We got this kind of talk (specifically, the "oh, if a child learns mathematics concepts ahead of the norm they don't really understand them and there are gaps")
I've been thinking about this kind of statement lately. I heard it with DD4 recently. She's quite obviously good at spelling and sounding out words to spell them. She was tested to skip K and the teacher told me "there were some little gaps. For example, she couldn't tell me the middle sound in a word."
Okay, DD leaves notes for us, etc. (e.g.
"Daddy pleas make me some egg." Pretty good for 4.).
From where I'm sitting, the perceived " learning gap" was obviously a just a missing term in her vocabulary.
The way I understand the exercise, the beginning/middle/end-sound drills are used to teach the rudiments of word structure. Thing is, DD never needed this exercise: she just got the idea intuitively.
The teacher didn't seem to understand that not everyone needs to go stepwise through a set of skills designed for average or even above-average learners.
So I wonder if there's a major conceptual barrier among many educators outside of sports and maybe music: namely, they don't or can't see that some kids can just pick stuff up and have no need for formal stepwise instruction.
<sigh> Part of me thinks this should be in a
Manual of Giftedness for Teachers or something.
Val
