Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Reading Group Determined By Writing Ability?

I am going to go under the assumption that her writing issues are analytical writing rather than handwriting. (It can get very confusing, I find a lot of people confuse the two.) I disagree with your husband. I think if she is struggling with this task now, you should look into it and talk with the teacher and address the issue sooner than later.

My DS15 has just been diagnosed with written language expressive problems and anxiety when writing. He will completely freeze and write NOTHING for an essay. This is a HUGE problem in High School. We didn't really notice anything till 6th grade and in hindsight this was one of the big issues then. He was an early reader and still reads years grades above grade level. He does well on the tests on the books but will write nothing for the essays, and well writing is 60% of the grade. This is somewhat anxiety and somewhat not enough time and somewhat apathy at this point. He often just doesn't have opinions because he thinks the whole question is just stupid.

So my advice is to look into this now and don't wait until she gets older. Your daughter probably doesn't have the same situation as my son but as I've found on this board is not unusual for gifted kids reading level and expressive writing level to be out of sync. Analyzing is a book is a very different skill than re-telling and answering questions about the plot.

As to what your daughter teacher said: "In high ability classrooms, we don’t just work on a vertical jump in reading, but focusing on reading at a deeper level. So, while we might be reading a novel that is a little lower than our current reading level, we are working on discussing and questioning at a higher, deeper level" This sounds totally reasonable to me. My older daughter had a Language Processing LD and really struggled with both reading & writing so I have worked with this issue before. (I just never saw it in my son because when he writes so much better than her when he has an opinion.) One thing I learned from the people who were helping my daughter is that when working on critical analysis and writing they it is best to not be simultaneously working on stretching their reading skills. They want the reading to be comfortable. The problem is having the reading level comfortable and interesting to talk about.

While I can imagine your daughter is probably bored at taking 6 weeks to read a Time Warp Trio book. It may not be the wrong reading level for teaching this task. They are a harder reading level than Magic Tree House books. I will always have a soft spot for this series as we have a connection to one of the illustrators for the series but I'm not sure these books are the best for this task. The gifted son my class was in 4th-6th had a reading assignment that I quickly realized couldn't be done with a lot of the more "popular" early readers. Because a lot of those books aren't really good literature with complex plot structure and character growth. We found it best to chose books of the Newbery medal list. I can't imagine analyzing a Time Warp Trio book like it was The Grapes of Wrath. Perhaps you should ask the teacher why she choose this particular book?