Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources differentiating at home

If there is no gifted program or ability grouping, the topics covered in the school curriculum may not be covered at the depth appropriate for a gifted student. Have any parents tried to supplement what the school teaches with more advanced books on the same subjects? For example, in 5th grade science my son's class will review 4th grade concepts such as plants and minerals, rocks and soil and then study ecosystems. I could get middle school or high school books on these topics and encourage him to read them. Two pitfalls I can see are that

(1) he may not want more homework

(2) differences between the books and hand-outs the school uses and what he reads at home could lead to his not giving the desired answer on tests at school .

I think I will try to find science books at his reading level but not pressure him to read them. It's called "strewing" .

My experience suggests that this is generally a fine and well-tolerated means of offering appropriate enrichment in a way that doesn't feel to the child like "more work" but instead offers a way to relieve the drudgery or mind-numbing quality of below-level instruction.


However-- you knew there would be a catch, right?

However; the latter point is one to very carefully consider. If your school uses low-level assessment practices as a regular thing, you may REALLY be setting your kid up for conflict over those assessments on quite a regular basis. This obviously creates its own subsequent difficulties.

Let's just say that I have one of these teeshirts, and our biggest school problems all along have ALWAYS been about "reading too much into" poorly written assessment items in canned assessments.

Or worse, doing so and trying to self-advocate with a teacher who isn't entirely comfortable with the depth of material that the child has mastered.

In the whole span of things, the least I'd hope from a teacher is to take a few seconds to say "and if this interests you and you finish early or are already familiar with these concepts, you might like read such and such that goes into this or that detail further..." and would like to see them have a variety of levels of supporting material along those lines in the classroom. Somewhere in there I'd like them to generate some excitement for the topic; in fact if they can at least do that, DS will take care of the rest, perhaps aided with some "strewing."

But if I really want DS to study something, all I have to say is it is probably too advanced for him (lol, learned this the hard way.)

I think it's interesting you brought this topic up with re to science in particular - this has been one of the most frustrating areas for our ds in his middle school. In his case, he's in a classroom that is working at least one year ahead of grade level and they have a wonderful teacher and great labs, and ds is very happy with the labs. The textbooks, however, even if they are a year ahead, are so very very light and behind where ds is thinking. He comes home with reading assignments that take a nanosecond, and then he is supposed to come up with questions that the reading led him to ask. He has a tough time coming up with questions because the readings are so basic - most of the time he already knows not only what he's read about but way above and beyond and in much greater depth.

I specifically asked his teachers if they could give him more challenging reading that corresponded to the assigned reading, but they are busy and don't have time to come up other resources for him. They have instead told ds he can choose other related reading himself and develop his questions from it - but that hasn't worked too well for two reasons: first, ds is a little bit lost in terms of knowing where to look and what to look for - he can google till the cows come home, but it's not easy to just google unguided, kwim? We can go to the library, but honestly, our city library isn't all that great of a resource. We can go to our local university library but so far haven't been able to easily work that into our schedule, and he's got to be coming up with new readings several times a week. SO...

I have temporarily given up on it I let him just be bored with the reading, help him think up questions (my most recent favorite that he came up with "Why can't they include more detail?").... and we're letting him after school through CTY for science. The reason we chose CTY was that our school district will most likely give him placement for high school based on what he accomplishes there, and has a track record of granting high school credit for CTY. I don't know that they will when ds is entering high school, but ds has really enjoyed the courses, and they allow him to go faster and deeper than what he's getting at school.

We also have a lot of books around at home that ds apparently absorbs through osmosis. I don't worry about subject matter and tie-in with school, just let him read whatever he wants to when he wants to. We subscribe to quite a few science journals and magazines and he flips through those when he's bored and picks and chooses what he's interested in reading about. And on breaks and holidays we send him to science camps.


Our ds would most likely not want to be assigned additional reading by me - he has a ton of homework already. It works better when the opportunity for additional reading/enrichment/etc is available at home and he uses it when *he* chooses to. Which works out to be probably more time than anything I'd assign him to read, simply because science is the thing he's really into

Re different answers than the teachers are looking for on tests - we've never run into that - science for the most part is relatively quantifiable ... so it's not like he's going to get different info on factual topics from reading more in-depth material. One thing that has happened with our ds though is that his teachers tend to tell him not to get hung up on so much detail and length in his written work in science, but we just ignore that - I think it's more important that he express his knowledge and let his voice be heard


This works well for us... although a huge number of the books end up in ds' bed, which is well, amusing. I am not sure how he gets any sleep with all the books piled up along beside him!

polarbear

Polarbear
I think where the issue shows up is in the nuances. My DS did an assessment on geology and was thrown by an erosion question because the question wanted you to say that rocks are worn away by water and by implication the rock just disappears but DS knew that the water is redistributing the rock elsewhere and so was flummoxed by the choice of worn away and another word he did not know but interpretted to mean redistributed. Part of it was the questions but by knowing too much he thought the correct answer was not right because he was taking the answer to its logical conclusion rather than just the immediate the water wore away the stone.

We have been somewhat successful getting some science differentiation, essentially getting him more depth in school, but not much. The bulk of his science learning is still done at home. Current favorite thanks to a ColinsMum suggestion - great courses DVDs. Wait for the 70% sale - we just got a 27 lecture series on nanotechnology. What's awesome about it is that the science is very sophisticated but it's not pitched that way so it is so much better than a dry text on the same subject.

DeHe