Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments the "gap" issue with acceleration

For those who have subject-accelerated or whole-grade-accelerated elementary school children by one or two grades: how significant are the "gaps" in subject matter that resulted? To what extent is this simply myth, and to what extent is it a real factor that must be managed?

If the latter, how did you (and presumably your teachers) manage it?

DeeDee

DeeDee,

We skipped first grade here so K to 2. No gaps for us but I can see it being more of an issue in upper grades maybe. It seems so much of the curriculum spirals and there is always an interminable review at the beginning of each school year.
What year or subject are you considering for an acceleration? If you have posted it elsewhere I am sorry I missed it.

Breakaway

Dd11 subject accelerated in language arts in 3rd grade and grade skipped from 4th to 6th. When she was going to the 4th grade LA class in 3rd, the only gap she had was that she didn't learn cursive since it is taught in 3rd. I just taught her cursive at home. I can't say that there were any other gaps in that subject which included spelling, reading, and writing.

As far as when she skipped 5th, it is probably older than you are looking at, but she didn't really have any gaps in any of the subjects except for a few math concepts she hadn't been taught. It was minor, though, in that she maintained an A in an accelerated math class all year and was still advanced on her math CSAPs (NCLB test in Colorado).

We had arranged for a 1-grade skip in math (skipping grade 3); I took care of those gaps beforehand. Due to scheduling problems another unexpected full-year skip may be necessary (skipping all the way to grade 5 as a just turned 8 year old).

I haven't prepped the extra year skip, but he probably knows some 90% of the material dealing with calculations and concepts that would be skipped. What I don't know is whether he has all the problem solving skills that would be taught (and skills in "showing your work" and so forth). And there may be other gaps I haven't envisioned.

I don't want to set DS up to fail, or for problems down the road. But I do want him to have peers.

DeeDee

My son isn't schooled but I was accelerated when we moved states in high school (here in Australia) and I skipped grade 10. Interestingly the reason wasn't because I was identified as gifted (even though I do believe I was indeed gifted school totally failed me on that one), it was simply a confusion in the way the different systems matched up.
The only subject that I suffered in was grade 12 maths. I missed out on covering statistics in grade 10 and this content was built upon in grade 12. Overall I went from excelling in maths in grade 11 down to average grades, however this was in part due to me having zero interest in scoring well, despite my ability. I have no doubt had I been motivated I could have caught up on the missed content had I had the motivation but I was more interested in pursuing the arts at that point. I don't regret taking that direction at all and sort of wish I'd had the option to opt out of maths at a senior level of school altogether as I've not once had to use it, nor do I remember much!

I subject accelerated in math, skipping 2nd. (That acceleration was reversed when we changed districts, so I did 3rd grade math twice. Ugh.) I didn't have any gaps - or if I did, I filled those holes in fast enough that they didn't bother me. I had to do several weeks' worth of "catch up" work following the skip, which was meant to prevent gaps, but really only made me hate subtraction.

We're only a week into DD7's skip (she was in 1st last year, and is now in 3rd). Her teacher says she's doing totally fine academically, and she has absolutely no concerns about her ability to do the work. Probably her biggest weakness is writing speed - she's had one page of "didn't finish in the allotted time, so needs to finish at home" homework, and on the spelling test today, she fell behind enough that she skipped one word entirely to catch up. (The teacher just handed her paper back and told her which word went in the blank.) Second biggest weakness is spelling for free writing assignments, but I haven't seen enough peer work to know if her spelling is average or below average.

In order for DD to get the grade skip, she had to pass a comprehensive evaluation demonstrating she'd mastered the 2nd grade basic standards. So while the kids who went through 2nd grade were exposed to more stuff (because the teachers introduce some 3rd grade concepts in 2nd), they weren't expected to actually know that more stuff. It's covered again in 3rd, where DD picks it up quickly enough to not fall behind. Because of that process, I don't anticipate any academic gaps.

Not what you asked, but I took 3 sets of college classes such that I was taking the first and second semesters of a two-term class concurrently. (So Intermediate Accounting I was the prereq for Intermediate Accounting II, but I took them at the same time.) If ever a situation existed where gaps would be a problem, you'd think that would be it. I never had any problem keeping up.

Also not what you asked, when my partner was in high school, she was "skipped" a grade. She was in a very low-income district with a high dropout rate, primarily due to parental pressure to work full-time to help support the household. In their school, they gave a grade-level achievement test (she thinks the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, but that doesn't cover the right grade levels) in 9th or 10th grade, and if your scores came back as at least a full grade higher than actual grade level, they gave you the option of skipping a year and graduating with 3 years of high school, rather than 4. Which sort of made my eyes bug out - scoring at 11th grade as a 9th grader on a 9th grade test doesn't mean you know what an 11th grader knows! But it meant that kids who otherwise would have been dropouts got high school diplomas, so had a better chance of breaking the poverty cycle.

Also not what you asked, people move from State 1 to State 2 all the time, without giving any thought to educational gaps. And I will say that EPGY math, which is tied to California standards, does not align at all with our state's curriculum standards. I could see a kid moving between states having significant gaps, even without a grade skip. But you never hear about that, now do you?

I believe it's reasonable to expect that a significant portion of his 5th grade classmates, who will have been shown those skills, will not have mastered them so well that they don't need review. If your DS can pick up new things after seeing them once or twice, I wouldn't think there would be a problem there.

There's a lot more written work, even in math, in the higher grades, though. I know for my DD, the increased writing volume is keeping her from being bored, even though the material isn't necessarily challenging to her. I think that a second year's acceleration would be too much writing for her, although she's a year younger than your DS, and a year makes a big difference at that age.

Dd9, whom I was planning to homeschool up until a few days ago, is going to give a longer try with sticking it out at her current school mostly due to the GT coordinator's efforts on her behalf. I can let you know much later in the year how this goes, but she too is subject accelerating this year. She's just starting so I have no idea how it's going to work out. If I remember, I'll let you know later ;-)!

Wow, Cricket2! How exciting! I'm hoping the GT Coordinator's efforts are a good sign for a great year ahead. I'll be following your story with interest.

Not sure if this is relevant or not, considering it's not really "subject matter", but deals with writing. DS10 skipped 4th grade and we've been really working with his written expression. It is a weaker area for him because he just doesn't care to write (handwrite or express himself), but we've also been told that there's quite a bit of writing instruction in 4th grade. He's in 6th now and I've already been in touch with his teacher (he's in a blended type Charter school where he does work at home, but meets with his teacher once a week) regarding the writing.

Luckily for us, I guess, his teacher taught 4th grade previously and said he'd work with DS to develop the output skills. It's really frustrating for DS because he's got content knowledge floating around in his head and can talk to you about it all day long, but ask him to write a paragraph about something and big chunks are missing. I'm really hoping he'll have some success with it this year. We aren't sorry that the skip took place because it was needed, but writing is just an area not as advanced as the others.