Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School "taking kids wide not UP"...????

In some ways K (2.5 hrs five days a week) is great for my DD5: her teacher truly enjoys her, loves that my DD gets her sarcasm and says that my DD is happy, popular, and stays on task, her handwriting is excellent, she ties her shoes, and the staff really enjoys her (all the specialists coming in and out of the classroom for various kids). The only thing my DD ever needs correction with is not trying to be the teacher and telling other kids what to do.

I basically accepted the idea that kindergarten would be an adjustment year and we didn't expect that she would learn anything academic (in school. At home, we continue to do more), but I am not comfortable with that for next year when she jumps from two and a half hours a day to full days. The staff clearly sees she is gifted and will have her in their pull out program starting next year, but that is only one day a week for one hour, the rest of the time she will have to sit through lessons that will be far below where she is and her teacher keeps saying how they take their kids WIDE not UP and while I am all for broadening their horizon, why are they so afraid of letting them go up (she is already doing negative numbers, fractions, multiplication / division etc. and reading at such a high fluent level with comprehension that I have no idea what grade it would be). I am one of the few on here who is nervous about skipping a grade. She is on the younger side in her classroom as it is. Public school is our primary option and I do not see homeschooling as a great option right now.

Is anyone familiar with this phrase / idea (wide not up)? If so, what did that mean for your child?

I have not heard the phrase "wide not up", but from your message it sounds like the "enrichment vs. acceleration" choice that has often been discussed in the gifted education literature.

Teachers who are dead-set against acceleration for any student should be avoided if possible. Often this is not possible, unfortunately.

Ah, Bostonian, you hit the nail on the head. It seems so obvious to me now LOL This article is actually making me consider acceleration: http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/enrichment.htm

I think it also means that within the actual classroom, that they do not allow advanced students to tread very far into the territory of the next grade. UGH

Well done, comprehensive enrichment can be great. My son's kindergarten schedule is the same, and while he's tested into or beyond second grade math (depending on which administrator you talk to), scheduling prevents him from joining the class taught at his level. I would have been absolutely thrilled with their plan of enrichment had the teacher done anything. I specifically requested, and they thought it was a fantastic idea, that he be given opportunities to learn that which educators wish they could teach, but don't have time in the day: logic, sets, patterns, etc.

Eta: that article on Hoagies types enrichment as effectively more of the same. DD's first and second grade math enrichment (provided inconsistently) was not more. It was things like logic problems, what if -type of questions, and probability. It wasn't accessible to many kids in the room, and indeed, we had one problem come home where it was later revealed that the teacher didn't know how to solve.

Reading is easier to differentiate. Is she being prevented from reading appropriate material at school? Are there related skills that the teacher can address?

I'd also go and observe the first grade classroom teachers. See if there 's someone who is clearly differentiating beyond the curriculum. But yes, too big a mismatch across too many subject areas make differentiation and enrichment difficult.

We have heard that phrase, and tons of similar ones since DD started school. In one class that meant that she was allowed to pick her own books from the library! In another it meant that rather than letting her go up in social studies (for fears that discussing the civil war would be too distressing to her) they would broaden her knowledge of the Greeks and Romans by teaching her Latin. Last year it meant that since she "wasn't showing initiative" and going above and beyond what the teacher said was expected, she needed to start going above and beyond. (For a kid with signs of perfectionism, the vagueness of "going above and beyond" was terrifying.)
I know that the various schools we've dealt with (we're onto #4 now) are not in favor of acceleration, whether in class or through pull out classes, because they have been convinced that either the material above the child is too mature for them, or that if the kid is learning at a different grade level and then goes and takes the state test in the grade level they are registered in they will not do well. And, since funding for the schools depends on good state test scores, most schools are not willing to take the risk of having one of their high scorers not do well.
I know it is mixed up, but that has been the bottom line everywhere we've been.

Who at the school have you spoken to? If just the teacher try a counselor or administrator. The administration at various schools is often willing to do more than what the school district policy says.

Sounds like lateral learning which can be good if well done but it usually isn't well done. FWIW, we skipped a kid who was already the youngest in grade and it was a good choice.

When I've seen "wide" work is when it looks something like this:
The math class is studying shapes and will spiral back to more in this topic in future years. Your child likes depth (mine had this issue with spiraling math curriculum and wanted to learn all about fractions, for instance, not just how to reduce them when they first came up). So, they go wide by teaching her geometry topics like the angle sum theorum or the pythagorean theorum which, in turn, requires teaching some basic algebra, multiplication, etc.

Where I've see it not work is in an instance like this (this is what dd13's 4th grade math enrichment looked like):
Your child knows most or all of the math her math class is learning. So, someone comes in once/week and pulls her and a few other kids out to do suduko puzzles and similar activities.

What is working for our kindergarten son is a combination of both. he is subject accelerated in reading and is going to a first grade class for 2 hours a day. Within that 2 hour block, he also receives 2-3 sessions a week with the enrichment teacher.

He also receives "wide" content in math and social studies/science in small group pullout.

the math is once a week within his kindergarten classroom, with differentiated assignments for the other 4 days.

the social studies/science is twice a week enrichment where he and another kindergartener are pulled into the first grade GT group for their content enrichment (map/data interpretation or scientific method experiments).

Of course, much of the success of something like this depends on the strengths and weaknesses of the actual teachers/curriculum and the schedule. this type of jargon can mean very different things in reality. I personally wouldn't immediately push for acceleration if the method of teaching post-acceleration will still be limited to the types of test prep focused instruction that is so rampant right now.

wow momof1 that sounds so amazing! I'm envious. That is great that he goes to a first grade class. My DD5.5 has a reading buddy as all K kids do (hers is a fourth grader) and according to my daughter my daughter helps the older child since she is a struggling reader. Are you in a public school? My DD's K is only 2.5 hours and I interpreted 'not going up' to mean not touching the curriculum of the grade ahead let alone visiting the classroom. I have spoken to her teacher and the school counselor. I think we may need to have a meeting at the end of the year to decide what will truly work. Her teacher clearly sees she is gifted so there is no fight there. The counselor calls her "charming and socially adept" so why do they seem to content to just have her float along? Maybe it is because my DD is singing and smiling all the time. This may change once she is in a full time program that does not meet her needs...

we are in a public school. Actually, our school is considered one of the "lowest performing" schools in the state according to the federal regulations.

but, we are in a college town with extremely well-funded schools. Typically, the gifted specialist doesn't work with kindergarten kids, but she stepped in once they realized that he was globally advanced, not just a precocious reader. We have a gifted specialist who typically focuses on 2nd-4th grades, and an enrichment teacher who focuses on kindergarten and 1st grade. there are some first graders who are receiving services from the gifted specialist, but they try to do the majority of their identification in second grade to hopefully avoid missing the kids who came into school under-prepared.

It is certainly not perfect, but it is a better situation than we could have ever gotten at a private school in our area--or, even at any of the other public schools in our town.