Is your child advanced at reading and writing?

[Anonymous]

My son is very advanced in reading and writing and vocabulary (always scores highest possible percentage in those areas on standardized tests and highest grades in school) and teachers are always commenting on his everyday use of "big words" and the very advanced insights that he gives in class in areas like social studies and language arts. He can do high school analysis on these subjects and has a very strong grasp on the context of the material.

His math and science are pretty grade level satisfactory for a fifth grader.

I want to supplement or encourage his thinking in the areas he has strength in. I feel like it is much easier to find outside courses that stretch a child in math, it is much harder to find the equivalent in, for instance, English and History. I give him all the books I think are age appropriate but it is not enough. I want to outsource this. Do you have any suggestions? It would be an even bigger bonus if he can find equal peers to relate to.

And yes, because this is DCUM and I know it will come up, every child here seems to be gifted so he isn't unique. All I know is I can't get answers from his school because he seems to be a rarity there and they aren't differentiating for him outside of giving him more advanced books to read. I am hoping it will be easy to find answers from those here in the same situation. Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Is he in public school? For all public schools talk about "critical thinking" they are terrible at knowing how to teach it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is he in public school? For all public schools talk about "critical thinking" they are terrible at knowing how to teach it.

Ha, this is so true

[Anonymous]

Private schools don’t teach it either . All bells and whistles

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Private schools don’t teach it either . All bells and whistles

My kid is currently taking a logic class where they go through things like how an argument is constructed and what the fallacies are.

It's been known how to properly teach critical thinking since the Middle Ages:

1) since you can't reason about something you don't understand, stuff young brains with facts. Young brains are literally proven by neuroscience to be better at taking in knowledge than older ones anyway.
2) once you have a good ground of knowledge and your brain is developing, learn how to reason (this would happen late elementary/early middle depending on brain development per kid)
3) once you know how to reason, learn how to present your reasoning eloquently in both writing and speech

[Anonymous]

Have him choose a subject (specific event in history, an animal, etc etc) and go to library and ask for both age appropriate and middle grade books and encyclopedias on the subject. Have him write a critical report on the r subject using those sources. If he is advanced, he can move much beyond 5th grade texts. I read a lot of classics and regular adult books in middle school and we talked about it. Maybe a poetry anthology and discuss what they mean. Could be a good challenge.

[Anonymous]

If you're open to some amount of Christianity, the gold standard in homeschool writing curriculum is IEW and they also have literature. It's a lot of work for students, but meets your criteria of outsourcing and being rigorous.

https://iew.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorJFpXaLZrXt24rZGRgsCCDRK0azd5QJCpciFhjbQjyouIV1a8v

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private schools don’t teach it either . All bells and whistles

My kid is currently taking a logic class where they go through things like how an argument is constructed and what the fallacies are.

It's been known how to properly teach critical thinking since the Middle Ages:

1) since you can't reason about something you don't understand, stuff young brains with facts. Young brains are literally proven by neuroscience to be better at taking in knowledge than older ones anyway.
2) once you have a good ground of knowledge and your brain is developing, learn how to reason (this would happen late elementary/early middle depending on brain development per kid)
3) once you know how to reason, learn how to present your reasoning eloquently in both writing and speech

This is OP - this the sort of thing I am interested in. Where is this class please?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private schools don’t teach it either . All bells and whistles

My kid is currently taking a logic class where they go through things like how an argument is constructed and what the fallacies are.

It's been known how to properly teach critical thinking since the Middle Ages:

1) since you can't reason about something you don't understand, stuff young brains with facts. Young brains are literally proven by neuroscience to be better at taking in knowledge than older ones anyway.
2) once you have a good ground of knowledge and your brain is developing, learn how to reason (this would happen late elementary/early middle depending on brain development per kid)
3) once you know how to reason, learn how to present your reasoning eloquently in both writing and speech

This is OP - this the sort of thing I am interested in. Where is this class please?

We're at Trinity Christian in Fairfax, but you'll get an even more rigorous logic curriculum at any classical school in 7th and 8th.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private schools don’t teach it either . All bells and whistles

My kid is currently taking a logic class where they go through things like how an argument is constructed and what the fallacies are.

It's been known how to properly teach critical thinking since the Middle Ages:

1) since you can't reason about something you don't understand, stuff young brains with facts. Young brains are literally proven by neuroscience to be better at taking in knowledge than older ones anyway.
2) once you have a good ground of knowledge and your brain is developing, learn how to reason (this would happen late elementary/early middle depending on brain development per kid)
3) once you know how to reason, learn how to present your reasoning eloquently in both writing and speech

Are you a Susan Bauer fan?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private schools don’t teach it either . All bells and whistles

My kid is currently taking a logic class where they go through things like how an argument is constructed and what the fallacies are.

It's been known how to properly teach critical thinking since the Middle Ages:

1) since you can't reason about something you don't understand, stuff young brains with facts. Young brains are literally proven by neuroscience to be better at taking in knowledge than older ones anyway.
2) once you have a good ground of knowledge and your brain is developing, learn how to reason (this would happen late elementary/early middle depending on brain development per kid)
3) once you know how to reason, learn how to present your reasoning eloquently in both writing and speech

Are you a Susan Bauer fan?

No

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private schools don’t teach it either . All bells and whistles

My kid is currently taking a logic class where they go through things like how an argument is constructed and what the fallacies are.

It's been known how to properly teach critical thinking since the Middle Ages:

1) since you can't reason about something you don't understand, stuff young brains with facts. Young brains are literally proven by neuroscience to be better at taking in knowledge than older ones anyway.
2) once you have a good ground of knowledge and your brain is developing, learn how to reason (this would happen late elementary/early middle depending on brain development per kid)
3) once you know how to reason, learn how to present your reasoning eloquently in both writing and speech

Are you a Susan Bauer fan?

I don't know who said "No," but I wrote the part you quoted.

I'm not a die hard Susan Wise Bauer fan, but we have some of her books. Really though I learned the ideas above because my parents read Dorothy Sayers when I was a kid. I mean, The Lost Tools of Learning really is the magnum opus on this topic: https://www.pccs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/LostToolsOfLearning-DorothySayers.pdf

[Anonymous]

My ADHD/autistic son was an early reader and always scored in the 99th percentile in verbal reasoning on his WISC evaluations, etc. He was diagnosed with a math disability (dyscalculia), which we bolstered with tutoring.

He just read a lot, and I made sure that his reading list included a lot of classics. Now in college in a humanities major and doing well.

It's nice that your son is gifted in this department, but if I were you, I would pay attention to the things he's NOT good at... otherwise it's going to cause problems later.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private schools don’t teach it either . All bells and whistles

My kid is currently taking a logic class where they go through things like how an argument is constructed and what the fallacies are.

It's been known how to properly teach critical thinking since the Middle Ages:

1) since you can't reason about something you don't understand, stuff young brains with facts. Young brains are literally proven by neuroscience to be better at taking in knowledge than older ones anyway.
2) once you have a good ground of knowledge and your brain is developing, learn how to reason (this would happen late elementary/early middle depending on brain development per kid)
3) once you know how to reason, learn how to present your reasoning eloquently in both writing and speech

This is OP - this the sort of thing I am interested in. Where is this class please?

We're at Trinity Christian in Fairfax, but you'll get an even more rigorous logic curriculum at any classical school in 7th and 8th.

I should add before we went private, I did get one of these books on logic for my kid: https://www.mfwbooks.com/item/27080/Introduction-to-Logic/?srsltid=AfmBOooqTZMqW1WC1IEc63CVxaELndKTW8Jg29FL8aozoCHdYEPhDrO5

But the perk of going private is that I don't have to scrounge up all these homeschool curricula and have my kid do them over the summer/after school/on break. It's built in.

[Anonymous]

Great logic classes at Dominion Christian and other classical schools, both formal and informal logic. They have a debate class in 8th too.

You could look at CTY but at that cost you may as well go to a classical Christian private like Dominion, Ad Fontes, etc. Like a session of logic at CTY is 7200, and tuition at classical Christian is about 15-18k.

AoPS has language arts classes.