Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Grade 1 gifted pull-out - appropriate content

Yes HK - that was my thought as well. I tried to respectfully point this out while the whole time inside my head I was shouting that this was NOT TINKERING, NOT EXPLORING, NOT INVENTING. In fact it was the very opposite.

And I could almost feel the principal frantically pushing the red, silent-alarm button under the conference room table. Danger! Danger! Unbridled creativity alert!!

Snort! I think I've seen that look. Vivid description. Thank you-- I needed that laugh.

Thanks MegMeg! For sure science enrichment should include science! I like your suggestion of having them explore friction. I will make that suggestion

Oh how discouraging.

At least we are not alone. Um - yay?

I remember DD doing a similar-sounding project in gr. 4. She enjoyed it, but - as you said - a lot of busy work.

When my DS went to the local PS, the enrichment work for the gifted kids were always artsy and craftsy - e.g. color the tallest dinosaur in the coloring sheet (for math enrichment to teach "greater than" and "lesser than concepts"), grow some wheat grass (no studies on germination or anything else, just planting seeds in paper cups and spraying them with water from a spray bottle), making patterns freeform with pattern blocks, making necklaces with candy to mark 50th/100th/125th day of school). He was tested very gifted and was placed in a 1st grade class for K and this was the enrichment that the whole class was given.
I got very frustrated with this and volunteered my Friday mornings to teach math and computer lab. I recruited 2 other parents, got some math manipulatives and sat with the kids and did a hands on "Math Lab" for 30 minutes and then a computer lab for 30 minutes. It was not difficult to get approved for it and the teacher took the credit for the "differentiation" and "acceleration" she was doing in-class, so it was a win-win situation for all the parties. (ETA: we did multiplication, division and fractions using the manipulatives and some money games. We used Terrapin Logo - funded by PTA - for computer lab. Since these were categorized as "enrichment games", the district could not object to the content being "above grade").
So, a good idea would be to "steer" the gifted enrichment in the direction that you would like it to go - find a few motivated parents to help you advocate. You can accomplish a lot by working within the system.

I'm glad you were able to give more appropriate content, Ashley.

Our experience was very different. It was explicitly against district policy for enrichment to be accelerative. So for K-2 it was pretty much arts and crafts. At third grade there start to be more options for broadening the activities, but for those young kids there's so little math in the curriculum that it's hard to improvise around the theme without getting into things which are 'supposed' to be taught later.

You could use that time to start a Destination Imagination or lego robotics team...

I'm having flashbacks to my days in California's primitive MGM program during the '70s. "Enrichment" must have been required, because we were all pulled out once a week and taken to a room without windows…where we did mazes. Yes, mazes. Every week. Year after year. Circle mazes, square mazes, rectangular mazes, mazes in the shape of animals. Could, perhaps, have been worse…at least the mazes were on paper. No cheese was involved. As I recall, this happened at multiple elementary schools.

As an adult, I've developed the theory that the schools did not want us to move ahead in any way whatsoever and that mazes were the one thing that was utterly unrelated to any school subject that they could come up with.

Sorry for the vaguely bitter rant. This exposure to "gifted programs" did prepare me to more effectively advocate for my DD. No mazes for her.

And suddenly I'm thinking of hexaflexagrams for the first time in years...enrichment strikes again.

Though we did make stop-motion animations one year, which was, at least, fun and creative.

Hmmm... I got sent to the library. To make dioramas. And write book reports.

On the other hand, by junior high school, I had discovered that the junior high school library had LOGIC PUZZLES. Whole BOOKS of them. {slack-jawed, dazed enthrallment}