My son's reading group (the highest) read the book individually and then answered some questions in their reading log. That was it, according to him....never much discussion. They read "The CHocolate Touch" and he said Teacher didn't bring up "King Midas." To me that's a no-brainer.
But what I was getting from that blog though is that this goes beyond reading groups. It's about how information is delivered in social studies, in art, in science, in language arts ... that the kid can handle more info, faster, deeper so it's not such much knowing the content in advance, but a mis-match in learning style, if you will.
I spoke w/ a teacher friend of mine and she agreed that the 4th grade curriculum at our school is very superficial. That's 4th grade!!!!
I recall a conversation w/ Teacher friend a few years ago after I had read "Mr. Popper's Penguins" with DS then 6, I think. I asked him why the author named the town Still Water. I can't recall the exact answer, something about the town was like still water, nothing much happened there and that is why the man wanted to get away....I should have written it down lol my memory is foggy, any how, she was blown away by his answer. She said he is not going to get that level of discussion at school, not even in a few years. We had a similar discussion about what other people where learning to read liberated them (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH) again she was shocked that he came up with slaves and how learning to read helped them...drawing on info from other books we had read previously. Now I find this hard to believe this was anything but normal, ND kid type-stuff but my teacher friend insists he won't get that in school. WHen he's in school, we have the homework battle, 2 other kids to deal with (and now another kid w/ homework) so I had hoped the school was addressing critical thinking skills, making inferences, and the like, but nope. And it doesn't seem to get any better through 5th grade.
I guess the take home message I got was that the verbal ability went beyond just needing appropriate reading level, but it was pervasive in all subjects.
