Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums "Children even out in reading by 3rd grade..."

i just read dotties post... it's so much better then mine.... mine is like a cheese burger hers is like a steak

I like both!

As I learned from teaching, it can be a very good thing to say the same idea more than one way.

Rock on, friends!

And HG(+) kids, they just keep getting further ahead of their peers in third and beyond. The gap just gets exponentially larger, or at least that's what I've heard, and what I've seen with my daughter.

Unfortunately, some children won't exhibit those huge gaps at school for a variety of reasons, but it doesn't mean they are *less smart*....

Could one reason possibly be that the idea that all kids even out these kids were casualities?

I am getting hungry...

I have heard that they all even out too but IMHO, I notice a significant difference between DS and his peers. He isn't quite in 3rd grade yet although his curriculum is 1 grade ahead... I have noticed some of the not as highly GT kids struggling to keep up...

I do hope it isn't true that they all even out. DS was so far ahead just 2 years ago. Recently, I have noticed a bit of a slowdown, in terms of self-motivation. I take my directives from DS so if he needs more, then we try to find things... Still excelling at most things though...

What I'm hoping that means is that the teacher doesn't have to read every stupid math test word problem out loud and wait for every child to finish the question before they can go on to the next question.

I've heard this comment before. From teachers and from one of my sister in laws. I wonder what I'm going to do? DD5 already reads at a 5th grade level (she must of missed the memo to stop when she got to 3rd) she does almost everything else at a 2nd and 3rd grade level, the only thing she does at age level in writing, so when she gets to 3rd on the other items I'll have to stop her, and have her only work on writing. But then what if she writes at a 3rd grade level before she's in 3rd grade? I guess I'll have to pull her out of school for a couple of years to let the others catch up. But then there's that darn reading skill, what I'm I going to do?

This is funny, I have been thinking ds8 is reading at 5 grade level or so, but I just reread his reading assessment from last year and it said 6th grade - so even if he is still at the same level .... how's that supposed to level out?
(maybe by the end of 3rd grade? Not.)

The studies I've seen have been misinterpreted. In the book "Trouble with Boys" she cites the study that I've seen, I think in "Reforming Gifted Education." If I'm remembering correctly, when they looked at academic pre-Ks vs kids who were in play-based pre-Ks or no preK at all, those kids evened out by 2nd-3rd grade or even 1st. The kids that came in knowing their letters and sounds, counting to 20 etc compared to kids who didn't know those things, you couldn't tell them apart by 1st,2nd grade. So these studies have been generalized to all kids which is just not right. These studies didn't look at gifted kids but are being over-generalized, to much detriment.

There are just so many flavors of kids, and not just iq-wise. It is beyond me to fathom why people continue to think it makes sense to have one kind of lesson for every single one of them.