Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments peer group

I am just post to share, as we do on our experiences. DD7 is in a district gifted second grade, where most of the kids had to score 99th percentile on the OLSAT to get in, so it is a pretty good peer group.

Some kids can get in with a score as low as the 90th percentile, if they are a sibling to someone in the school.

DD brings home her math problem, which was: does the necklace weigh 15 gms, how do you know with the scale and the following weights? DD looks at it and immediately knows because the teacher did an example using pumpkins. And writes her answer, quite eloquently, surprising me, but probably paraphrasing her teacher.

Talking to some mothers in the class, they were surprised how difficult the problem was for their children. Now one of these was one of those 90th percentile kids.

But there was this moment of sadness for me that my kid wasn't with peers, even in this gifted class. And that she wasn't getting more difficult problems.

I dunno. You can't necessarily draw conclusions about peers from one assignment.

As kids, my brother always blew out the curve on math portions of tests and I blew out the curve on language/verbal portions. Both of us tested gifted, but lower, in the other subject area.

Certain things came easier to him (and still do) and certain things came easier to me. That didn't mean we were not intellectual peers.

Here, the full-time gifted program doesn't start until 3rd grade, so my DD7 spends most of her time in a regular 2nd grade classroom (although she is supposedly "clustered" with kids of higher ability making up a good portion of the class).

There are children in her class who cannot tell you what year it is.

Even if your child is on the higher end in the gifted class, I think she will still benefit. The class discussion won't be coming to a standstill waiting for one kid to guess what year it is, know what I mean?

Hi Wren,

I understand what you are talking about. DS7 is now grade-skipped into a school for HG kids, so he is a year younger than most of them. I have a feeling that DS still learns some things (not everything) at a quicker pace and has a higher level of understanding about certain things than some of his classmates. But it is such a huge improvement from when he was the only kid in the class like him, that I don't worry about this, as long as I know that DS is being appropriately challenged himself. I will start to worry again if I feel like he's the only one in the classroom not learning anything new.

By the way, I think it's great that your DD is understanding concepts so well and can relate what her teacher taught. If she can surprise you in what she's doing, I'd wager that she's definitely learning.

As for peers, even if your DD were in a group of kids who all scored the same as she did, those kids would still all be different little individuals, learning at different paces even within that group.

Good point.

Mr W is 3 and is accelerated a year ahead at his school, and recently maxed out the tests they gave the class. This morning when I dropped him off he met a classmate who is 5 in the hallway. Mr W grinned at his friend and they both began to talk and then started running down the hallway racing each other to the door. Seeing him smile like that and then hearing his classmates in the class call out his name was great.

Mr W is very competitive. I think being with older kids who can beat him at a lot of things due to better dexterity and size is good. He tries really hard and accepts losing a lot better than before.

I also think he needs to learn to work with all kinds of people from all over the world. I don't want him to grow up being ineffective as a leader among people who don't have his talents.

Alas, unless they extend the Davidson Academy down to elementary school (and we can all move to Nevada!!!) . . .

It's nice being on this board, where for a change my kids aren't even the brightest ones.