Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School How far ahead in math are gifted kids typically?

Yes, we were surprised as well.

Not sure if you gave an age for your child. Our DS7.5 really, really enjoys the Life of Fred books. (Now he's a voracious reader and very autodidactic when it comes to learning math...) They're a good mix of funny story telling and doing real-world math.

JB

Very recently I helped another homeschooling family find math curriculum for their GT 2nd grader. They were using very a very straight forward curriculum that most people would use as extra practice. They had to come down 3 grade levels from where they were before to start their child in Singapore. Singapore is a very dense, deep curriculum IMHO. I have a math/science background and spent quite a bit of time looking at math options for us.

I think math is one of those things that is harder for kids to leap on without exposure and encouragement compared to language arts. My own child conceptually gets so much, but can still be intimidated by notation. So I think there are kids that are very gifted in math that might not be able to demonstrate all their conceptual knowledge on a particular test. Some computationally saavy kids may not have as deep of knowledge conceptually. I'm not sure it can be as simple as testing X years ahead = some particular level of giftedness.

Needless to say, your child is extremely gifted! My child was working 3 years ahead in Singapore last year and tested 5-6 years ahead in math.

Yes, my dd just turned 4.5! I know she is young and when I started home schooling her, I had no idea she would excel so quickly.

Thank you for all of the positive feedback and advice.

I have a bunch of things that keeps her busy...
She sat and completed a MightyMind set very quickly in one sitting - all the cards, one after another. She promptly asked for the harder one. She likes the Patternables book. She even likes me to read Penrose the Mathematical Cat to her. I have a bunch of Marilyn Burns mathy story books too. Math cubes, scales, c-rods and other manipulatives. All the good stuff.

She does love patterns and even found some interesting patterns in the bathroom of the Chili's Restaurant! LOL

Wow! That thought (5-6 years ahead) really makes me a bit ! LOL

Technically, IQ x chronological age is mental age. Average IQ of 100 at 5 years old starts at K level but with Gifted student with IQ of 140 already is 2nd grade level and IQ of 160 would be in 3rd grade level at 5 years of age.(Granted that the kids are being challenged/stimulated).

The research has shown that IQ correlate better with Math than reading level. Some kids with above grade reading level may have average IQ.

Good point.

My own observations lead me to suspect that it is the rate of acquisition that probably points to the underlying ability of the learner. Otherwise, it's probably a matter of exposure alone.

So it isn't reading level that matters really, so much as how rapidly they PROGRESS. Well, those differences more or less vanish entirely for a PG child by about age four to six, since they are reading at an adult level. How does one "progress" at that point in terms of reading level? The options are limited.

With mathematics, there is a much clearer way of measuring progress for much longer, since advanced mathematics continues quite a steady learning curve through early adulthood.

It's hard to point to "adult level" mathematics, if that makes sense. Is that basic algebra? Calculus? It depends, but even most PG children don't get there until they are 4-10 years old.

What is "adult level" reading? A newspaper? A best-selling novel? Many PG children are already there by the time they are chronologically kindergarteners.

I guess I'm framing this as an assessment ceiling issue as much as anything else. An assessment with a low ceiling (like literacy, in this context) is not going to be very useful as a differentiator. Mathematics has a much higher natural ceiling, so it is probably a better tool for correlation to IQ.

It also seems to be that literacy acquisition is something which is difficult to truly assess well, which might be why it doesn't correlate with IQ as cleanly as mathematics does. It's harder to break out the individual skills and differentiate them with objective criteria, which leads to a lot of noise in the data when children are assessed.

A child can "read" (meaning decode and pronounce) text that s/he can't really "process" yet, too. That really isn't possible in mathematics, so inflation in scores isn't possible from that kind of artifact.

That may have been true of the old IQ tests, where IQ was calculated as a ratio of "mental age" to actual age, but these days IQ scores are based on how many standard deviations from the mean the scores are. And I think the norms are done for every age, but I'm sure we have people who know how testing really works who can explain better.

I believe this formula of figuring the IQ doesn't apply anymore. The way you explain it looks simple, but in reality, it isn't. My Dds8 is technically a second grader, and he is doing intermediate Algebra right now, so that places him about seven grades above grade level. So that would make his IQ about 178? Then his younger brother, who is six, technically in kindergarten, is doing seventh grade math, and pre algebra. So that would place his IQ about 200. In reality, there's almost no comparison between the two. The amount of information ds8 knows, his comprehension, vocabulary, etc., is much more advanced than ds6, and it was even when he was 6. I think that gifted children learn more advanced work when they are exposed to it. If they are ready to learn it, then they do so, but that shows the child is gifted, but not necessarily how gifted they are.

As a side note, my niece was doing third grade math when she began kindergarten, and she did not score high enough in an IQ to be accepted into the gifted program in PS.

I agree with learning other bases. I remember going to a summer gifted program (in the 1970s, but can't remember how old I was). We learned different numbering systems and I was so excited about the different systems.

When I grew up, I became a programmer and was in hexadecimal more than I was in decimal. I think that you don't really know the decimal system until you try a different one.

DS6 is a PG kid who will complete the 5th grade curriculum this year at school (so +4 in math including one full skip and 3 additional for subject acceleration). He is a very mathy kid who is still way ahead of the 5th grade curriculum, that is just the pace they are taking which is going well. He still does his own math stuff on the side like algebra and other stuff. He also is doing lots of interesting enrichment and things on the side like math olympiads and learned hexidecimal this year and now loves to take numbers and convert to binary and hexidecimal for kicks. I do know of many other HG/PG kids that are not quite so mathy and have other areas that they excel in. There are such varying degrees it is hard to say.