of DD's enthusiasm for "differentiation" in that subject pretty much right there.

Wait. Fourth graders in a gifted class can't multiply large numbers? Fourth graders in a standard class should be able to multiply large numbers. Or has she already started school and you're referring to kids right now, at the beginning of the year? In which case I wonder what they were doing in gifted class last year if they didn't get to multiplying 145*78?

My daughter had the same teacher for 1st and 2nd, and it wasn't until the end of 2nd that it came out that she hadn't had direct reading instruction since early in 1st grade.

That being said, I take these reports from young kids with caution. My kids, at least, have a limited sense of the different possible forms of their instruction. DS also reported not meeting with his reading group this year more than 3-4 times. However, the teacher was doing much more individualized teaching with him, where she was giving DS particular books to read during silent reading time, then having a conversation with him about it during free work time. He was getting just the reading instruction he needed, but it didn't look to him like reading instruction.

If DD's previous experience in this class was any indication, drawing pie charts and bar graphs.

She brought home another she'd done in class yesterday, only the second day of the new school year, and I died a little inside.

Good point, geofizz. I do think that matters.

Again, this is why others have trouble understanding that no, DD really doesn't get any instruction in some subjects. I know because I see what she does for school (full-time) as part of the model.

To me, once you can read, you can read -- as long as they give you some decent books to read, I wouldn't worry about "instruction". My first grade teacher knew I could read, and she got books from the other classes for me, and while I remember being in the highest reading group, I can't recall anything that we might have done there. It would have bothered me (and my mother) if they had insisted that I read Dick and Jane. It never bothered me to do worksheets of any sort, though some probably should have, and it never bothered me to be the one who read to the class.

True, I'm only guessing here but based on the fact that the teacher flat out refused to differentiate in math I'm not really surprised. I just had no idea it was the same lack of differentiation for reading.

The teacher has only been teaching in the classroom for a few years. Prior to this she was a reading recovery teacher so reading is her specialty, her love, her passion... etc... I had high hopes at the beginning of the school year that she would take my dd's current (at that time) reading ability and stretch her. I realize that my dd can read but there is more to reading than just reading the text, imo. There were things she could have improved upon or worked on instead of memorizing fact families.

And I did ask dd if she was certain that her reading group got less time with the teacher and she was pretty sure about it. They did reading groups in kindergarten and she said it wasn't like that where they rotated each time.

mountainmom,

I feel sorry about your situation but You can't just blame it on the teacher only. It's the system and NCLB Act. Unless the politicians change the requirements, the educators will concentrate and spend manpower and resources on students who are behind.

That's why we need to make sure TALENT act is made into law.

http://www.nagc.org/index.aspx?id=7804

May be you can talk to principal about differentiation. AR (accelerated reader) program from renaissance learning is used by many schools. The students read any (most of the books are on their lists) books they want and answer questions to earn AR points. They have small chapter book (like magic tree house) to college level books on their list. That program help kids with their comprehension.

http://www.renlearn.com/ar/

When my DD was in 2nd grade, she would read whatever she was assigned and she would read her HP books. She probably got the highest AR points too because HP books are assigned pretty high AR points.

Life is like a poker game. You can wish for the best cards possible but in reality, you have to play with what you are dealt. I gave up on my DD's old school and move to a better school with structured gifted program. But looks like she is growing out of it and I need to start advocating again.

I like analogies, my variant of "Life is like a poker game"... Success isn't measured one hand at a time but through an accumulation of hands. A winning player maximizes winnings on good hands and minimizes losses on bad ones.

AR was pretty important for DS, but not really all that instructional.

Slightly off-topic, this, but--


what in the name of all that is holy is a "fact family??"

(Has my education been horrifically deficient? Was I not adequately educated as a reader??)

1+2=3, and ALSO 3-1=2 and 3-2=1. Sometimes 2+1=3 is also explicitly included. Multiplication/division families also exist, of course.

This is intended to strengthen the connection between addition and subtraction for those who don't just see it. I apparently comprehend backwards, since it is beyond obvious to me and always has been, and just look confused at them when they offer this to my daughters as an example of their new, deep approach to mathematical concepts.

Assuming this is math reference, it is a group of numbers like 5, 8 and 3 that relate to each other 5+3=8, 3+5=8, 8-5=3, 8-3=5. It is basically teaching the students the commutative law without teaching it to them.

I was surprised to find them emphasizing the number families in math this last year, they were supposed to memorize all the different families... Isn't it easier to learn basic addition and subtraction? I guess I am getting old, I am starting to sound like my parents ;-)

I agree! I don't see how it is helpful, but probably because I just get the relationships, I guess for those who don't understand it intuitvely need it spelled out, and maybe it helps them learn the basics easier.

My son enjoyed the fact family homework sheets... done in like 2 minutes! lol. More than once I had to make him erase and re-do them because they looked like chicken scratch he was in such a hurry.

He did NOT enjoy the reading comprehension homework, lol. I am hoping for more of that this year... he actually has to think hard and focus for that!

Well, I guess there ARE things like AR. Reading comprehrension quizzes on out of level books. It may be what we ask for for DS5. But really--it's pretty limited, and those questions are often so surface-level, and...wrong, even, a lot of the time. I have some Hate for that stuff.

I'd like it if my boy could talk about themes and ideas in his beloved chapter books with other kids. With a teacher who was great at leading discussion. That would be cool, and he's more than capable of it. But it wouldn't produce written PRODUCT. The horror.

I saw my DD producing some pretty good short answers in response to pretty good questions about books she read in her magnet last year. I mean, it wasn't AMAZING, but it was decent. The books were 5th grade level or thereabouts (she was in third). Questions might be something like, "Why do you think X character did Y, even though it might have seemed to make sense to do Z?" or "What do you think was the hardest challenge X character faced?" That was okay for me, in terms of 3rd grade reading instruction for bright kids. But DD is a great writer and did beautifully with this. For kids who are more asynchronous with comprehension/production, it would be a poor fit. And obviously, DS5 is nowhere near able to do this yet. DD was ready for this in 2nd, but she is really capable with writing.

Pretty sure this wasn't a mention of math instructional pedagogy, er-- at least to me it wasn't connected.

Thus my confusion.

I've been following this thread and it has touched on something I've been wondering about--now that DD can read at a 3-5 grade level (I think her guided reading level is like Q or R, and all summer she's read books at 3-6, but also Shakespeare) what should reading instruction look like? Obviously she can read, so just getting lot of reading with new variations of syntax, punctuation, vocabulary, etc will help her. But then is it discussions about character and theme? Her school talks about "big ideas" and "frames" from Sandra Kaplan that students can use to break down the text, organize ideas, find patterns... It'll be interesting to try to catch a glimpse of reading time this year. I also got a few books from the library about gifted instruction so maybe that'll help (I'm responsible for about a fourth of her instructional time, part time homeschool). Anyone have experience with what else students might find beneficial at this point? Otherwise I'm going to keep pulling out my simplest high school techniques. But I do wonder if they'll get any good discussions going in first grade!

In schools that do ability grouping, it's not unheard of to start 1st grade with books like this one:

http://www.scholastic.com/browse/book.jsp?id=2310

The quality of discussion varies year to year. When they have a few shining starts, they get into pretty sophisticated stuff.

St. Margaret - I'd work on order of events and working on being able to summarize what she's read. That's what DS did the last 2 years (2nd & 3rd grade.)

Yes-- summarizing skills, pulling the main idea (which CAN be made surprisingly difficult in a nuanced or complex reading selection-- the SAT and ACT both use it).

Those both lead into more sophisticated literary devices like foreshadowing and theme later on.

I suspect this would be somewhat unusual except in cities with a lot of highly able kids, but I could be off base. DD read books like this one (approx. 4th grade level) in 2nd grade in her GT class. They didn't ability group, though, which I didn't love.

I was rather surprised to see how high functioning these students were because I suspect most of gifted/bright children in our medium size city are not in the public school system. This particular public school at the time had the second highest reading score in the entire state and it does ability grouping for reading and math from K all the way up to 5th (except for 2nd for some odd reasons) so I think some parents who opted out of private school sought out this school for that reason. Our district allows area exception and this school is located at a highway exist that is closest to the downtown area so it makes commuting easier for many parents.

I've shared this previously but in our city, there are two well-regarded K-12 prep schools and the competition to get in at K is fierce. So children start working with a tutor (or tutors and coaches) since age 2 and as one of them also does achievement tests in addition to cognitive, parents try to get their children to function 3 to 4 grades above their age. Since both schools screen behaviors, if the child wasn't a perfect little angle with impeccable social skills and charming personality, he won't get in. So these first graders could have been rejected applicants with very disappointed tiger parents who were already aiming at 6th grade admission.

Many of these students are eventually referred to their GT program and most of them test out to be around 125 to 135. So what it is worth, MG children can read 3 grades above by 1st grade if they have been prepped for GT Pre/K admission process since birth.

Thanks for the input! I think there are a lot of pretty capable kids at this school; I see young students hauling around Harry Potter but my sense regarding the kindies with her last year is off as DD's three to maybe six years ahead, depending on her interest in a text. I know a few others can read fluently but it's her and one boy who are most advanced, but put with two others for language arts, even if sometimes they do their own thing. I remember reading that summarizing is a very key skill for younger students, that it really gives them a strong foundation, and that's certainly something I can help scaffold for her. She's always finding literary devices at work, but I was vague on the big picture stuff. (This is really going to make me a better high teacher when I return, seeing the progression from K thru 6.) Thank you!

I was so distracted that I forgot to get to my main point in the last two posts. The "big picture" goal of the highest 1st grade reading group was to see the connection between reading and writing and then to understand what exactly is literary "voice." Then they had to reflect upon their own writing and what kind of voice they want to develop as a writer. I used to roll my eyes at how developmentally inappropriate this seemed but I now realize I was being rather narrow-minded. I'm now fully reformed.

St. Margaret, I'm so glad to hear that Harry Potter is alive and well. I haven't seen anyone read HP in my neck of the woods in years. I was afraid that it is no longer appreciated by youngsters these days.

Thanks for that insight into potential goals. And yes,several kids were dressed up as Hogwarts students for book character day! (Not DD though; mentioning reading a book with a male protagonist consistently induces tears in her! Someday.)

oh my, alive and strong. DD12 had a HP birthday last year (she made all kinds of props etc.) and most of her friends are huge fans. They frequently reread the books and watch the movies.

DD went through them (HP) like a dose of salts n times - still loves them

My DD9 read the HP series about 6-7 times this summer. She has finally declared herself ready to move on. Interestingly, she resisted the series for about 2 years (thought it was too scary and didn't want to read a male-protagonist book) before giving in. She moans about not being able to go to Hogwarts at least once a day.

Yes, yes, and yes! Only now am I starting to see that he has lost some of his love for math, but I stopped asking for anything more challenging when I realized it would simply be worksheets with operations of multi-digit numbers instead of 1 and 2 digit numbers.

My child has long demonstrated mastery of basic math operations, regardless of the size of the numbers involved, and tested 7th grade to post high school level in math depending on the grade in which the test was administered. And he should be happy to replace 12X4 with 1,289X372 while getting nothing more? Really?

FWIW, all (and I mean *ALL*) of my friends' children over the past 15 years have loved loved loved HP, and my ds was soooo into them. The vast majority of the kids my ds went to school with read them and loved them. Most of my friends' dds have read and loved them. I can't think of anyone really who's a child I've known who hasn't loved them except, for some odd reason, my dds. Go figure!

And fwiw, all of my adult friends have read them and loved them too

polarbear

I only know one other grown up in real life who is a HP fan. I am not so sure it's a regional thing but after the last movie, all thing HP have moved to the clearance bin. Every time we go to the Lego store, I lament on the discontinuation of their HP product line. I refuse to believe that they can sell more of Ninjago than HP.

Sorry for thread hijack but going back to the original topic, I have mixed feelings about ability grouping across grade level but considering the alternatives (high performing students not learning anything, differentiation that is useless, peer-tutoring, etc), it's starting to look like the least worst option.

My 8 year old son will be Harry Potter for Halloween this year. He read all the books last year in second grade.

But that's the commercial stuff that's created to sell around the time that movies are out and popular - that kind of thing does come in and go out of style quickly, and movies come out, are in theatres for a few months at most, and once the initial surge of everyone seeing the latest thing is over, they are relegated to Netflix or whatever. It's the *books* that I was referring to, not the movies. The HP books are classics and are bound to be around for years and years.

polarbear

If Star Wars product line can be around permanently, so can HP! I assumed HP lego sets would be around for a long, long time and I was thinking of getting one fancy set per Christmas and building it as a family. SO of course hates the entire fantasy genre and loves Star Wars so he has this self-congratulatory smile every time we walk into the Lego store.

I remember when HP books were so popular that I couldn't walk around bookstores, library, or elementary school campuses without bumping into children reading HP books. It brought excitement about reading to a whole generation of children. I too believe that HP books would be around for many years to come but it isn't quite the same. I don't know if my DD would ever have a chance to have a sleepover at a bookstore in celebration of a book release. Well, I suppose we'll have to host our own HP sleepover parties.