Does differentiation mean that he no longer receives any verbal instruction or teaching in math? He just works ahead, and if he can't figure out the directions/concepts independently, he needs to stay with the rest of the class?
Our experience so far this year is that they will provide "harder" differentiated work covering the same topics, but they are not going to teach my sons how to do the problems. They have been give some fairly difficult word problems recently, and when one was answered incorrectly, it was just given back to be corrected by my son. I have explained to him how to do it, but I really don't know if he turns it again with an incorrect answer if the teacher will explain it. I hope so.
For example, the question type is something like this: There are 29 cars. There are 5 more orange cars than red cars and blue cars. How many of each are there?
Mind you, he doesn't know division (or algebra) so this is a really difficult problem for a first grader until someone teaches him how to do it.
