Here’s what Lucas read over spring break:
That stack amounts to about 570 pages.
Here’s what was sent home as appropriate reading for him from school this week:
It has three pages of text.
Lucas can spell apprentice and warriors and basilisk, but his spelling words this week include boy, toy, and joy.
Lucas is teaching himself multiplication; tonight he was filling out a multiplication table just for fun.
Here are the flashcards that came home with him today:
Surprise! He’s becoming increasingly resistant to homework.
Any advice from parents and/or teachers? He loves to learn, but he has this stuff down.
So this is first grade? Welcome to the joy of living in a red at-will state.
We’re doing private school and my son has skipped two grades there and they’re about a year ahead of the publics (so he is age 6 in 2nd grade, and really well matched academically). I’m fairly sure the public schools are about at the level you’re showing. Public K was colors, numbers, letters, etc.
In general what you’re going to want to do is set up a parent-teacher conference with the school, and possibly with the principal. There’s a lot of phrases you’re going to want to avoid (“bored”) and some you’re going to want to use. Good resources are the davidson gifted forums and hoagies gifted. Also you will want to read A Nation Deceived (free online) that discusses the options for what you can do when your child’s educational needs are not being met.
I don’t know how much you already know, but good terms to have: differentiation, full year acceleration, single subject acceleration, cluster grouping, pull-out, IEP. Differentiation seems to be really “in” right now in K-5, so maybe some hope.
It may be that they don’t realize that your son can read at a higher level than what they’re teaching and all it will take is a conference to address the needs. It may be that they don’t want to help and you’ll have to get testing and pull out some big guns. Possibly the quickest way to get a strategy is to either search the davidson gifted forums or to sign up and ask for help.
We’ll have to check to see if the library has those Warriors books. Our son spent Spring Break reading a bunch of Cam Jansens, Cornelia Funke’s Ghosthunters series, and the Animorphs series by K A Applegate.
Thanks, nicoleandmaggie. I’m loathe to think about a full year acceleration because I worry about socialization issues. He’s a good kid, a bright kid, but he’s always been a bit behind the curve socially. He’s awkward with other kids; it takes him a long time to integrate, and he usually experiences some bullying. (Taekwondo is helping with all that a bit, I think, but it’s slow going.)
I think the school does see itself as meeting individual students’ needs–it’s a small charter–and it’s good that he’s in a 1st/2nd grade combo class this year, but I’m not sure how that’s going to work out next year, when he’s in 2nd grade with a bunch of 1st graders. (He’ll have the same teacher, whom I like and appreciate, despite these issues.) My understanding is that the school allegedly does offer some pull-out GATE assistance, though I note it’s not detailed on the school website–it says students would need to go to their residential district schools for that.
It should be noted that many gifted kids do BETTER socially and are bullied LESS when they’re no longer with their same-age peers. They are out-of-synch with their same-aged peers (also tend to be more sensitive) which makes them easy targets. But you should have an idea of whether your child is friends with more first graders or more second graders if he’s in a classroom with both. Again, A Nation Deceived discusses the research on the social aspect as well as the academic aspect.
If it’s a joint class, then it should be very easy for him to do single-subject acceleration this year. Next year might be more difficult. If you like and appreciate the teacher, then it should be easy to work something out with her so that he gets more challenges. Not challenging children can lead to an increased rate of dropout, depression, trouble-making, etc. Also it’s a waste. Research says that pull-out classes are generally fairly worthless, but still better than nothing.
With individual differentiation, the techniques in “Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom” are both trendy and they work. But I’m not sure how a non-professional can introduce said book to a professional. (Maybe, “My friend recommended this?”)
Oh, and he *loves* the Warriors books. Plus, there are around 25 of them, so he’ll be busy for a while!
Keep encouraging at home. He’s brilliant. I don’t know about gifted programs after my experience but maybe (big if there…) schools have figured out better ways to do it. Otherwise I think you should consider home schooling if you and Fang can manage it. He definitely doesn’t fit into normal parameters. It may be difficult to find a school setting that will work for him.
There’s no way in hell we can homeschool. If we had the time and resources and connections and my family of educators nearby, maybe we’d consider it, but the social aspect worries me, considering how disconnected we can be from the non-university community. (The homeschool people we do know here are doing the hyper-Christian thing, which you know is not exactly our style.)
If the social aspect is all you’re worried, about then that is ALSO something that to read up on. There are a lot of reasons not to home-school (and it’s something we are not doing), but the social aspect is not one of them. That’s also one of those stereotypes that isn’t backed up by research. 1. Same-age peer groups aren’t the only way people can get socialization, and mixed age groups seem to produce more mature kids (who also don’t have to deal with bullying), 2. There are plenty of activities outside of school to socialize at (see Tae Kwan Do, but there’s others as well, including volunteer work) 3. Often homeschoolers can do hybrid activities in the public school such as band etc.
Like I said, there’s a lot of good reasons not to homeschool, but the social aspect is a terrible stereotype. Especially when a kid’s social experiences in school include bullying.
Oh, I wasn’t clear, then–I wasn’t saying that homeschooling means poor socialization. I know that’s a stereotype. What I meant is that Fang and I are not particularly well-connected in town or good at making new connections, and I worry we’d fail Lucas because we wouldn’t find sufficiently enriching experiences.
Definitely schedule a conference to find out how much the teacher/school will work with you. Are there any project-based learning schools around? They tend to allow for more differentiated learning and expression of learned material. Part of me says to just tell the teacher (in a respectful way) that if there’s something Lucas can’t do, you’ll have him complete the related homework, but homework that reviews skills he has mastered will not be completed. At my house (so far), we’ve just taken the position of, “It’s easy, so do it fast and move on,” but that’s easy to say when homework takes ten minutes per week. I would have issues if pointless work was taking up larger amounts of my kids’ time.
His school is project-focused, if not entirely project-based, so at least that’s a start. And yes, the amount of time homework takes adds up quickly, which cuts into his creative and play time.
Have you asked Lucas himself for suggestions? Sometimes kids have surprisingly workable solutions.
And it may be that he has a very simple solution that would make his world right again. For example he might say that if the librarian would just let him sign out big kid books then he would be happy to do the simple homework. Ask him why he doesn’t want to do his homework – his reason may not be the one you expect.
Or maybe you’ve already had this discussion, and I’m late to the game.
My recommendation if you approach the school is to go armed with some suggestions/solutions that are easy for the teacher to implement. At least in the beginning, the less extra work the teacher has to do, the more onside they are likely to be. And, if there is an absence of pressure on the teacher’s shoulders to come up with the most amazing program, they might get more involved on their own.
Hope there is something useful in my ramblings.
Definitely useful, Karen! I think a lot of my disinclination to approach the teacher earlier is that I understand how much work teaching is, and how many special requests teachers get from parents. Plus, since the school is a public charter, it doesn’t get the local levy funding that the regular public schools do–which means the teachers get paid less. So then I’m even more disinclined to suggest she do additional work with the boy.
Noah has passed times 12, and taught himself other math. He knows history and facts galore (he’ll be great at Trivial Pursuit), but is socially and physically not adept. Ben keeps saying that modern education is “one size fits all.” And Noah is more stubborn than a mule.
I’m hoping that by upper elementary things will change or even out for the better.
Either that or it will be waaaaaaay worse.
This is why I homeschool. Seriously. We got to the middle of grade 3 at which point I had to practically push her out the door to go to school and then she came home asking if she could “stay home and do harder work” with me. She’s now almost 16. We still homeschool. (I noticed you worry about socialization above re. acceleration so let me assure you, not a problem. F is VERY social. There are networks. In your area you might have to avoid talking about dinosaurs in some circles but…)
Absent that option, let him read other stuff. GIve him permission not to do the homework. Play Yahtzee (great for multiplication) and other games. Check out http://www.livingmath.org for other fun math ideas to do at home (so it’s not school-ish but home-ish; yet you can tell the teacher that he’s not doing the homework because you are doing more appropriate work in those subjects with him). I bet the teacher won’t mind because he isn’t going to blow their standardized test scores (which is also why she’s going to be more concerned about the kids that aren’t keeping up).
But seriously, I bet Fang would be great at homeschooling.
Thanks for the math site tip, Jo. They use one math games site at school, but I haven’t been horribly impressed by it. And Yahtzee! It’s been years since I played–I will definitely acquire the game.
I won’t address homeschooling, since I’m not well-versed in that literature and have a scholarly background that predisposes me to be critical of it. I think a lot of the advice you’ve already received is on the mark (meet with the school, don’t be afraid of acceleration, etc.) The only thing I’d add is that there are ways to build on the content the school is covering so that he can explore those areas more deeply without going off on a total tangent.
I have a colleague who specializes in gifted ed who might have some ideas. I’ll ask him and get back to you.