Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments How to address advanced Science needs- new tactic

I know this school district. I know of two PG kids whom they refused to help. One is home schooled and the other goes to the top private in the DFW area on a partial full ride.

This district is considered the top public in the DFW area. (So they don't have to make changes??)

They continue to lose their brightest students to the privates.

Cawder-I love then idea of a mentor! Ironically my middle school science teacher is a friend on Facebook and I just reached out to her for suggestions... She laughed her "head" off over my son wanting to create a new single cell organism- I am sure since Science was not quite my best subject she found it even funnier. The other good news is my high school chemistry teacher is a teacher at the school we are looking at and I would trust her to guide him well. Collinsmom- Thanks for the Aleks suggestion I will look into it!!!
Unfortunately I work a LOT and I can't do as much as I would like with him myself and I need to balance his time to be a boy too. That is why I want to have it taught in school so he can PLAY in the evenings. fingers crossed tomorrow goes well- I want them to let him enroll EARLY!!!!!
Brandy

Austin, I think they also like to keep the bright ones at "grade level" to boost their scores. Math Rocks is the only acceleration they do and that starts in 4th grade and. You have to commit to competing which I don't think should be a requirement to be accelerated.

The ALEKS Chemistry course is very, very dry, and math-heavy at the beginning.

Another option to consider while you are setting up a mentor is Merlin's Academy - Alchemy, an course for building knowledge of chemistry that doesn't rely on advanced math.

I agree that they may think this way. It is small minded, though. They would get even higher scores if they accelerated.

Math Rocks is pretty good. Competing is not so bad. I went to college with one of the proteges of a similar program from Eastern Europe who was very mature mathematically. This person was very shy and they said that competing helped to remove that shyness.

The college I went to stressed the Socratic Method to teach math for math majors, which requires everyone to publicly do problems and comment on them. You cannot help but get excited about the problems and everyone feeds on it.

But I agree that it should not be a requirement. An SM based advanced class with differentiation should be the solution.

You can still join the math circle and go to the lectures, though.