Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Does acceleration solve the problem?

Then I'm also guilty as charged.

Although it may be far from perfect in various ways for some students, plain old acceleration into a higher level class is still a major step in the right direction. It's cheap/free and simple.

Seriously? I reread books for assignments all the time in junior high and high school, and even earlier than that. I didn't mind it, and no one else seemed to care. I did have my 11th grade English teacher use my having already read something - I think it was Pride and Prejudice, maybe? - to have me do independent study of some other book for him, but I realized years after the fact that that was actually to get me out of the classroom and reading more appropriate literature. (He kept me doing the independent study after we were done with that book, for the rest of the year. I thought at the time I was getting away with something. It was an awesome year - I read George Bernard Shaw, Dickens, and other great literature, at my own pace instead of the glacial pace of the class.)

Points to consider:

Emotional maturity-This leans toward the idea that if you can keep their childhood as normal as possible, the thinking nowadays is to do so. If your child is demanding to advance, then take that as a cue to help accelerate if that works for your family. It is like a sliding scale where you are constantly weighing and monitoring what is going on. In medicine, medical professionals all always saying that they can't predict for sure what will happen next, so don't be afraid to change the educational plan to meet what happens next.

Goals--Some families need for the children to get through college early for whatever reason. Some people don't want their child in college early, they just don't want their child's brain wasted before then.

How much mental stimulation does your child need? Who can provide it? When and how? What is the cost and who carries the cost? Schools do not see what is going on at home and how the child is voracious and the parents never get a free minute.

Personally, I love the idea of acceleration in theory, in that if I can get my hands on knowledge that is new to me and so interesting, I am much happier with life overall. I can choose to study X,Y,Z, in college and post-grad, but it would have been nice to have been intensely studying A through W before then.

Hope it helps. Good Luck.

Yes-- the problem is that in the "second" reading, it's slower, and the assessments tend to be quite shallow and CLEARLY intended to be completed in "as you go" fashion. So not only was it done at an agonizing pace, it was rehashing of the Captain Obvious aspects, only done in a discovery-mode with questions intended to get students into "predictive" mode as they read-- obviously not something that you can do very well if you happen to have, say, already seen how Othello ends.


So with a few things, we deliberately told her "no-- wait until you see it in class," because we didn't want to put her through that if we could see it coming. I mean, there's plenty of great literature out there. No problem if I say "Not yet" to To Kill a Mockingbird and offer something else instead.

My son had this issue in junior high, almost every "literature book" they did in 7th & 8th grade was something he read in 4th-6th. In the lower grades they were books he chose for their monthly book reviews, or the small group literature that was done in 6th. It made the teachers lessons on "predicting" the ending not very useful, and it is a skill my son is still struggling with. And my son found it boring to have to slowly go through the books a second time. Books that this happened to were Animal Farm, and Fahrenheit 451, and one or two others I don't remember right now.

This is why I sometimes suggest holding off on particular books when kids are particularly young. And waiting till they can really appreciate it. I personally do enjoy re-reading my favorite books. And I can see that kids get different things out of books when they are read at different ages, but I also have seen kids with the attitude of read that once I don't need to read it again.

I agree-- DD has now read Romeo and Juliet three times, and each time, she sees it from a new perspective. Her first two readings are singular in that she couldn't really identify with the romantic feelings of either title character, but saw all of their behavior with a rather harsh rationality that didn't tally well with classmates as a 9th grader (well, she was only ten, so...)

She only now (at nearly 15) reads it anything like "expected" but still not really because it's just so darned familiar to her at this point.

She enjoys re-reading, but usually her first pass is the one that most resembles what formal education wants her to get out of a reading selection.

This reminds me of when my son read the Hunger Games at 11/12. He was reading a lot of other dystopian literature at that time and he liked those aspects of the book. But he HATED the romantic part of the story, thought the main characters were just acting stupid and that the main character with the wrong person. Part of this is the fact that he wasn't emotionally ready to identify with the romantic feelings yet. But in this case I somewhat agree with him.

He is doing Romeo & Juliet in class right now, and is a LOT happier with it than the poetry unit they just finished. He has never read the book but has seen a film version, and in the theater before.

DD's 2nd grade class read a simplified and abridged version of Romeo and Juliet, and DD had a similar reaction. Her one-sentence synopsis of the play was something like, "teenagers can be really stupid."

blackcat, that's a shame that your ds missed the "how to measure with a paper clip" lesson last year… because… you know.. when I need to measure something that's always what I look for first - a paper clip (SERIOUS sarcasm inserted here lol!).

To the OP, I'm coming in a bit late here, but fwiw, the first thing I'd do is verify that what the current teacher is doing is actually random. It may be different in your area, but in our district the curriculum goals for math in early elementary really *are* random (at first glance), and my kids were working on seemingly different concepts every other week or so if not more frequently in K-3rd math in particular. If you find out the work they are giving your ds now is truly random, I'd consider sending in a curriculum (or after-schooling the concepts) and sending in work from home that is geared toward those concepts. If the teacher was willing you could make a plan together. OTOH, if they are feeding your ds work and instruction now that is based on your district and state curriculum standards, and they are tracking what they are doing, I'd let them continue. As long as your ds is happy and seems to be retaining the info I wouldn't worry too much about having only 5 minutes per session of instruction. I think if you sat in the classroom during the general math discussion time you'd most likely find that even though the instruction is spread out over much more than 5 minutes (perhaps), your ds would most likely be picking up the concepts in 5 minutes or less.

Best wishes, and let us know how your meeting with the school goes.

polarbear

ps - about reading books ahead of school - my ds and older dd both typically found the school pace of going through books boring beyond belief, whether or not they'd read the books before the class read them. DS in particular usually read the books right away when they were assigned, so he'd be done with the book by the end of the first day they were assigned many times, so I gave up worrying about whether or not to tell him "no, don't read this yet because you might have to read it again in school later on". Which sorta comes around to what we've found with acceleration - acceleration may temporarily stave away boredom, but it doesn't (or hasn't for us) done anything more than a "step up" - the classroom pace is still slow, unless you are able to place your child in with other similar-ability kids and in a classroom without disruptions. That's been the biggest challenge for us in terms of finding an appropriate curriculum.