I feel as though I've read a thread about this kind of issue in the past, but I can't find it now - pointers welcome.

Executive summary: I'm looking for tips, gotchas and BTDTs for how to make a situation work in which DS6 will have to do his own maths in a classroom of people doing other stuff on a regular basis.

Background: DS6 is about (in Sept) to enter his third year of school. He has finished the school's usual maths curriculum. There are no sensible "bus him to the next school" options (even if they'd work for him pace-wise and socially).

His class will be small (14) so it's reasonable to expect his teacher to notice whether he's on task and redirect him if not, but it isn't reasonable to expect her to teach him much maths one-to-one, even if she'd be comfortable with the material. I don't know her yet, but she might not ever have seen some of the maths he needs to learn. DH and I can do whatever teaching is needed out of school, but we need a plan for in school.

We discussed "where next?" with his last-year teacher at the end of term, and agreed that the most important thing for this year is that he practises working on hard problems, with learning new material as a secondary aim.

Hard problems is the trickier thing to make work. I'm hoping he may be able to use Alcumus in class. Finding problems for him to do is easy; my concern is what happens when he gets stuck. Of course, if he can get fairly independent about this, that's excellent, but I worry that he may just stare into space, and if that happens regularly then this strand will get dumped, whereas it's really what he needs intellectually. Alcumus has the possibility to give up and get a worked solution, which is something.

New material: he's at the stage of filling in gaps in GCSE-level syllabuses, so we have (again after discussion with last year's teacher) bought a couple of textbooks, with the idea that he could have one to use in class reasonably independently. I'm less worried about this, although there are still practical points that'll need discussion with his teacher, like how it gets decided which questions he should do and when he can go on to another topic.

I'd like to have some thought-through ideas to take into the meeting we'll obviously need to have with his new teacher, and especially to anticipate any problems... comments?

My son was given math independent of his classmates by going online. Everyday when the class started math, he went to the computer in the corner. His math was checked at the end of the day by the teacher. The few times he had trouble, the gifted teacher helped him during their normal meetings. It worked well for him, but he is really reliable for independent study.

Can I ask some more about what material this was, esp. what the learning objectives were? New material, or challenging problems? What I'm wondering is: in writing "the few times he had trouble" are you saying that the work he was doing was generally straightforward for him (in which case I suppose the point would have been that it was teaching him material that was new to him, but not hard for him) or are you saying that he did regularly meet problems that were challenging enough for him not to be able to see how to approach them, that he had to think hard about for a while, but that he could usually get through that process without help? It may be that in wanting the latter for DS I'm asking for the moon, but if your son has had it that would be encouraging!

Thanks for your reply, CFK, discouraging though it is :-) I do hear what you say, but at a high level I just don't see that there's any alternative. Acceleration might have been a partial solution last year, but he now really is* (at least in what he knows, although not always in how well he problem-solves) well beyond any class in the school, so there's nowhere to send him. (He maybe has enough left to learn in the syllabus for exams people here take at 16 to keep him busy for this coming year, provided he spends most of his time on hard problems.)

It may be that the message I should take away is that we're trying to do something hard here, and if it doesn't work we shouldn't beat ourselves up. Fallback should be that he does something somehow worthwhile in that time, he's not miserable, and we do maths at home, I suppose!

*in maths I mean! Another part of the story is that his writing is, I think, age-appropriate on a good day.

Wow, ColinsMum -- Your ds sounds impressive. Good luck with everything...
Some thoughts -- is there a computer lab or library or some place he could go to during his "math" time to do independent work? Maybe not math work, though, if you're looking for something challenging. Maybe some sort of applied math type thing -- programming or engineering type games? And then do math at home, perhaps with a tutor? Does your ds write proofs? That might type of thing might be a nice challenge?

ColinsMum,

One of the problems with the "hard problems" approach is that he'll figure out the way to solve the problem type and they won't be hard anymore. It's a great place to start, but someone will need to be constantly ahead of him finding a new "hard type".

Clay's idea of application sounds wonderful. Perhaps it's time to focus on Physics.

There are such places, but I don't think there's anywhere that's routinely supervised, and I don't think they (or I!) would be that keen on a 6yo being regularly unsupervised. Maybe an idea for in a few years' time. It's true he could just do something else in maths time, but it seems a bit of an admission of defeat! He does enjoy programming and writing proofs (natural deduction proof trees - is that what you meant? I'm surprised it would occur to anyone else as a possibility, but maybe I shouldn't be :-) but if he's going to do genuinely challenging things in either mode, we're back at the problem of his lacking the maturity to deal with the challenges without any input. He could of course just read (about maths or about something else), and there would be worse ways of spending the time...

ETA: maths at home is fine, yes, and no tutor needed, as DH and I are mathematical and he doesn't as yet have any problem learning from us.

That's not as hard as you'd think, for example because there are many different maths competitions with past papers available. They, of course, give assorted problems and try to come up with new problem-shapes often. Alcumus too is good at mixing up question types.

Indeed it is - he's chemistry-mad currently (half way through ALEKS chemistry, and to my astonishment just read Sam Kean's The Disappearing Spoon with great pleasure*) but he also enjoys physics. These are good ideas, but I don't think they make the problem go away - he'd still be doing things on his own, and would still either be unchallenged or have to deal with challenges without significant teacher input. Well, I suppose that's it: he has to learn to do that!

*I thoroughly recommend this book, btw

Indeed it is - he's chemistry-mad currently (half way through ALEKS chemistry, and to my astonishment just read Sam Kean's The Disappearing Spoon with great pleasure*) but he also enjoys physics. These are good ideas, but I don't think they make the problem go away - he'd still be doing things on his own, and would still either be unchallenged or have to deal with challenges without significant teacher input. Well, I suppose that's it: he has to learn to do that![/quote]

Could he participate in an online class? He would still get support, and it may not matter that he is significantly younger than other students. They might not even know.

He was working in ALEKS and for the most part didn't run into anything really hard. My son is one that can see something brand new, look at the little explanation blurg and he's got it.

On rare occasion he would run into somehitng he needed a little extra help with. The GT teacher was also resposible for setting up quizzes and monitoring the results of the assessments when they popped up.

We did logic and problem based stuff at home to keep the wheels greased.

I'm eyeing the AOPS classes interestedly for later, since as you say it would be good to put him in an environment where age isn't obvious! Right now, although they have just introduced some new times that come in our evening (unlike most of them, which are in US evening and our middle of the night!), it wouldn't work logistically - that's supper and bed time. (He might also have trouble keeping up, as his typing isn't there yet, but we're working on that.)

AFAIK there is nothing like that during UK daytime.

Yes, so new stuff at school and you did more challenging problem solving at home, makes sense. Mine is like that too, weird, isn't it? Thanks.

Our experience is very like CFK's. Good intentions, failure of teachers to monitor or keep up with DS's progress, resulting in a near-complete lack of instruction. DS got less than a third of a year of math across a year of school, and nothing that was appropriately challenging.

In our state, this situation is actually illegal; all kids who are enrolled are required to have math instruction every day. Because of this we were able to set up a better situation for next year.

A kid this age, it seems to me, needs a teacher's attention and instruction to learn this material; they don't yet have the self-discipline to guide their own learning, even if they're motivated. I haven't found the computer programs to be a good substitute.

DeeDee

I think kids vary a lot, especially these kids: but I doubt mine has the self-discipline to work at hard things in a sustatined way without some teacher input. Ah well. His teachers last year and the year before were both, in their different ways, excellent for him, so I shall just have to hope that this year's teacher is too. I'll certainly be updating on how this year goes, and hope you will too!

We ran into the same issue of good intentions. DS8 used EPGY online in class last year, the problem was that it was used rarely. If given the chance of working on something else withe the class DS8 would do the class project. At times he would be on-line less then once a week. When I would address it, things would pick up, but go back to very little work rather quickly. I am hopeful for next year but not sure of what to do. More then likly they will place him in 5th garde math. I have actually held back this summer, almost no math. he is at 5.85 on EPGY. We could complete 5th on EPGY and ask for just EPGY 6th, the school would allow it, but agian would they follow through. I could also ask that he go to Middle school for 6th but they may fight that one, it would take some effort, timming and transportation (We are willing to provide). I guess we will just see and adjust, the good thing is that they are trying to work with him. I can't understand why so many schools fight finding the right fit for the student.

Hi,

Is there any possibility of your hiring a tutor to come into the school 2-3 hours a week to work with your DS? On other days he would do "homework" assigned by the tutor during math time in his classroom. Perhaps the school (or a nearby middle school or high school) knows of a retired teacher or a substitute teacher who might be interested? My father, for example, a retired professor, volunteered last year a couple hours a week as a tutor -- so even if money is too tight to pay someone it's not out of the question someone could be found, if the school were willing.

Polly

Kids do surprise. I would have said the same about my son (he is older than your son though, at 7yo). He goes to school 3 days a week (he has private math and science instruction and lots of OT on the other 2 days). He brings in his Math Olympiad book (we have tonnes of local books supporting this, with explanation bubbles) on one of the 2 days when he has a teacher's aide assigned in school. On the other day, he does HeyMath (he brings in his own netbook). He receives no help from the teacher when he stumbles. When he does (and so far it's rare), he brings it home so we can work on it together. She generates quizzes from the system (not sure how often) to keep tab of what he's learnt. Does he feel isolated from his classmates during the lesson? Actually he loves it, because he can see what they're doing and he shudders at the thought! Maybe this is what's lending him some discipline .

This arrangement has worked out surprisingly well. The school condones this, but a lot of credit rests with his school teacher, ie, it may not be the same in the following school year. The level of work given by his teacher kept getting revised upwards throughout the year (it's been 7.5 mths since Jan) as she got to know him better. It's with his non-accelerated and writing-related work that he has problems with.

I'll bear it in mind, but I *think* that if the school agreed that there was a need for this, they'd prefer to have one of their maths teachers provide this input, rather than having someone come in from outside; which may happen, in fact, as they do have the people who could do it.

Lol, yes, my DS doesn't like the idea of doing "ordinary maths", either! How do you find HeyMath btw? That isn't a programme I know much about.

I just asked my son - if his typing were better, I'd ask him to reply . I'm meshing his and my comments together:

He says HeyMath is a lot easier than the Math Olympiad books. That's true because Olympiad-style math always carries a puzzle-like twist that he likes. The syllabus is a parallel of Singapore Math, but the questions are also simpler than some of the Singapore Math-style books I've seen. What's great is that the explanations are very clear and precise, which is a bonus when there's no teacher at the side. My son says they do have very cool games as well (his seating partner must be green with envy!)

The programme doesn't track progress like Aleks, so I'm glad he has a teacher/ teacher's aide to keep tab of what he has to do next. He definitely prefers HeyMath to Aleks because it has a much livelier presentation (not cutesie but very similar to the default Singapore curriculum, My Pals Are Here). They do have quizzes and the results (although I'm not 100% sure about this part) can be accessed by the teacher.

Thanks to you both! I must resist the temptation to add anything else to my DS's list of possibilities right now (he's still finishing Descartes' Cove, and that and Alcumus are really enough computer maths for right now), but it's good to have options for the future.

Update: four days in, it's going not too badly, although we clearly still have some fine-tuning to do. It seems that his teacher this year prefers that we plan and superintend his maths, to the extent of sending his workbook home for us to mark. That makes sense, but the extra responsibility (e.g. for planning what he can do remotely, not just finding appropriate stuff for right then when we can help him) is going to take some getting used to! He can use his textbook in class and we'll also keep an envelope of other work updated in his bag. Haven't pushed using a computer just yet; he seems to like the relative inconspicuousness of the textbook for just now (everyone else has a textbook too, and he knows what to do when the class is told "get our your maths textbook", he simply has his own). What he hasn't got the hang of yet is reading the chapter carefully before doing the questions, which has led on one occasion to his being stuck and on another to his making mistakes. OTOH, that does show he's on work where he does need to learn something!

He may not actually spend much time on maths at school, because they are going to try to arrange that his instrumental lessons are timetabled for maths time - pragmatically that makes sense, as it's less disruptive for him to be out at a time when he'd be doing something different from the rest of the class anyway.

I'm agreed to write something in the way of a plan for what he's going to learn this term. That's going to be fun, since one thing I know about predicting what he's going to learn is that it's not easy!

Just thought it might be useful if I updated on this in case the experience is useful to anyone else. Background: I started this thread to ask about people's experiences having a child working independently on their own maths in a classroom, since for DS-now-7 we really had no alternative to making that work. It's been going better than I had any right to expect.

As expected, he didn't find it easy, to begin with, to deal with getting stuck, and there was rather too much staring into space! I made him a laminated card (business card size) headed What To Do When Stuck, which he really liked; he says he's now internalised that and doesn't need to consult the card any more, and indeed, he seems to do well.

He always has two strands of work on the go, one problem-solving and one learning new material. It feels easiest to keep it simple and have just one resource in each strand; he's worked through Challenge Your Pupils (very nice, multiple choice so minimal writing!) and done a selection of chapters from a textbook (short chapters work well). Typically we read through the introductory material from a chapter of the textbook on the bus, and he does the questions in class. Everything he does in maths comes home to be marked and gone through (even though the answers are in the backs of the books - his teacher seems to feel happier handing the whole thing over).

He and another child are taken out of class once a week for problem-solving sessions with the head, and occasionally he has written work to do relating to this, in class - I'm happy about this for several reasons, especially that it means someone in school does actually get to be involved in his maths. (The head remarked the other day that "he really shows insight, he isn't just parroting advanced maths that he's learned" - good to have that noticed :-)

The problems he does at school are not that stretching - he needs to be able to do most of them independently without too much struggle. At home he does more challenging things, mostly Alcumus and Descartes' Cove (which is nearly over, sadly... I wonder whether he'd like to go back to the beginning and go through without any help next time?!)

He doesn't seem to have had any problems at all with other children's reactions to his doing different stuff: "they don't take any notice".

Anyway, so far, so good! Thanks again for all the comments when I was anxious about this at the start of the year.

Hi ColinsMum:
Thank you for the link to this thread. Wow. I could learn a lot hanging out with you. . I really like the concept of how your son's math is structured. It has pointed out that no matter how hard the "enrichment" questions are, my daughter still deserves to be learning new material.

That Descartes' Cove looks like so much fun. Where would you put that in terms of difficulty, amount of math learned? (As reference, my daughter takes AOPS Algebra and finds at least one question a session very challenging; she usually gets level 18+ but struggles with levels 20-25).

Is the Challenge your Pupils the problems solving strand? I couldn't tell as the textbook also looked like it was preparation for a problem solving competition.

Thanks for all your posts!

Colinsmum, what did the "What to do when stuck" card say? We are going to steal this...

DeeDee

As near as I remember, it's:

What to do when stuck
Is it worth zapping harder?
Can I see a better way to do it?
If not, mark the question "?".
Go on to the next question.
If "???", revisit questions marked "?"
Re-read each question carefully.
Keep brain turned on!

That's fairly telegraphic so as to fit onto a laminated business card. He talks about "brain zapping" problems so that's the first point - will another more concentrated go with the same technique crack the problem? For the second, it may even say "Can I see a mathematician lazy way?" - I once had a maths teacher who told me maths was the art of being lazy (since so much of it is about finding neat easy ways to solve problems that would otherwise be a lot of boring exhaustive search, trial and improvement, measurement or whatever) and this made a deep impression on DS. The point here is to spot cases where he can't do it because he's missing a trick. Then I want him to indicate any question he's left out because he couldn't do it with a ?, and I don't want him to do that for more than three questions in a row without interrupting the process and trying again. Finally, like most people he can trip over misreading questions or just failing to think, and that accounts for the last two lines.

My guess is that she'd find DC low on the difficulty scale compared to AOPS algebra. The algebra adventure specifically doesn't go much beyond quadratic equations. Some of the Hypatia's Cove questions are pretty challenging, but most of the early questions are straightforward if you already know the material. (And that seems to be the way it's intended to be used: as reinforcement for people who have already basically met the techniques, followed by more challenging problems using them than are typically met in school.) Amount learned: really depends on how much of it she knows already! The links to the NCTM grades 6-8 standards which are basically what it covers from the DC site seem to be broken but I think it's roughly the same as what is here. DS was meeting quite a lot of stuff new for the first time as he went through, at least for the early adventures (since he was also learning stuff outside DC and going through DC quite slowly - starting when we gave it to him for his 6th birthday - he know a much higher proportion of it already at the end than at the beginning!)

That's right. It's simply an organised collection of questions from the Mathematics Association Primary Mathematics Challenge, which is very similar to the UKMT JMC that he's using now, but a bit easier. Some of those questions are very straightforward, but using the book let me direct him at the harder ones, since they were grouped together! Individual papers for the challenge can be downloaded free from here (they are likely too easy for your DD though).

Wow, Colinsmom --

Reading this thread opens my eyes to my own DS-almost-6! I thought he was really good at math until I see the level that your son was on at the same age. Incredible. I guess I will count myself fortunate that I don't have the same challenges to deal with!!

please don't do that, susandj - the great thing about this board is that it feels like a safe place to be matter-of-fact about this stuff! (And fwiw, don't be so sure that you don't have this level of challenge with yours - mine changed very fast very suddenly at a certain point!)

Don't get the wrong idea, Colinsmom -- I'm not feeling like my son is inadequately bright or anything! I'm just having a hard enough time figuring out how to get the schools to deal with HIS math abilities. I can't imagine having to figure out how to work with him if he were three or four years even *further* ahead. I just have no idea what you would do.

Colinsmum, thanks for the "Stuck" list. It's great!

DeeDee