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

Thanks. You made me feel better -- I never promised anything either, so now I can fall back on "I tried." And it's good to be reminded that 2nd graders have a wide range of writing skills.

I did have discussions with DS about how it's going to be hard if he doesn't practice writing. And we try to sneak in math facts whenever we can. But nothing formal works at home, so far. My plan is to flip the rest of the book that his math teacher sent home with DS, in case there's something he's never seen.

FWIW, DD7 (skipped to 3rd) doesn't know her all addition and subtraction facts, and uses her fingers. Her class has 10-minute math worksheets, and she's fast enough to finish on time. She's generally not good with time pressure, so knowing her facts wouldn't necessarily help with a shorter time limit.

I figure that when she wants to be faster, she'll learn 'em on her own.

Just as a quick and early update, dd9 seems to be doing well. Her test scores being so erratic have been what has kept her out of a lot of these programs in the past. However, her test scores also seem to depend largely on confidence which is directly impacted by her placement. When teachers give her the msg that they don't believe she can do it (either directly as her 3rd grade teacher did or indirectly by placing her in the average groupings), her scores invariably drop.

For instance, her math MAPS were running in the 90s in 2nd grade and then dropped like a rock in 3rd and never really recovered after that. She's a week into school and a week into the subject accelerated math and they just did the MAPS math test today. Her score was in the 97th percentile for a 5th grader (her grade). While not super high like some of your math-genius kiddos here it's still not an average kid and does warrant her placement in accelerated classes such as the one she's in.

Now, she needs to stay consistent this year and not drop again by the end of the year. If she can get the score up a mere 3 points by the end of the year she'll qualify to subject accelerate and do 7th grade math in 6th grade at the middle school. If not, we're looking at a second year of 6th grade math which can't be ideal.

Way to go Cricket's DD!! We all know that belief in yourself is a big part of the puzzle for these kiddos and we are all cheerleaders disguised as moms! (and dads)

We did a skip from K to 1, so no gaps. In fact, there were some areas that DS needed an additional skip.