Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Has anyone here done radical subject acceleration

My little guy is in kindergarten and has been skipped up to second grade for both reading and math. So far he seems to be really enjoying it. He is in a charter school where they focus on STEM subjects and start learning Chinese in K. He goes with his K class for all of these subjects. So far this seems to be kind of a 'best of both worlds' situation. From those of you who have already BTDT- are there drawbacks that you've seen that I should look out for?
BTW-his school has small class sizes and they have been really involved in trying to do all they can to keep him challenged but they do not have a gifted program per se.

Welcome vwmummy - I haven't btdt (my DS's school has been excellent enough with differentiation that that's been the better option for us) but I'm replying partly to bump your post to make sure that people who have will see it. Many people here have done things like that.

From what I remember people saying about it, the kind of arrangement your DS has can work brilliantly. Things to watch out for are timetabling (danger that he goes up for advanced X while his home class does Y, so that he misses out on Y and later has to sit through basic X anyway) and what happens at the top of the school, when the appropriate class in his accelerated subjects is on another site. That said, the mantra here is mostly to do what's appropriate now and not worry too much about what will be appropriate in future, since it's so hard to predict anyway.

I'm not sure if our situation is exactly the same but it has enough similarities that I'd say it qualifies ! My dd13 subject accelerated by one year in language arts in 3rd grade (the only year they were willing to do this) and then skipped 5th grade as a whole later. She is now a 9th grader, so accelerated one year in everything, and is further subject accelerating in science by taking both the 9th and 10th grade science courses this year.

I'd say that it is wonderful that they are willing to start subject acceleration this early. I don't imagine that he'll miss out on much so early in the process. For all subjects but math we never saw any gaps with skipping a year or more. For math, both of my girls have subject accelerated one year so not as much as your little guy, but they weren't offered this until much later in the game. They both missed the 5th grade year of math to move into 6th grade math (dd13 due to the grade skip, dd11 due to subject acceleration). There were a few math concepts that they hadn't learned at that juncture but they were fairly quickly filled in.

The fact that your school doesn't have a gifted program might turn out to be a good thing if they continue to be so open to making alternate arrangements for your ds. What we found in schools with gifted programs was that a lot of the kids were tracked into the GT classes and they were somewhat of a status symbol. They generally did not meet the needs of highly gifted kids and the schools were less accommodating regarding alternatives b/c they felt that they had a gifted program so it should be enough for all gifted kids regardless of the variety btwn those kids.

I agree with the excellent insights of the other posters. I can also contribute a "success" data point, with the caveat that our local public school may be unique.

My twins are in their first year of middle school - 6th grade. They are not grade accelerated (12th birthday this month). However, they are 3 years subject accelerated in math (Honors Alg. 1). They also have a 6th grade peer (similar age) 5 years accelerated in math (currently taking Algebra 2/Trig.). None of these kids are slouches in other academic areas (e.g., dd's recent reading MAP score was at the 99th percentile for 8th graders), but the school seems to do okay with accommodating through cluster grouping and differentiation.

(By the way, they offer Alg. 2/Trig. in a regular class at this middle school, but for levels of math beyond that, kids would have to take the bus to the high school 2 miles away.)

Mr W at 3 is subject accelerated with a 6 year old for piano and music.

When I was subject accelerated, I did homeroom in middle school (7th) then walked over the the HS (100 yards) for classes (10th grade equivalent), then came back for the last two hours of the day, ie PE and History.

Hi, my now DD13 was radically subject accelerated when we changed her school in 4th grade. She went into 6th grade math and 7th grade Language/Arts. It worked really well for 4th grade. At the beginning of 5th I tried to skip her. I got all the scary stories about skipping that one hears and backed off. I had not found this board. In 6th grade she was again promoted in math and did Algebra I. She had used up the language/arts curriculum available at the school by this time and really was not given anything to do. Middle school did not maintain her acceleration in language/arts but it did in math. There is a school district wide policy that the only classes that can be taken at a high school level are math and foreign language. So even though her school is attached to a high school she is restricted in her English classes. This semester she tested into Freshman College English at the local college and I do way to much driving. Looking back I wish I had pushed for the skip harder. Her current friends are from her math class. We have taken her schooling semester by semester since 4th grade. I long for the stability of knowing, but we don't and so we continue.

DC20 and DC17 were accelerated, though not what I'd consider radically accelerated (2-3 grades in some subjects). It was pretty easy logistically, as their schools offered accelerated courses for a good chunk of their classes, and they enjoyed challenge without doing things too differently than their classmates.

When I was accelerated, my experiences with older kids were quite positive (8th grade humanities while in 2nd, later radically accelerated to college for math and science in middle school/high school). I could keep some of the age-peer friends for recess and lunch but learn with students who appreciated and shared my academic interests. However, some age-minimum laws and logistics made this challenging and infeasible at times (field trips, admission to local academic programs for students my non-accelerated grade or my accelerated grade, sports, financial aid for college courses during middle school...).

Overall, though, it was much better than being left at grade level in every subject or ending up in college full-time as a very young student. It allowed me to learn and experience some of the "rites of passage," like high school athletics, dating, and homecoming (insert whatever social or athletic passions may apply).

Thanks for all of the thoughts guys. I just talked to his teacher last night and she told me that he is usually "beaming" when he comes back from his 2nd grade classes. The school that he's at goes through 8th grade so I'll have at least a few more years before he starts running out of topics ;-) I'm getting the feeling that the school may be setting the stage for a full grade skip somewhere down the line but for now this arrangement seems to be keeping him happy. It seems as though he is speeding up in his academics before our eye and I won't be surprised if there comes a time in the near future when we have to deal with this.
Just the other night he told asked me what would happen if the microwave didn't stop and kept counting to negative sixty. I didn't even know that he knew what a negative number was. Turns out, not only does he know what they are but he can even figure out basic adding and subtracting with negative numbers. I have no idea where he learned it and neither does he. Like I said, I'm open to the idea that we may have to do more soon...