Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education John Hopkins CTY Program

We received an invitation to retroactive Grand Ceremonies for both the 2017 and 2018 CTY program years, to be held in late May. I don't know if we'll go, but it's a positive that they're giving kids who qualified the option to participate.

They're on consecutive days, so we could stay overnight and make a doubleheader out of it .

(The "Congratulations, [Student Name]," greeting tells me they're still working out some kinks...)

We got this the other day too. Hopefully the program can be revived - it was certainly dormant for a while. Have never gone before but am considering it this year for the JHU campus tour. Will be too early for good local crabs though on the other hand we haven’t visited the aquarium there for a while...

Thanks all for this thread. My daughter took her first CTY class and really enjoyed it. The Grammar class was great.

Hi JudAU, which Grammar course did your daughter take? My daughter is currently doing the FUNdamentals and I have not been that happy with it. I have found the levels between the three courses she's doing very uneven. We signed her up for reading, writing and grammar courses (as part of homeschool). The writing has been perfect, I have been so impressed, but we have had to pause that that to handle the load from the Grammar. The grammar is a huge amount of work, but of questionable effectiveness. The reading course she's doing she's found the books very enjoyable, but the work very easy. The main thing she's learning from reading is how to manage doing an online course (from all three really), I can't see it's doing much for her actual "critical reading".

Yes, she took the Grammar fundamentals class. It was her first class and so there was a steep learning curve. There was a lot of work, but I think she had strong gains with it. We discovered that it worked best as a team effort. We choose an ungraded course so she would do the work and they she review with her father before she submitted. They would talk about anything she missed and ferret out the problem. It was a positive experience for her. Her school is very week in this area, perhaps all schools are these days. I wish my son had taken it when he was younger.

She is very strong in math and she reads nearly constantly but I feel like her writing is weaker from lack of practice. I do think it is really helpful. I’m signing her up for another course, probably a writing course (not reading comprehension, because she as read almost all the books listed) or above grade math. And my older son will probably take the writing for an audience. Im glad to hear you enjoyed it.

Part of the reason I enrolled her is that she is applying to a highly selective gifted program (that my son attends and I love) and I wanted to burnish her resume. But she definitely had gains from it.

Did you do the course individually? We are doing the course as a group, and it’s very much “we” are doing the course. I do agree that my daughter will have made significant gains in the grammar terminology. But it feels like the content is not coming together as a cohesive whole.

Our school system hasn’t taught grammar like this in decades, so I am learning it all with her and often having to search for other sources as the instructions sometimes seem disjointed from the games etc. some parts of the course are much better than others.

I can’t see that it will do much for her writing skills at all, so much as give her a vocabulary to talk about language and grammar. However, she was already a prolific writer of a standard far beyond her age.

The writing course is providing fantastic formalization of skills for approaching the process of writing which will absolutely impact her writing directly.

It has been a few months and she got into the gifted program and is almost done with another math class. I continue to see the gains in her writing and comprehension. In fact, her older brother who is also a gifted writer, is going to take it next even though he is technically no longer the target age. And the math, wow. I really wished I had sick feed this content earlier. The classes cover so much more content than regular,sr classes.

My DS10 just took a SCAT test and got into this program! We are totally new in here! He is thinking which course to take!
He wants to try ( computer, technology )
And I want him to take Writing

Hi Yanaz, we have been very impressed with "The Process of Writing" I think it's a well designed course. We haven't done any of math, science or computing courses so I cannot comment. Within the verbal courses there does seem to be quite a variable level of difficulty.

Thank you ! I hope he will like it 🙂