Hi Everyone,

Almost every book or web page on gifted kids mentions telescoping -- compressing 2+ years of a subject into a shorter time span. Really, I think that is what my DS7 needs -- grade 5 and 6 math in one year.

Is this one of those things that sounds great, but is unworkable in practice? I've read about a classes that offer an accelerated curriculum but not telescoping as an accommodation for individual students. I'd love to read some "how-to's" or first hand descriptions of successful telescoping.

Has anyone had any experiences with telescoping? I'm particularly interested in the elementary math telescoping that doesn't involve computer-based curricula.

Ul.H.

Well you could get the 5th and 6th grade books and go through the 5th grade book and for every topic in the 5th grade book...say it is adding fractions do both the 5th and 6th grade work, or if it is the topic of probability do both 5th and 6th grade work. Don't do every practice problem presented by the books.

If your child can do 3 problems of every type discussed in that lesson...move on.

Hi Ultralight Hiker

This has been DS8 path so far, and required some advocacy on our part, but the school has seen his math abilities to be beyond the norm and has accomodated us fairly well.

K- started off with 1st grade math, then about 6 weeks into the school year his teacher gave him the second grade math book

He skipped 1st grade altogher.

2nd- His teacher gave him the 3rd grade book, but wasn't paced well. He only completed 2/3 of the book. He had a 4th grade Singapore math book at home which he sometimes worked out of.
At the end of 2nd grade he tested out of 3rd and 4th grade math.

3rd- He goes to the gifted 5th grade class for math. This is better, but is still not enough. At home he took Art of Problem Solving PreAlgebra 1 in the fall and is taking PreAlgebra 2 now. The pace and level is a much better fit.

Next year in 4th he will continue with AOPS Algebra 1 and Counting amd Probability and be able to do his work in his classroom. He will no longer do any "school math".

It has been interesting to say the least, but this year is finally working out well. We hope next year will be even better without having school math and the extra homework. The school was not really able to do more than one grade level a year which is why in a way I decided to "take over" his math instruction and go with AOPS.

Good Luck and remember you know your child the best.

If it's 5th and 6th grade math you're specifically wanting to combine into one year, those two years are often combined routinely for kids coming out of elementary math who will be moving into the honors math track in middle school (or at least that's the way it works in our school district).

Our ds has telescoped in math and science, but he's done it via online courses.

Good luck!

polarbear

I was looking at the curriculum my mom school uses and I think math is one of those subjects that can be easily telescoped, although I don't know how it works for an individual student at school. How I have done it homeschooling is take a look at the subjects covered in both grades (many were the same, introduced the topic in the lower grade book and expounded on the teaching from the higher grade book. I also made sure to include those that were not covered in both and make sure i did it in an order that made the most sense. Good luck. I personally think telescoping is great and allows a student to not have as many gaps.

I can tell you what I did, back 30+ years ago when computer curricula were not an option. I took prealgebra in 7th grade, and algebra in 8th (normal honors track at my school). Then I went to CTY the summer between 8th and 9th grade and took algebra II/trig and analytical geometry, plus tested out of regular geometry, so I was ready for calculus when I came back for 9th grade. That took some fancy footwork to talk the school into, but they did let me take calculus AB (while requiring me to do all of the end-of-chapter tests for the skipped classes - I knocked most of it out during the six weeks after the AP exam). I had to take calculus AB and calculus BC in two consecutive years, which I thought was totally ridiculous, but I then was able to take math courses at the local college during my junior and senior years of high school.

I don't really recommend this track if you can find a better way, though.

Our son is in a virtual school using the k12.com curriculum. He did grade K, 1, 2 math while in grade K, and is doing grade 3, 4, 5 math while in grade 1. Telescoping (acceleration with no gaps) is easy in this format, which is one reason why we went with this type of school.

We've done this with and without computer-based curriculum (ALEKS). The year DS turned 7 he was just becoming ready to do his own maths in class without input from the teacher, which made everything much easier. We just gave him a textbook that had plenty of exercises and a clear style (I did pick that with care). Talked about what he'd done, and planned what he'd do next, at home/on the bus, and sent regular emails to his teacher so that she was in the loop, but she left it to us. The telescoping just happened naturally because we weren't taking notice of any schedule. We were trying to spend as much time as possible on problem-solving, too, which I recommend, but felt he needed to get some new material too; ended up being nominally two years' worth.

I didn't know that this was called telescoping but I agree that Maths is one of the easiest subject areas to do this with - the material is very well defined for each grade level. My DD8 has been using the Singapore Math + First in Math and we are about to review the 4th and 5th grade stuff via the 'Challenging Word Problems' published now by Marshall Cavendish.

We don't 'hothouse' per se - we just give her the books to work through in her own time and she taken this in her stride outside of regular school. I was concerned that perhaps she was going too fast to truly internalize some of the concepts (she was nailing the exercises in the books but even so...) I am expecting the challenging word problems to test that.

My $0.02 is that you should try it - I don't see that it will do any harm.

Our district actually offers a track that telescopes three years into two for a few years of their math sequence. It's very good.

The problem we have found is that if you're trying to telescope within the context of a regular classroom, with no extra teacher available, it may start well but end as nothing. There was a year where DS got practically no math because the intent was to differentiate, but they had no staff-- they just handed him a workbook, and that wasn't going to do it. Even well-intentioned teachers often have trouble sustaining this kind of program.

If you're doing it as HSing or afterschooling, it should not be hard to manage.
DeeDee

DD is at a gifted magnet that does this as a matter of course. It seems to work pretty well as far as I can tell. They use two math books in a year. However, this is done for the entire class, so it's not like she's going it alone. I'm not quite sure how they manage without skipping stuff. I think they pretest, so maybe they do skip sections that everyone is strong in. I do notice that they have not gone in order at all.

Telescoping makes the most sense to me. As most earlier math instruction seems to be 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences.

I wonder if it would be possible to keep DS in the 5th grade math class and then have him do a little Aleks on top of that to fill in any gaps (his schedule is flexible enough to do both, but would it make sense curriculum-wise?). Thoughts on this idea? The following year he could either go to middle school algebra (gulp) or do AOPS pre-algebra.

Ul.H.

Edit: DS really likes the classroom experience and math games, which is why I don't want him to exclusively work with Aleks/AOPS (yet)

What you're proposing is exactly what my 5th grade son is doing right now. He was already skipped in math to 6th, but it was too easy, so we were able to sign him up for AoPS. He takes the class after school and is allowed to do the homework on a computer at school. The only bummer is the teacher seems to need some kind of written record of math, so he also makes my son take math tests with the rest of the kids. It's so easy, it's not an issue, but it's pretty silly, IMO, and he always gets 100 percent. Next year, he's going to a science and tech magnet school, and they're putting him in the honors algebra class, but they said AoPS is more rigorous, and he'll probably need/want to go back to that. (Love that the school admits that!)

DS in 2nd grade went to 5th grade for math, until the teacher said he didn't need to go anymore because he was done with it. He twiddled his thumbs the rest of that school year.

In 3rd grade, we tried ALEKS, starting him at the beginning (3rd grade level) to make sure he hadn't missed anything, and he did 3rd-4th-5th-6th and half of 7th before Christmas break. He burned out at that point and only finished another 25-30% of 7th grade in ALEKS that spring.

In 4th grade, he had his own private math tutor, a paraprofessional who took him out of class when they were having math, and he manipulated her and the high schoolers who came in periodically and ended up still not finishing 7th grade math that year. It was most disappointing.

This year, in 5th grade, he took 7th grade advanced math class at the Middle School, and will be moving into 8th advanced next year as a 7th grader (skipping 6th because he took most of it this year).

So we telescoped 3rd to 7th in one year, then spent two more years on 7th. I'm still not happy with where this has left him, because his teacher says he is bored with it all (wonder why?) and he really could be so much farther along if not for some missteps and his general lack of ambition. He doesn't feel motivated to work ahead anymore, like he did years ago, and that makes me sad.

I would recommend telescoping everything you can, while there is still interest, and maybe it will stay.

We did ALEKS alongside instruction in the earlier grades (DS is now in 5th). The only thing that should have been better planned was how much to give him, and how to slot him back into the school's curriculum correctly. He ended up whipping through several years of ALEKS really fast; and then we had to face the reality that we were not going to send him to the high school as a 5th or 6th grader, which means that there's no place to put him back into a math class (and class is the right place for him, not independent study).

I would choose to go deeper or toward problem-solving rather than faster. At some point we diverted him off the "straight ahead" track into math application work when it became clear that it made no social/emotional sense to let him run ahead indefinitely.

DeeDee

Fwiw, this is one of the things I like about DS not being formally accelerated - although he has his own work, he's physically in the classroom with agemates and the teacher can and does include him in the fun stuff as appropriate.

Your plan could make sense. I wouldn't really worry about curriculum ordering and coherence if that's your concern, provided he's enjoying what he's doing; doing things in an odd order and sometimes tripping over gaps that then need to be filled can even contribute to a sense of adventure in a way!