Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Kindergarten, experiences with skipping?

I know you didn't say all students and do not know my son but I have heard this statement so many times and still have an issue with it. My son has social skills that seem natural when he is with older children and adults. He can make conversation, he can talk on the phone, he has manners. There are no signs of social issues except when he is with younger children. What social skills can my son gain for other 5 year olds that he doesn't already have? Why should my son have to learn to play with other 5 year olds? Why should I force him to love the potty humor (which he already did and moved past at 3 years old). Why should my son be held back to be with age peers who do not share any interests with my son? I get frustrated when I hear this statement made as a generalization.

I had the same bone to pick, crisc.

I think kids need to spend some time with other kids of *some* age. But kids make the best social connections with true peers, as distinguished from agemates. For HG+ kids, true peers and agemates are rarely the same people.

For myself, keeping me with age-peers did nothing for my social skills. Zip, zilch, nada. I didn't begin to develop my social skills until I was gradeskipped and placed in a GT school.

The assumption is peers teach social skills, which isn't always the case, particularly with HG kids.

I feel like my DS7 generally enjoys his age peers at school. Especially the MG boys that enjoy being class clowns. Had a few disciplinary issues lately due to this. 40+% of these kids test at least MG, so maybe that makes a difference. There are maybe 1-2 other kids in class that are beyond MG. He also really enjoys older boys. When things digress to fighting or screaming with groups of boys DS just walks away and does tend to get frustrated.

However, academically this year has been a disaster. I'm not sure I could identify that he's really learned anything at school. We're definitely hanging in there for the social aspect until the end of the year. I would love to keep him with age peers, but I don't see a way to make that work. He would need multiple grade skips to actually be learning. But based on his size alone (48 lb 1st grader), I'm not really anxious to do it.

Anyway gtmom, you sound like a gem of a teacher. I wish there were more of you in the world! I do think the social issues need to be decided on the basis of each child's personality.

To be honest I really cannot see how my son could be in the 1st grade classroom while still being taught math on his level, which is currently 4th grade in K and will be at the very least 4/5th next year. How about his spelling? He can spell as an average 4th grader too. How about his reading and science? No offense, but no matter how much I try I just don't see how this could work. I think it's pretty much impossible to teach such children and still teach the rest of the kids who are years behind academically.

I am glad that there are 2 PG in your class (quite a rarity unless you are a gt teacher) at least they have each other. As for no skipping, I highly recommend reading Nation Deceived.

http://nationdeceived.org/

It also means you are at the mercy of each teacher every year to differentiate the curriculum. If you get one who doesn't/won't do it, your child is effectively held back a year (or more, depending upon how much differentiation has taken place before the bad year). Plus the child does not get credit for taking subjects or understanding topics in case of transfer or moving up to the next level of school, so s/he may have to repeat subjects multiple times because the informal nature of differentiation doesn't "count" in the formal structure of the school system.

A good teacher makes a HUGE difference--the teacher can be the only difference between a dismal year and a good one, in fact!--but I really don't think differentiation is any substitute for systemic changes that support a GT child. It's better than nothing, but as a system, I don't think it's much better than nothing.

But, ah! Would that every teacher believed in tailoring the education to meet the child where s/he is!

I will say again (sorry) that we have done well with year to year differentiation. Of the 7 years that DS has been in public school, he has had teachers who did a great job in 5 of those. And by a great job, I mean that they have really pushed him to think deeply about what is being taught to all the kids as well as helping him move ahead on his own. Of the 2 not great years, one teacher was adequate (and DS was very fond of her) and one year (first) would have been a loss, except the GT teacher started pulling him out on Fridays (and whenever else she could) to play games and do puzzles with her GT 4th and 5th graders. Every teacher has helped DS grow as a person and fully participate as a citizen of the school and the community.

Each kid, school, teacher is so different, I just get nervous when I see any post that suggests that there are absolute right or wrong ways to create a good educational situation for our unique kids.

I agree, acs. I find it impossible to generalize these kids. Some of them- there's no way they can be in a typical age-based classroom. Others, maybe. But they are all so different and have different needs.

Sorry to make you nervous, acs. And I'm definitely not saying differentiation can't work. It worked like a charm for us one year, and then failed miserably the next, in part BECAUSE it had been such a success the year before. Case-by-case, it's hit or miss. And there are definitely some big hits!

But I'm not really talking on a case-by-case basis, as you are, I think.

I'm saying that as a systemic solution to the problem of how to handle the spectrum of learning speeds in a classroom, differentiation is the one that's hardest on the teacher to implement and the one that puts the kids at the greatest potential disadvantage, for all the reasons I listed in my previous post. The damage when differentiation doesn't work is worse than that of most of the other possibilities for dealing with GT kids.

I'm saying that differentiation is last on my personal list of solutions in terms of the big picture of GT education.

I'm saying that I wish differentiation weren't the default mode and sum total for GT education today (maybe with an hour pull-out a week, as if kids are only GT an hour a week...), but instead were an extra thing we did to make things even better for the kids.

We are working within an educational system, and I think trying to think only in terms of case-by-case is limiting what we accomplish. Yes, the kids are all unique and have unique needs, but what solutions could we implement that might do a *better* job of serving *more* of them?

Is that less nervous-making?