Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Trying not to be too pessimistic

in 1st and 2nd grade my teacher used to send me to count textbooks in the school storage locker. Back then I could never figure out why they had such a mess in the system and needed it recounted couple times a week ... now I know it was to get me out of the way so the teacher could TEACH the other students! lol ... and I LOVED my JOB ... made me feel important!

So true. DD3 showed no interest in numbers. Then one day, we were reading a book that had an illustration of a blackboard with some number problems on it. She asked what that was and I explained it was just math problems like 2+1=3,5-1=4, etc. Silence, then a week later while we are in the car," Mom, do you know that 12+1=13?" Two weeks later, she was doing subtraction, adding 3 numbers in her head, and basic x2 multiplication. I have no idea how she went from point A to point B but here she is. Not sure how any school can handle the different pace at which each child learns. I empathize with the teachers as much as I do with parents on this board.

To be fair: it is review and the class is a year 1/2 combo. So it has kids who started y1 (k eqivalent) as late as last October through to kids who turn 7 in 3 months. My son is in the middle as a young y2/g1. But the challenge problem worries me as without significant extension there is no challenge and if I do the extension I will probably offend the teacher.

Next week is assessment week. If they assess to a reasonable level something might happen.

now I'm a little confused ... when you're saying "y1 is K equivalent", you mean 5-year olds???

I am in New Zealand and yes it is odd. We start school the day after our fifth birthday irrespective of when it is in the year.

If your birthday is before a certain date (in my sons school April 1) you go straight into year 1 (hence k equiv) then into year 2 (1st g equiv) the following year. If your birthday falls after that date you go in to a year 0 class for the rest of that year then in to year 1 the following year. So some kids going into y2 (1g equiv) will be amost a year older than my son born 30/3).

I put the grade equivalents because that is what is familiar to most people on the boards.

ah, makes sense. It's just like if we had a cut off on October 1 (we have ours Sept 1)

good luck with the assessments!

The leaps thought is so true. We have not done a lot of math at home per se. So kindergarten was really ds5 first introduction. Yet, he could count, had number sense, measurement- things like that. (His group did start addition/ subtraction in the fall.) Now, class is working on +/- to = 5 with numbers 0-5. He woke Saturday (4 days after new topic introduced) and started rattling off how to +/- to get to 50. When I asked if he was learning this at school, he said, "No, just thinking about it." So funny how they take the idea and run with it. The problem for ds is now his class will work on this for 5 more weeks.

THIS. Yes.

It's hard enough to differentiate-- but what on earth do you do when you have to make it up on the fly as you go? Those leaps mean that appropriate differentiation is a moving target-- one that is moving like a jackrabbit on the run.

This is evidently a hallmark of HG+ kids. It's the characteristic that our gifted-ed teachers have found almost mystically fascinating in DD. It's not exactly as though kids like this are autodidacts, because they often aren't really spending much time thinking about it and learning-- it just, sort of... comes to them. We call this quantum learning at our house, because it seems to be like electron spin or excitation. All or nothing, but once it happens, it is a complete transformation. No faltering, no stumbling-- mastery.

It's the reason why we've never been able to seriously consider that regular brick-and-mortar school enrollment is an option. I still don't think that she has the patience for the awkward mismatch between conventional instruction and-- well, whatever you want to call what SHE seems to need-- and she's 13. When she was younger, there was no way. She'd have been horribly disruptive to her unfortunate classmates, given her penchant for Socratic engagement with others.


LOL on the supply closet. My favorite of those activities was "go to the library and prepare a report about {your choice}. Don't come back until after recess." I was usually tasked with running the mimeograph, since I already knew how (my mom was a teacher). I later realized why I was being gotten out of the classroom in K-8, though. I had a big mouth.

Interesting direction. Now the chicken and the egg question:
Which came first the perfectionism or the epiphanic mastery?

I think this only works in math or more fundamental sciences.

It's some sort of intuitive thingy related to the fact that these areas are discrete conceptual wholes rather than disjointed parts.

And it doesn't seem to work for biology or engineering.

Only math, chemistry (not organic chemistry), and physics.

Or it could just be me.