Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment aeh could you offer your expertise ?

My DD struggles just as much with quite similar things, truthfully-- it's the basic instructional model at fault, at least in part. IMO, I mean.

This "discovery" model makes no sense developmentally until kids are in adolescence, on average. {sigh}

So with that said, my DD is HIGHLY verbal, and has zero difficulty with "story" problems, per se, loves applications of math in STEM, but she still makes a gazillion stupid arithmetic errors-- all the time. I think it's sheer inattentiveness to the boring part of things, myself. If she has a way to 'reality-check' her answers, she does fine, because she can apply common sense and check her work when she sees that something is off-- but when she really has no context, not so much.

This was a killer, btw, in high stakes testing. Her math scores NEVER reflect her actual ability on things like the SAT/ACT, etc. Never. She's just not technically meticulous enough.

One of my recommendations is to reduce the number of items to that necessary to show mastery, which gives high-achieving (but, um, careless?) students incentive to use a little extra care, so as to minimize the number of problems they have to do. Mountainmom's dd also has a processing speed score that would justify this as an appropriate accommodation, anyway.

Thank you so much!

What you said about EM makes sense and could very well be the culprit. I've wondered about 2e but since it's really just when she's doing EM that she has trouble makes me wonder if it's more of a problem with it not being the best curriculum for her. I guess I will have to really advocate next year for a way to get the higher math and not be held back by her EM pretest scores.

Her writing has improved tremendously this past year and she's great at spelling. However, you're right that she's definitely not like the highly verbal kids and is probably why she was overlooked as gifted by her 1st grade teacher. Her reading is about 2 years above grade level at this point (at the beginning of 2nd she was at a 4th grade level). She doesn't like to read much though.

Thank you for the insight regarding the shyness and social difficulties. You've given me something else to consider and I probably should just follow her lead when it comes to needing space and quiet time. She has always been like that when it comes to too much time around others and needs to 'recharge'.

She's fine at home and situations outside of home where it's just family, even if it's crowded. But once there's a group swim lessons, birthday parties, school, etc... it's a problem. When we have more than one friend over she'll play fine for about an hour and then usually goes off to be on her own.

has always been like that when it comes to too much time around others and needs to 'recharge'.

That's classic introversion. Period.

If she recharges solo, and in proportion to the level of output required in interactions with others... yup.

{raises hand}

Even with my own family, after a road trip, I have to retreat into my own space for a while. Headphones and music are a lovely thing that way. Might be something to try.

DD9 and I have a somewhat lower, though similar cognitive profile, and both of us have gone through the same issues in math that you describe. We've both always shown to be advanced for our development stages in procedures and concepts, but prone to bone-headed mistakes, and difficulties in translating English problems to math problems.

The first issue is related to big-picture thinking, and lack of attention to detail. The only solution to that which I'm aware of is a metaphorical rolled-up-newspaper-whack-to-the-head to pay attention next time. The newspaper has taken different forms for DD and I, due to our different personalities. I provided my own, because I wanted to beat everyone in the class, and getting marked down (and therefore not winning) for casual mistakes were the equivalent of kicking the ball into my own goal, and my competitive nature demanded I do better next time. DD needed outside support, because she's liable to think she's losing points because she's not good enough, and make even more mistakes later. In her case, we came up with an external reward system wherein making boneheaded mistakes costs her the chance to earn some money. I can tell how successful it's been because she currently has more discretionary spending money than I do (while being effectively grade-skipped 2 years in math).

As for word problems, my personal definition of math is that it's a foreign language that describes relationships. It's also entirely abstract. So a "mathy" kid is extremely fluent in the language of math and abstract ideas. Word problems expect the student to translate from English (which is a lower skill for your child, as demonstrated by his VCI) to math, and from concrete to abstract, then back again. There is a lot of cognitive heavy-lifting going on in this process, and it plays to our children's weaknesses as well as their strengths. Throw in some math accelerations, and... yikes.

My DD would typically respond to a word problem by seizing the numbers and jumping into operations against them, often without any regard for how they reflect the concrete reality of the story. As much as my DD loves working with me on various subjects, word problems sent her to her room for meltdowns on a regular basis... because in order to get her through this, I used my metaphorical newspaper on her. I couldn't do all the translating for her, or she'd learn nothing, but I did have to keep pushing her to do it on her own.

Like any learned skill, it gets better over time, given enough effort. DD certainly ended this past school year in a better place on word problems than where she started it.

Just throwing out something related to Everyday Math (our school uses it, too). I was surprised that our school used the "verbal" portion of the CogAT to decide which students might get into the higher math group, but someone pointed out to me that Everyday Math requires more "verbal" skills than other math programs (I have no opinion on this). FWIW, DD, however, who is probably stronger verbally (than mathematically), has been testing extremely well on standardized tests in math lately, and she has primarily been taught using Everyday Math.

EM can be good for verbal kids, like yours. I think the reason it polarizes people so much (google it: you can find websites devoted to how horrible EM and the whole school of Chicago Math are) is that it is very learning style-biased...and appeals to ivory tower educational researchers because it tends to match their learning style (very wordy, and prone to subjectivity).

School is exhausting for introverts so be sympathetic. I know in the real world maths doesn't come in neat packages to be solved but it still seems grossly unfair to turn maths into basically another language subject. Kids who aren't language types need to have somethinh to enjoy.

Thanks, aeh - and that is what I have started to wonder...whether EM might work very well for kids like my DD (VCI 165+), but not as well for kids who you might EXPECT to excel at math (those with the higher PRI).

FWIW, DD makes careless mistakes in math all of the time, but she somehow tests well.

Also, I suspect DS6 might have the opposite profile (strength in PRI, lesser in VCI - perhaps like the OP), so what should we do with these kiddos if the school uses EM?