Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Test results- grade skip or better not to?

In a related insider tip, there-- with a grade-skip and high levels of asynchronous skill development, there is also a real danger that a child will assume that his/her weakest skill set is what defines him/her as a student.

Because all of the interventions/accommodations seem to focus on hothousing or working around those more age-appropriate skills.

My DD is convinced that she is "merely average" as a writer (not true other than maybe if your comparison group is "AP Lit students three to five years older than me") and that she "struggles with math." (Uhhhh... NO... she's finished with algebra II and has such good understanding and retention of high school math that she was hand-picked to be among a handful of peer tutors to middle and high school students nationwide. I'm thinking that isn't "struggle" the way most people think of it.) I'm pleased to note that she's finally begun seeing the truth of this in working with students who truly DO struggle.

She doesn't see how her other skills are still really extraordinary even among the academic peer group (for example, she now has "humanities friends" and "STEM" ones, and she's the only crossover).


It's kind of a warped self-image. That's the one consequence of acceleration that we would have really liked to avoid. She has a tendency to interpret "I have to apply some effort to this activity" as "struggle" because everything else is still not anything like appropriate, and therefore still just as effortless as it was before the acceleration. I hope that makes sense. This is one of the conundrums that I simply haven't found any way around, as hard as I've thought about it.

My dd does the exact same thing. She's rather convinced that she's bad at math, which is the one subject that has required work post-skip. I think that she's still feeling pretty confident about her language arts abilities b/c she's performing we'll beyond the honors expectations in that area and her smart friends still ask her to do the write ups and presentations on group projects b/c she'll do the best work.

Agreed. Our district is one in which The Only Official Options are either a skip or a subject acceleration, both of which are available in theory only by following a narrow and prescribed path, guarded by people who don't know your kid. And even our great principal and guidance counselor, who do know DD and are generally supportive of her zooming ahead, still make noises about "maybe she's just too young" and "she needs time to be a kid."

My DD (now a 9yo 5th grader) was a late bloomer, and it wasn't until midway through first that school became intolerably slow, so I'm also in the camp of "don't have experience with a K-1st skip."

Skipping 2nd was clearly the least-worst choice for DD; I can't even imagine what it would be like for her to be a 4th grader this year. But having a 9yo grade-skipped 5th grader with an additional stealth math acceleration is not at all the same as having an optimally gifted 10-11yo 5th grader.

This can be so frustrating. My daughter thinks she is not good at math.

So I ask - "Do you think I'm good at math?"
"Oh yes. You are great at math."
"Well, with your grade skips and subject acceleration, you are three years ahead of where I was at the same age."
"Hmmm..."
"That boy in your grade who you think is a math genius? He's only one math class ahead of you, yet is well over a year older. And those math geeks from a grade below who are in your math class? They are also older than you. You are NOT bad at math."

Urgh. And she still thinks she is not good at math...

Asynchronous development is fun to deal with. Quite often I have to remind myself that no matter how ahead she is academically, she is still very much a 12 year old in other respects.

S.F.

I had a child who spent a year thinking he was bad in math. Took another year of working with him to get him to drop that thinking. He thought if you have to teach him a math concept and a procedure for solving a problem then you are bad in math. He just wanted to know it without any discussion at all. But he didn't want to figure it out himself in an inquiry method way...he just wanted POOF to know it.

We spent tons of time explaining what "bad in math" might look like and explaining what normal "learning new concepts" looked like and what was expected of him and what wasn't (the poof was not expected). Eventually he decided that he was decent in math. And he is kind of mathy as a general nature but isn't brilliant but he was selling himself way short of his natural well above average ability. It was his attitude that held him back not aptitude.

I've just had an epiphany about this--

the problem here isn't inherently about acceleration, but it's related to "What a Child Doesn't Learn," but about what they have learned instead.

Our kids who aren't challenged in their earliest schooling experiences learn that formal learning environments are about demonstration of mastery/competence, NOT "learning, making mistakes, and growing in understanding." They learn that pleasure comes from KNOWING, not from LEARNING. (Or it had better, if they intend to not spend most of their time miserable-- they adapt to a fixed mindset because of environmental pressures...)

Then in the wake of acceleration, if there is an unresolved lack of challenge, the child interprets this as normal. The contrast, though, leads to labeling the area of appropriate challenge as "too hard" by comparison. Okay, so most of the new placement is "easy" and these few areas feel way hard... ergo, "I struggle at {difficult task}. I don't have very strong skills in that area." It's not an illogical conclusion in a person without much life experience.



ETA: I've also identified why my gut has always maintained that EARLY acceleration is so important-- the more gifted the child, the MORE important. That reason? Consider how rapidly such children learn things. And how permanently they know them. Sobering.

Also, look what we (our society) do: we allow "I struggle at {difficult task}" to be a way of saying that something is wrong! But struggling is not a sign that something is wrong: it's a sign that work is being done. How did we get to a position where for any given school subject, we expect that most children will not struggle with it?!

We had our school meeting today. The results are:

- subject acceleration for literacy/ reading, with visits to a higher grade (hopefully daily)
- twice weekly pull-out sessions with the AG teacher (literacy + math)
- challenge packages from the AG teacher for reading comprehension/ writing/ math, to work on during class time
- she does not need to participate in classroom instruction on topics she clearly comprehends (possible pre-test/ opt-out)
- special weekly homework from the teacher with reading comprehension and math at a higher grade level
- she will have an IDEP in a few days (and happens to be the only child in our entire GT school of 400-450 kids with an IDEP).

We are fine with the arrangements so far, although the IDEP is very vague and does state that the visits to higher grades and the AG teacher will be done "as scheduling permits". I had hoped for a commitment of at least 3 or 4 visits, each of a minimum of 30 minutes, per week. It's a decent start though, and I realize many schools are much less willing to cooperate with parents.

The school does not allow for acceleration for anything but reading for her, but offers differentiation only (in the way of core curriculum challenge packages). We're not completely satisfied with that. I am planning on starting her on EPGY at home to allow her to work ahead (her math achievement percentiles were quite high but aptitude not high enough).

Thank you for all of your comments and suggestions.

Great progress, Johanna! I hope that they follow through and that it works well to improve things for her.

Great news Johanna. For our ds9 we sinle grade accelerated him in math and then the oil lowing year ended up whole grade skipping I'm. Both worked well. In fact the subject acceleration ended up being a great stair step for whole grade the following year. He was much more comfortable because he already new a entire classroom of kids at the new grade level. Just thought I would mention. I posted another post but not sure if the submit otton worked.

We went through similar testing and Iowa scale as well. Have much share f you want to send an Im.