Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy math acceleration

Hi all - I am cross-posting this from the elementary school forum and hoping some of you can share your experiences. My kids (rising 3rd graders) attend a high performing public elementary that has a weak gifted program (pull-outs 45 mins/week, almost 50% of their grade classified as "gifted" this year). There is currently no accelerated or advanced math option until middle school, so in elementary it's mainly "in-class differentiation," which has been insufficient in our experience.

I have been advocating for an accelerated math class starting in 3rd grade and the school is considering doing this, but even after a lot of advocacy, it looks unlikely that it will actually happen for the coming year. So I have a meeting set up with the principal for next week and am thinking of requesting that my twins go to a higher grade for math class every day, assuming there is no advanced class option.

The problem is that I've been told that each grade has math class at a different time - the schedules are not aligned (currently). For those of you who have been in this situation, what did your child do when back in his/her regular classroom during the time slot for the base grade math class? And how did the school handle the other missed work? I would like to have some suggestions in place. I hate to have them miss something else in their regular class but after three years of watching them learn next to nothing in math at school, we are desperate.

Thanks for any advice or thoughts!

In second grade the teacher (who had a gifted endorsement) pretested my son and the only taught him the missing skills...that took one month...she walked to the third grade book storage room grabbed a textbook, worwork book, testing book and supplemental book for advanced learners and walked back to her classroom. Each day she would get the class going with five warm up questions on the smart board. Some days they worked individually some days in pairs. She explained my son's lesson during this time. He then completed his work and worked on the computer or even had time for extended math projects.

Third grade they couldn't figure out how to walk down the hall and grab 4th grade materials (not gifted endorsed teachers)...I kept having meeting after meeting...same thing 3rd grade math not taught at same time as fourth grade. So one month into school with them realizing I wasn't going to have him do 3rd grade math again, he whole grade accelerated into 4th.

Wow Cookie! Can we clone that 2nd grade teacher?? She sounds great!

But nice that you got a grade skip out of it. Where I am, kids can't be skipped (we don't do that anymore) and they have to learn the grade math curriculum - even for the congregated gifted classes. :-(

Well it isn't like his reading/language arts wasn't advanced too. But unless they got him high school novels to read they weren't going to meet those needs so he was happy enough to just do grade level stuff with the class and then read independently what he wanted to read. So the whole grade skip was great for both areas. I really wanted the second grade teacher to move up with him. She was THE BEST!

Twins here too, now grade 5 doing grade 8 maths. Their teacher explains the plan for the week and they self teach/pair teach with provided material and ask questions when stuck. Their teacher administers the standard grade 8 tests as per the grade 8 schedule. All going well so far, they are placing top ten against the grade 8 cohort of around 200. Any errors in testing are definitely revised and taught by teacher. Whenever the teacher has the class hard at work she checks on them/explains/progresses etc. whilst not perfect, this is better than them going to grade 8 classes as they are actually working through the material quicker than them.

A teacher is totally capable of teaching two separate math groups in one math period. Get one going work with the other get them going check in on group one. When I was a kid each teacher had two sometimes three reading groups and one big math group with the possibility of a small second math group. Just one kid advanced in math in a class might walk next door to a higher class, three or more needing acceleration stayed in class and became group two. I am sure there was a sub group of kids who needed extra tlc/instruction.

It isn't rocket science

DS is going into 7th grade this fall. We began asking the school to give him different material in second grade and were successful finally in fourth. We started him on EPGY which he rapidly progressed through until Geometry when we had some issue with EPGY and discovered AoPS.

He worked independently for two years on EPGY/AoPS until this year in 6th grade he was able to go to Math III/Algebra II. He had a great year as he really enjoyed being with other kids in math for the first time in two years. He did well on the AMC8 and AMC 10 and qualified for the AIME (where he did not do so well...).

In order for DS to go to Math III this year, he had to self-study science which went ok. Next year his middle school will not have math for him so he will self-study again for math but be in the regular classroom for science. Not ideal but it is working out pretty well. We do not want to have him skip grades. He is so far ahead in math it would be very difficult so doing AoPS online works ok. We are trying to slow him down a bit and ensure he has a very deep understanding of math through Number Theory, Combinatorics, etc.

We had the same issue with the "scheduling problem" and also various people being obsessed about gaps, and what DS might miss being moved up a grade. It didn't seem to matter to the teacher that he was 99 percent accurate on the end of the year test for that grade before the year even started, the test DOESN'T COVER EVERY STANDARD. We had a couple allies, and we were able to have him removed from class to go to the special ed room and do Khan Academy on the computer, and advanced workbooks with a sp.ed teacher supervising. But obiously this was not an ideal situation, since she was not allowed to actually help him with math. Finally we just switched schools to one that had the math schedules aligned, and they aren't so rigid, and they moved him up several grade levels for math. Second grader going to 5th grade for math and working on 6th grade math. From comments on his report card, it looks like it went well. I think the schedule aligning problem can be solved if the principal works on making it work, for instance making sure there is third grade class doing math at the same time as one of the fourth grade classes. This normally needs to be arranged before the school year starts. But they really don't like to do this and we encountered one excuse after another. The district has an acceleration policy that makes it practically impossible to accelerate, for instance. But HEY, they can say that the children have "personalized learning pathways" because they have these policies that no one is able to utilize!

My son kinda found 5th grade academics useless and although he had a grand time in fifth grade socially and with the arts and academic contests...he came to the conclusion that he could have just gone through elementary school on the even year plan....k,2 and 4. I reminded him K was pretty useless too...and he said oh yeah....just 2 and 4 would have worked. I wish he had wanted to homeschool.

My ds was moved to 2nd grade math and reading/LA in 1st grade. Then he was moved to 4th grade math and reading/LA in 2nd. In 3rd he was in 5th grade for math and reading/LA. They wanted us to move him to middle school in 4th we opted not. They said they would work with him on AoPS Pre-Algebra in 4th. We bought him a tablet and had a tutor (a senior boy at the high school) who was a gifted math kid work with him at home one or two times a week and set the wheels in motion. After one month we knew the school wouldn't keep up with their side but we keep up at home. In 5th grade we opted to go to a private school for gifted kids that started middle school in 5th. The public school had a lot of good ideas and worked with us but we thought it might all fall through again and it would have watching what had transpired that summer and the following year.

He is now starting 7th grade and taking Honors Geometry this year, it is pricy but we made the best decision, no question.

Also: Our absolute best teacher at the public elementary school was the 2nd grade teacher in soo many ways. She came to one of our sons winter basketball games "to watch". She really came to talk to us. She told us that we had some big decisions to make about our sons education and left it at that. I guess she was right.