And now at 11, we are still in the quandry of offering more advanced material without the hours of homework.
:yes:
DD13 doesn't need to do all of that practice to learn, and that still leaves her well apart from many peers. She has managed to escape some of this by attending an online public school-- so the fact that an AP-heavy demanding senior-level course load only takes her about three hours to polish off daily with straight A's... well, it leaves her time to do other things she wants to do. KWIM?
That would NOT be possible in a brick and mortar setting at all. They'd throw MORE work at her, not allow her 'free time' as long as it was all going well and she seemed happy. SO I agree with the OP about the theory of a 'non-leveled' school being the right sort of idea for this kind of thing. On the other hand, it doesn't sound as though this is working very well because she can SEE that she isn't doing what others are doing, and it feels maybe a little unfair to her?
DD has learned not to tell others how little time it takes her to do so well. That would be rude, given that many of her classmates (3-5y older) are working pretty long hours to get the same A's she does.
This is the plus side of the online school. Because it's mostly assessment-based, basically she can use ANY method and any amount of TIME she needs to learn the material well, and then ace the assessment, and earn a good grade for the material. It has required a fair amount of dedicated hectoring on OUR part, though, so that she develops actual study and note-taking skills.
On the BAD side, because the assessments are frequently short, multiple choice that are
really badly written? Yeah, perfectionism in a
HUGE way. Anything less than 100% is cause for a certain amount of angst much of the time.
I also agree that as long as they hide, they are pretty much bound to be miserable to some degree.
