Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Curriculum compacting experience

Does anyone have experience with curriculum compacting?

Despite a grade skip, DS12 is not being challenged in most of his classes. We'd like to try this approach, but I'd like to know if it's a viable option.

Thanks everyone

I could never seem to make it work with Social Studies, since there is so much new content. The teachers in the original study were more likely to try it with math or reading. Several teachers in the study began by compacting for one student, but ended up compacting for about ten. They were more willing to try it again with support from a gifted resource teacher. Most of the teachers who used it filled the student's extra time with enrichment instead of acceleration.

I, too, have only seen this work well when it is planned for a group of kids. For instance, my older dd's middle school started a program her last year there where they offered incoming 6th graders who had advanced achievement scores in math the option of taking a compacted math class that covered both 6th & 7th grade math in one year. The 6th & 7th grade math classes were both, essentially, a pre-algebra class and could easily be combined. Those kids could then move into algebra in 7th.

Trying to make it happen for one child in a class is probably going to be hard for the teacher and, therefore, happening with a lot less actual instruction for the student. Is there any possibility of subject acceleration if compacting isn't something that works well?

We found the first year of math subject acceleration a bit painful with some missing concepts for dd11 but it has gotten easier in year two. I think that, when subject acceleration (especially in math) happens later, it can be a bit more of a challenge b/c there are more missing pieces. If your ds is really far ahead, though, there might not be much missing at all.

What is the difference in compacting, differentiation, and old-fashioned (evil) ability grouping? I have not seen differentiation work, but how did teachers ability group back in the day.

So, compacting involves learning more material in a shorter period of time (such as pre-algebra & algebra in 1 year instead of 2). It's a faster pace than usual with the same or similar amounts of material. It can be used as a form of acceleration.

Differentiation involves different assignments (more in depth or more in breadth). For example, when children are learning fractions, a worksheet exploring Farey sequences using fractions might be used for advanced children to learn more about fractions and their applications in number theory. A child might be the only one in the class working on that assignment.

Ability grouping is similar to differentiation, except that there are groups of students with the same assignments (the top 20% of the class may have that Farey sequence worksheet, while the middle 60% have the regular assignment and the bottom 20% have a remedial worksheet).

Compacting worked well for DC20 (pg, 2E) when he was younger, as did differentiation. However, ability grouping didn't always work, as his strengths and weaknesses weren't always shared by the students in that group.

In my own experience, ability grouping didn't work well, as no one in my classes was as far ahead as I was before accelerating. Differentiation let me work at my own level in different subjects, while compacting allowed me to accelerate through material until I hit a better level of placement.

Compacting is one differentiation strategy. Before you teach a unit, you give a pre-assessment and find out a handful of your students already know most of what you're going to teach them, several of them know some of it, and some are going to need a bunch of help. You tailor your small group instruction and the work you give students based on assessment results.

In the original Compacting Curriculum Study, Renzulli et al. found that you could eliminate half the curriculum for certain students without impacting their achievement on achievement tests aimed at students a year older, in each case, from the test subjects.

In other words, a fifth grader was identified by their teacher (whether or not formally identified as gifted) as someone who might benefit from compacting. That student was given a 6th grade achievement test. Half the curriculum was eliminated through pre-assessment for that student, and then they took the 6th grade test again. Their achievement did not suffer, and the teacher sometimes ended up compacting for about nine of their classmates.

To compare and contrast this with ability grouping or tracking, your ability groups--if you use them in compacting--are determined by your pre-assessment for each unit. Theoretically, someone who is in the low group for fractions might be in the high group next week with different material.

Well, back in the Dark Age day (when I was in 6th grade) our math class was divided into ability groups and it worked really well, for me, an uber-achiever who is great at math - I got to be the farthest ahead in the highest ability group so it fed my uber-achieving ego, plus I got to learn a lot of math that year. The way it worked in my class way back then was the kids in our class worked in groups of anywhere from 2-4 kids on the same general set of material, but the assignments for that section were given out at the start so we could all work at our own pace, and the teacher just floated around between groups helping and teaching concepts as needed. I don't honestly recall ever needing to see too much of the teacher. After we'd finished the required set of assignments for each unit and taken the unit test on our own, we moved on. I loved it! And it didn't matter that I didn't have a peer working at the same level either. Kids did get moved around between groups depending on where they were at as they worked their way through everything.

One caveat - it was already a one-year accelerated honors class, so we didn't have struggling students who weren't mathy in the class which probably made it easier to let everyone work semi-independently.

polarbear

Thanks everyone! I was hoping compacting might be the solution as differentiation is not being done. Mostly because the teachers truly don't understand the concept.

The issue is not so much math - he's doing Algebra 1. Science is mostly new information and the teacher is engaging. The problem rests with "honors" language arts and social studies.

Ds is fascinated with history, revolutions, dictators, war, weapons etc. He reads at a college level and has read fairly extensively on the subject.

He chose to test out of the 1st quarter of social studies - teacher is a gifted hater - and spent his time in the library researching a paper. 2nd quarter he stayed because he enjoyed the t.a. and spent class time chit chatting to a friend, who is the kind of kid who needs to listen. This quarter we have the TAG positive teacher and I'm hoping he can come up with something for Ds to do.

The issue is that he knows the material and he's ready to discuss geopolitical and social ramifications. His peers just aren't there.

The "honors" language arts class is a waste. He's learned 2 new concepts the entire year and met the benchmarks for 7th grade last year in 5th grade. Teacher says she's on board with gifted learning but nothing happens in the class. Mostly, they discuss her personal life and her pets.

Oh and ds has already taken the state test and far exceeded the benchmark.

This is interesting, but not exactly what I've understood compacting to be - the way the term compacting has been used where I'm at is to refer to teaching new material at an accelerated rate. It's not easy to actually pull off unless you have a class that is all-gifted kids, and even then each child most likely varies in their ability to learn at different rates. I do know that compacting worked great for our ds in after-schooling math when he was in elementary and not allowed to accelerate at school.

polarbear

Ability grouping is not evil -- I assume you were being sarcastic. In the absence of ability grouping by classroom, affluent parents effect some degree of ability grouping by moving to school districts with high average test scores.