Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School homework expectations after partial grade skip

Anyone have any thoughts on how much homework is appropriate for a child who has been partially accelerated? Should it be as much as the rest of her accelerated class? Or more in line with the amount given to kids her age? (My dd was skipped ahead 2 grades in math this year. She can do the work no problem, but she is dreamy and distractable and has handwriting more in line with her physical age.) Getting all the homework done every night on top of stuff from her regular classroom, plus enrichment activities gets us down sometimes. So far we have tried to get EVERYTHING done and done well to prove the skip was appropriate. But on days when dd misses the schoolbus home(adding 2 hours to our day), has extra work from other classes, and/or violin lesson I think our heads are about to explode. She's 7 and most of the girls in her math class are 10. I don't even know what is reasonable here. What are the expectations with your kiddos?

My dd is 3 years accelerated in math. I expect the teacher to treat her the same as the other kids in her math class but I also expect her to do the same work as the kids in her math class.

I agree. My son was also accelerated 3 years in math. I also expected that he did the same amount of work as the other kids. My expectations (and his) remain the same now that he is doing high school and university.

I'm generally in agreement with "treat them the same," but with an "almost" inserted in there for sanity's sake.

While our son was doing the school's math curriculum, I received authorization to trim the math homework -- at my discretion -- based on son's mastery. He simply does not need thirty bazillion practice problems to learn the majority of concepts presented.

Similarly, for spelling we requested that he not be required to do the 5-times-each as that was just total drudgery and drove him positively nuts.

With writing assignments, we asked that he be allowed to type is work, as he was struggling quite a bit with the bottleneck at the tip of his pencil. Once he started typing, his quality and quantity increased at least five-fold.

You can find articles from Ruf, Karen Rogers, Sarah Robbins where they really stress the fact that the gifties do not need the same extent of repetition, and that too much can even be counter-productive.

I have been thinking about this lately too. DS5 had a full grade skip and started first this year, but he is doing work several grade levels above that. So for spelling he has different things each night. Monday - 3x each, T - write half the words in a sentence, W - write the other half in a sentence, Th - write in ABC order and "study" (sorry I couldn't resist the quote because he has yet to ever study anything). He has harder words...sometimes words that are even up to 9 letters and such. Last night he had this work and he also has math most nights. His teacher has printed out a bunch of great math sheets and he can pick which ones to do. Last night he picked a sheet with math pyramids which was really cool...but it took a while as they were really big pyramids and the numbers got up to the 600's at times. He did 4 pyramids but it took him like 20 minutes. His spelling took him 30 minutes to write 30 words. Now let me just say he was completely distracted. He was drawing doodles and coming in to tell me that one of his words was a palindrome, and then telling me that he calculated that the 27th word would go below the line and wouldn't be able to fit on the page, etc. etc. So...overall his homework took like an hour. He is only 5, that seems a bit much for me. And tonight he is going to have to come up with sentences for words that are kind of hard to put in sentences and involve lots of writing (basil, agent, radar, etc.) I am thinking that if I time him and give him like 15 minutes he will get it done. I don't want him to be working on it all night. I am very excited that the school has given him differentiation and is doing so well with him. And he loved doing the math pyramids last night, it wasn't like it was really "work" for him.

any thoughts?

Re having to do lots of different things for the spelling homework, would his teacher be flexible on this? DS (who also has "special words" for spelling) has come home with a printed sheet that instructs him to write the words out, etc., but his teacher has explained that he needn't. He just studies the words on the bus, and says them what I think of as spelling-bee style, saying the letters and then the whole word. Clearly this is enough for him to learn the words, and would be for your DS too. I suppose the only obstacle would be if the teacher is actively wanting him to practise writing. I am *so* happy with DS's school's "no compulsory written homework" policy, I can't tell you :-)

Shellymos - I've had a similar discussion on another board RE:spelling. I think what was mentioned that once the kid is spelling words that he doesn't use in his own writing, it's time to table spelling for awhile. How about work on latin/greek roots? I think for a 5yr old, his time is better spent on other things than spelling if he's a natural speller. It would be much better to pursue history and science at this age. JMHO. 8-) How about have him narrate from history and science and then write down his narrations...that way he is spelling words he would want to spell.

I do agree that he doesn't need the spelling. In fact, before he even sees the spelling words I say them outloud to see if he can spell them verbally. He so far has only missed 2 out of 50...so he knows them all before he even sees them. I guess my only concern at this point as the school has done a lot for differentiation and I am afraid they would say at this point he has to do spelling and if he doesn't do his own words, he does the classroom words. And that would not be good. So I guess I will try and push through and maybe bring it up at our next conference in a couple months. The one good thing is since he doesn't know how to use some of the words in a sentence, he has to look them up and figure out a sentence for him. I have to admit that part can be a challenge for him at least (and would be for me as well). It is particularly a challenge for him because his goal is writing the shortest sentence possible, LOL.

I think this parenthetical is actually an important distinction, and helps to clarify my "almost" wobble earlier.

My desire to prune the excessive repetition has nothing to do with his age, and is something for which I would advocate strongly regardless of whether or not he was grade-skipped.

I would agree with older kids but not a 5yr old. I think after some level, writing would catch etc so issues a younger kid would have, an older kit wouldn't.

If a 5yr old is working on spelling "assessment," or "subsequently" what's the point if DC is not writing at that level and using those words? Rather than move forward on rote subjects like that w/ a kid who obviously spells very well, why not work on subjects which foster a love of learning? Have DC write narrations regarding books he's reading, regarding history, science, a history documentary he has watched. It works on spelling but adds interest and content AND critical thinking rather than just learning to spell list after list of words DC is not using in everyday writing.

I can see the issue coming up w/ my DS. He might be ready for high school level chemistry, but not writing lengthy lab reports when he hasn't developed the stamina.