Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Post your math telescoping experiences here

DD is at a gifted magnet that does this as a matter of course. It seems to work pretty well as far as I can tell. They use two math books in a year. However, this is done for the entire class, so it's not like she's going it alone. I'm not quite sure how they manage without skipping stuff. I think they pretest, so maybe they do skip sections that everyone is strong in. I do notice that they have not gone in order at all.

Telescoping makes the most sense to me. As most earlier math instruction seems to be 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences.

I wonder if it would be possible to keep DS in the 5th grade math class and then have him do a little Aleks on top of that to fill in any gaps (his schedule is flexible enough to do both, but would it make sense curriculum-wise?). Thoughts on this idea? The following year he could either go to middle school algebra (gulp) or do AOPS pre-algebra.

Ul.H.

Edit: DS really likes the classroom experience and math games, which is why I don't want him to exclusively work with Aleks/AOPS (yet)

What you're proposing is exactly what my 5th grade son is doing right now. He was already skipped in math to 6th, but it was too easy, so we were able to sign him up for AoPS. He takes the class after school and is allowed to do the homework on a computer at school. The only bummer is the teacher seems to need some kind of written record of math, so he also makes my son take math tests with the rest of the kids. It's so easy, it's not an issue, but it's pretty silly, IMO, and he always gets 100 percent. Next year, he's going to a science and tech magnet school, and they're putting him in the honors algebra class, but they said AoPS is more rigorous, and he'll probably need/want to go back to that. (Love that the school admits that!)

DS in 2nd grade went to 5th grade for math, until the teacher said he didn't need to go anymore because he was done with it. He twiddled his thumbs the rest of that school year.

In 3rd grade, we tried ALEKS, starting him at the beginning (3rd grade level) to make sure he hadn't missed anything, and he did 3rd-4th-5th-6th and half of 7th before Christmas break. He burned out at that point and only finished another 25-30% of 7th grade in ALEKS that spring.

In 4th grade, he had his own private math tutor, a paraprofessional who took him out of class when they were having math, and he manipulated her and the high schoolers who came in periodically and ended up still not finishing 7th grade math that year. It was most disappointing.

This year, in 5th grade, he took 7th grade advanced math class at the Middle School, and will be moving into 8th advanced next year as a 7th grader (skipping 6th because he took most of it this year).

So we telescoped 3rd to 7th in one year, then spent two more years on 7th. I'm still not happy with where this has left him, because his teacher says he is bored with it all (wonder why?) and he really could be so much farther along if not for some missteps and his general lack of ambition. He doesn't feel motivated to work ahead anymore, like he did years ago, and that makes me sad.

I would recommend telescoping everything you can, while there is still interest, and maybe it will stay.

We did ALEKS alongside instruction in the earlier grades (DS is now in 5th). The only thing that should have been better planned was how much to give him, and how to slot him back into the school's curriculum correctly. He ended up whipping through several years of ALEKS really fast; and then we had to face the reality that we were not going to send him to the high school as a 5th or 6th grader, which means that there's no place to put him back into a math class (and class is the right place for him, not independent study).

I would choose to go deeper or toward problem-solving rather than faster. At some point we diverted him off the "straight ahead" track into math application work when it became clear that it made no social/emotional sense to let him run ahead indefinitely.

DeeDee

Fwiw, this is one of the things I like about DS not being formally accelerated - although he has his own work, he's physically in the classroom with agemates and the teacher can and does include him in the fun stuff as appropriate.

Your plan could make sense. I wouldn't really worry about curriculum ordering and coherence if that's your concern, provided he's enjoying what he's doing; doing things in an odd order and sometimes tripping over gaps that then need to be filled can even contribute to a sense of adventure in a way!