I would agree that an "on level" use of Investigations is going to be well below the level of most gifted students in most areas. There are some strong activities in some areas (fractions,geometry, data,probability) but I would say that if used on-level (or even just one level up)then most GT students would be able to absorb and synthesize the whole concept in one compacted Investigation (which would generally be 4-5 connected lessons in the curricular design).
I would say though that I agree with ColinsMum's comments about "fuzzy math". As an approach--especially for strong students--it allows kids to go beyond computation and actually delve into math. However, in the hands of a teacher who knows the computation routines but not the math, it definitely becomes "fuzzy" and not very effective.
Re: the school that uses Investigations: I would want to know if they just use it as a resource to draw activities from, or if they follow it lesson by lesson.
