Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education grade acceleration

I have an update on my decision to skip grade 5 next year. My son is rapidly going through the grade 5 Math now both in and out of school. He will be prepared at least for that. His 4th grade teachers are apprehensive. To paraphrase them, they feel that his thoughts and ideas are beyond kids his age, but he has a hard time processing them fast enough (I feel that is because he considers things from every angle possible). They worry that future teachers will put pressure and expectations on him that woud be too much for him to handle. I am speaking mostly to his writing. They gave the example of the class reading of a book about racism. They called on him to respond to something about the book and he got flustered. They expected him to immediately respond to their question because of his high level of understanding. He didn't and started to get upset. I am wondering if it is because he was consideringanother aspect of the topic that was much bigger. I say this because the teacher told me that he approached her after class and asked her if they would still be teaching this book had their been a black child in the class (we live in a mainly white area). He fwas upset about the possiblity of that happening and the topic being upsetting fo that child.

I am going on an on and I am sorry but I really could use the help with this decision.

Have you looked at the Iowa Acceleration Scale, mentioned above? I really think that this will clarify things for you. Also, what does your DS want? Does he want to skip?

DD9 makes silly mistakes when under-challenged, too. She can also get flustered when she doesn't immediately know the answer. IMO, these are NOT a good reasons to avoid the skip. In fact, I see these as signs that more challenge is needed.

Your DS sounds like he might be a deep thinker. This ABSOLUTELY does not mean that he is a poor candidate for being skipped.

I think they will do the Iowa. I also agree with your thinking that it may be a sign of even more challenge being needed. I swear if he could just talk about his thoughts on everything all day long he would be so happy! (but he'd put people to sleep.
Thanks for the advice. Also looking into private schools (which we can't really afford, but perhaps they offer scholarships).

If you are going to grade-skip your DS, I would really push to move him into 5th grade at the beginning of 3rd quarter so that he can be up to speed with the 5th graders' writing and executive function expectation ASAP. In our area, 5th to 6th grade is a significant leap forward because our middle school starts in 6th. It's a big adjustment for all the kids but it will be easier if your DS has been treated as a 5th grader during the second half of the year. In the second half of 5th grade last year, DS/DD's teachers tried to introduce some middle school expectations and otherwise prepared them for middle school. While he will need to answer promptly as class discussions move quickly, that is something that he can work on now so that he can be comfortable by 6th grade.

Why do these posts seem to have old dates on them?

Are you looking at the "Registered" dates on the left, instead of the post dates on the upper right of each post?

Do you think my if my DS9 accelerated, he would be allowed accomodations for processing speed? He scored superior to very superior on most subtests on the WISC, but his processing speed was low average. The psychologist suspected that his perfectionism (noted very neat handwriting) slowed him down. Teachers are concerned about that processing speed as causing too much pressure on him. I agreed initially, but then I thought, "�k, so his thoughts are too much to get out on paper fast enough? That doesn't makes sense to hold him back for that". What are your thoughts?

Well, in my experience (given that I have a child who has been radically accelerated several times over and is pretty asynchronous with some academic skills-- and is now in college as a young-ish teen); this is something to worry over, but probably not a reason not to accelerate in the here and now, assuming that you're talking about a jump from a primary grade (4 or 5, right?) into a higher primary grade, or even into a middle grade.


The reason is that the shift in processing speed demand would be relatively small, and probably COULD be readily accommodated, assuming that there aren't huge accommodations happening for it in the current placement.

It does begin to matter a great deal with the work output demands are higher, and they take a VERY large jump in 9th grade, in most instances. You'd have a couple of years to figure that out or hot-house the skills, though-- but that assumes that it would be effective to do so.

It also depends upon whether it's a hard limit imposed by his particular developmental profile, or if it's voluntary in any sense. If it isn't voluntary, the problem becomes the fact that while he can be scaffolded to some degree (being given scribing, etc, keyboarding as an accommodation, or extra time on assessments), if the skill isn't truly a DEFICIT relative to the norms of academic peers, this is going to very likely come to an end in post-secondary anyway...

and, (more ominously), the ultimate problem is that it takes most high-performing/high-potential students a fair amount of time to perform at that high level. So while giving a college student time-and-a-half on a midterm exam is fine and dandy, there is not any WAY to give that same student "time-and-a-half" in the term, nor in each day. They'll come up short on having enough time to demonstrate what their peers can, in terms of mastery via work-product, first of all, and secondly, if it's truly an underlying processing speed problem, they may well need more time with the material in order to gain mastery to begin with.

Pacing of coursework is a very rude awakening for a lot of students in college, and never is that more true than with students who have slow reading or processing.

With that said, I would caution you about thinking that an acceleration is without cost down the road-- however, it might still be the right thing NOW. You can worry about a gap year or deceleration via a year abroad or something-- later.


Hope that helps.

On the flip side of that series of considerations, however, is that if you're right and this is perfectionism manifesting as slower processing, then placing it under greater LOAD is likely to be a good thing in the long run.

The greatest problems for our own perfectionist were definitely when she felt that she should be able to attain it. If it truly felt out of reach, that made it better and enabled her to take more risks and focus less on the lack of perfection in the results.

Acceleration is definitely of benefit in that sort of situation, even the asynchrony makes it hard. If you think that applies, though, I'd strongly emphasize that you probably do NOT expect "accommodation" for something that isn't really a disability, but a quirk of asynchrony. The reason is that accommodations may place perfection back within reach, and offering them in the first place risks communicating to your child that you EXPECT perfection, since you're committed to placing it within reach, even using external modifications as needed to make it so.

Does that make sense?

The only skills that DD has never thought we expected perfection in/with are the ones that she has had to struggle a bit with-- motor skills and writing. No, she isn't exactly disabled at either one, at least we don't believe so-- she's just not got those as areas of top-1% ability. They're weaknesses in her particular profile, in other words. We've opted not to level them for her. I was unsure about that decision for many years, by the way, but in hindsight, I think it was the right thing to do.

That was VERY helpful! Thank you! I am only begining to recognize the patterns my son is exhibiting. What I know is that he is happiest when productive and challenged. If he is under challenged, whether it is in school or even a sport, he will lose interest quickly and move onto something else. And when he finds that something else, he loses himself in it completely. I think he knows that he can think and speak quickly and efficiently so he becomes annoyed at the need to write it all down. Standardized scores show absolutely no deficit in processing, so I think I agree that NOW it will not be a big deal if he accelerates with the descrepancy. I guess I woudld prefer that struggle than the potential one of him losing interest in school.