How to handle first grade when DC is way ahead

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Other tips or solutions you came up with to get through this? I was thinking maybe DC should have skipped a grade but I didn't want to put DC in with older kids.

Depending on just how far ahead your kid is in math, you could look into having your child skip a grade or two in math, but remain in their regular grade for all other subjects. FCPS does allow this, but your kid would have to be pretty far off of the charts for the school to consider it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It all depends on how flexible the teacher is and how overburdened they are with below grade level kids. If you are in a Title I school or any school with a lot of kids below grade level, the teacher will not have the bandwidth to provide differentiation for your kid, but they might be fine with letting you provide it.

I'd ask if your child can skip the ST math and Lexia, and instead read books from home, do BA workbooks, or do BA online. Or for both of them, the teacher definitely can increase your child's level in the system, so the child gets more advanced stuff. ST Math is terrible and will still be a boring slog.

Thanks! I will see if I can ask, maybe after I know the teacher a bit better. I would love if I could send him in with BA books and other books from home. It's not a Title I school but I have no idea how burdened the teacher is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Other tips or solutions you came up with to get through this? I was thinking maybe DC should have skipped a grade but I didn't want to put DC in with older kids.

Depending on just how far ahead your kid is in math, you could look into having your child skip a grade or two in math, but remain in their regular grade for all other subjects. FCPS does allow this, but your kid would have to be pretty far off of the charts for the school to consider it.

Thank you. So how would it be determined if kid is 'off the charts'? How will they know? I am happy to talk with teacher/principal when the time is right and make a case, but I feel nervous about it and would obviously prefer if it was just something that became known to them from knowing DC's work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The day my first grader was pulled out for her routine reading evaluation with the reading specialist, she'd sneaked my collectible copy of The Lord of the Rings to school and was reading it in class. For the next 3 years she was in that school, the reading specialist never let me forget it!

Yes, gifted or precocious kids get bored in any and all group primary settings. It's the first experience, for most of them, that they are outliers and have to work on skills other than academics: patience, tolerance for nuisance, and generally biding your time until something interesting crops up. Sometimes kids act out because they're bored. I just gave my kid more appropriate books than my precious, thin-leafed, gilt-edged edition of LOTR! She stayed quiet in a corner and read. She still does that in 8th grade, despite being in all the most advanced tracks her public can offer (including being bused to the high school for math). The English teacher whispered to her as a joke: "DD, you read too much".

So ask the teacher for differentiation, supplement outside of school (BA is great! DD loved it), make learning fun, get them into a cerebral activity (violin for DD but could be chess or whatever) and a sport, and exhort them to patience in class, with all the books they can carry, or maybe a Kindle, if the teacher allows it.

Thank you for your reply--It cheered me up. I appreciate the ideas. In terms of asking for differentiation and allowance to read outside material, I'm a bit nervous because I do not know the teacher very well yet. (DD didn't start at this school until mid-semester last year.) I don't want to come across the wrong way, lest the teacher get annoyed, offended, etc. Do I just wait and see?

DP. A few options here, depending on how passive you want to be with the situation.
1. You could request a conference, frame it more as being worried that DD is having trouble adjusting to the new school, see what the teacher says, and then segue into her being bored. It's not at all a direct approach, but it shouldn't annoy the teacher or make her view you as *that* parent.
2. If you have some documented test scores that show your child is far ahead (did she do iready and get very high scores? Did she have testing from her previous district?), be more direct that your child is struggling because she needs more challenge. If you don't want to burden the teacher, offer suggestions for enrichment that require no effort on the part of the teacher.
3. Have your child just take a BA workbook or whatever chapter book she's reading, and then ask the teacher if she could do that in place of the ST math or Lexia. The worst outcome is that the teacher says no.

Thanks, these are great suggestions. I don't have anything documented in terms of scores yet. I will wait until I know the teacher a little better and try one or more of these options. Would be great if DC could do BA instead of ST math!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in the 99th percentile for both math and reading according to iReady and she does not complain about being bored at school. I think they differentiate and I also think they work on enough social emotional skills that she is still very occupied. She also will often be called upon to help kids who are struggling which I think is a great skill for her.

I'm glad she's enjoying it and you're happy with it, but this is considered poor practice for teaching gifted learners. It might be great for her as a person but academically it's not as valuable as learning at your own level. There's study after study on this.

My kids had a teacher who could differentiate well in 1st grade and it made all the difference in the world. All of them - same teacher for each - were given reading on level and had access to on-level material in the classroom library. Fluently read middle grade chapter books. The kids who were advanced in math were, on a unit by unit basis, given advanced work if they qualified for it. It was great.

And we've never had a teacher since who could differentiate like that. Teachers like that are (understandably, because it's hard) unicorns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The day my first grader was pulled out for her routine reading evaluation with the reading specialist, she'd sneaked my collectible copy of The Lord of the Rings to school and was reading it in class. For the next 3 years she was in that school, the reading specialist never let me forget it!

Yes, gifted or precocious kids get bored in any and all group primary settings. It's the first experience, for most of them, that they are outliers and have to work on skills other than academics: patience, tolerance for nuisance, and generally biding your time until something interesting crops up. Sometimes kids act out because they're bored. I just gave my kid more appropriate books than my precious, thin-leafed, gilt-edged edition of LOTR! She stayed quiet in a corner and read. She still does that in 8th grade, despite being in all the most advanced tracks her public can offer (including being bused to the high school for math). The English teacher whispered to her as a joke: "DD, you read too much".

So ask the teacher for differentiation, supplement outside of school (BA is great! DD loved it), make learning fun, get them into a cerebral activity (violin for DD but could be chess or whatever) and a sport, and exhort them to patience in class, with all the books they can carry, or maybe a Kindle, if the teacher allows it.

Thank you for your reply--It cheered me up. I appreciate the ideas. In terms of asking for differentiation and allowance to read outside material, I'm a bit nervous because I do not know the teacher very well yet. (DD didn't start at this school until mid-semester last year.) I don't want to come across the wrong way, lest the teacher get annoyed, offended, etc. Do I just wait and see?

PP you replied to. Others have great advice. What did the teacher say in the parent-teacher conference?

I didn't ask for permission for DD to bring in books, if I recall correctly. This was in a pretty overcrowded public school in Montgomery County, and I knew the teachers were all rather overwhelmed. So DD brought whatever she wanted to school, and read those books during reading time. At every parent-teacher conference in November, without me broaching the subject, every year the teacher would say: "I wish I could do more differentiation, but I can't, so here's what she's been doing" and would hand me a miserable one-pager of slightly different math sets. Not the teachers' fault, they did their best. This is why we did Beast Academy. Essentially for grades 1-3 (she did a Montessori preschool that ended in K, and then went to a magnet for 4th grade), DD thought that school was a purely social scene, where you were occasionally required to do boring sheets of stuff, but the rest of the time, you could eat lunch in a very noisy hangar gaily enhanced with food-throwing, run around at recess, read and talk with friends, or watch someone scream and hit the teacher's aide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The day my first grader was pulled out for her routine reading evaluation with the reading specialist, she'd sneaked my collectible copy of The Lord of the Rings to school and was reading it in class. For the next 3 years she was in that school, the reading specialist never let me forget it!

Yes, gifted or precocious kids get bored in any and all group primary settings. It's the first experience, for most of them, that they are outliers and have to work on skills other than academics: patience, tolerance for nuisance, and generally biding your time until something interesting crops up. Sometimes kids act out because they're bored. I just gave my kid more appropriate books than my precious, thin-leafed, gilt-edged edition of LOTR! She stayed quiet in a corner and read. She still does that in 8th grade, despite being in all the most advanced tracks her public can offer (including being bused to the high school for math). The English teacher whispered to her as a joke: "DD, you read too much".

So ask the teacher for differentiation, supplement outside of school (BA is great! DD loved it), make learning fun, get them into a cerebral activity (violin for DD but could be chess or whatever) and a sport, and exhort them to patience in class, with all the books they can carry, or maybe a Kindle, if the teacher allows it.

Thank you for your reply--It cheered me up. I appreciate the ideas. In terms of asking for differentiation and allowance to read outside material, I'm a bit nervous because I do not know the teacher very well yet. (DD didn't start at this school until mid-semester last year.) I don't want to come across the wrong way, lest the teacher get annoyed, offended, etc. Do I just wait and see?

DP. A few options here, depending on how passive you want to be with the situation.
1. You could request a conference, frame it more as being worried that DD is having trouble adjusting to the new school, see what the teacher says, and then segue into her being bored. It's not at all a direct approach, but it shouldn't annoy the teacher or make her view you as *that* parent.
2. If you have some documented test scores that show your child is far ahead (did she do iready and get very high scores? Did she have testing from her previous district?), be more direct that your child is struggling because she needs more challenge. If you don't want to burden the teacher, offer suggestions for enrichment that require no effort on the part of the teacher.
3. Have your child just take a BA workbook or whatever chapter book she's reading, and then ask the teacher if she could do that in place of the ST math or Lexia. The worst outcome is that the teacher says no.

The problem with asking to skip Lexia or ST Math is that our family strongly suspects FCPS higher ups are pushing teachers to get kids to log MORE hours on those time wasters. We've had multiple teachers switch from giving meaningful assignments to saying "just do ST Math" even for kids who are in advanced math. Similar push for Lexia. It's horrible and the kids would definitely get more out of just about any other learning website in far less time, but without a push at the school board/Gatehouse level I don't know how this ends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in the 99th percentile for both math and reading according to iReady and she does not complain about being bored at school. I think they differentiate and I also think they work on enough social emotional skills that she is still very occupied. She also will often be called upon to help kids who are struggling which I think is a great skill for her.

I'm glad she's enjoying it and you're happy with it, but this is considered poor practice for teaching gifted learners. It might be great for her as a person but academically it's not as valuable as learning at your own level. There's study after study on this.

My kids had a teacher who could differentiate well in 1st grade and it made all the difference in the world. All of them - same teacher for each - were given reading on level and had access to on-level material in the classroom library. Fluently read middle grade chapter books. The kids who were advanced in math were, on a unit by unit basis, given advanced work if they qualified for it. It was great.

And we've never had a teacher since who could differentiate like that. Teachers like that are (understandably, because it's hard) unicorns.

First grade is more about continuing acclimation to school from Kindergarten than actual academic growth. So many 'gifted' kids in K and first just had preschools that pushed them further. By second, most kids will catch up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The day my first grader was pulled out for her routine reading evaluation with the reading specialist, she'd sneaked my collectible copy of The Lord of the Rings to school and was reading it in class. For the next 3 years she was in that school, the reading specialist never let me forget it!

Yes, gifted or precocious kids get bored in any and all group primary settings. It's the first experience, for most of them, that they are outliers and have to work on skills other than academics: patience, tolerance for nuisance, and generally biding your time until something interesting crops up. Sometimes kids act out because they're bored. I just gave my kid more appropriate books than my precious, thin-leafed, gilt-edged edition of LOTR! She stayed quiet in a corner and read. She still does that in 8th grade, despite being in all the most advanced tracks her public can offer (including being bused to the high school for math). The English teacher whispered to her as a joke: "DD, you read too much".

So ask the teacher for differentiation, supplement outside of school (BA is great! DD loved it), make learning fun, get them into a cerebral activity (violin for DD but could be chess or whatever) and a sport, and exhort them to patience in class, with all the books they can carry, or maybe a Kindle, if the teacher allows it.

Thank you for your reply--It cheered me up. I appreciate the ideas. In terms of asking for differentiation and allowance to read outside material, I'm a bit nervous because I do not know the teacher very well yet. (DD didn't start at this school until mid-semester last year.) I don't want to come across the wrong way, lest the teacher get annoyed, offended, etc. Do I just wait and see?

DP. A few options here, depending on how passive you want to be with the situation.
1. You could request a conference, frame it more as being worried that DD is having trouble adjusting to the new school, see what the teacher says, and then segue into her being bored. It's not at all a direct approach, but it shouldn't annoy the teacher or make her view you as *that* parent.
2. If you have some documented test scores that show your child is far ahead (did she do iready and get very high scores? Did she have testing from her previous district?), be more direct that your child is struggling because she needs more challenge. If you don't want to burden the teacher, offer suggestions for enrichment that require no effort on the part of the teacher.
3. Have your child just take a BA workbook or whatever chapter book she's reading, and then ask the teacher if she could do that in place of the ST math or Lexia. The worst outcome is that the teacher says no.

The problem with asking to skip Lexia or ST Math is that our family strongly suspects FCPS higher ups are pushing teachers to get kids to log MORE hours on those time wasters. We've had multiple teachers switch from giving meaningful assignments to saying "just do ST Math" even for kids who are in advanced math. Similar push for Lexia. It's horrible and the kids would definitely get more out of just about any other learning website in far less time, but without a push at the school board/Gatehouse level I don't know how this ends.

The teacher can set the level of ST math

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A few things:

- Agree with talking to the teacher about how your DC is being challenged. Be careful with how you approach this. Don't say "DC is bored" or state that DC is ahead of the other children. Saying your kid is bored will feel like an attack in the teacher's approach (no teacher wants to hear that children are bored in class) and you don't actually know if your child is ahead of everyone else -- often there are multiple kids who are accelerated on a given subject, and your child might not even be the most accelerated in any given subject. But discussing where your child is at, how you can support what is happening in the classroom, etc., will give you a better idea of what is happening at school and whether it's meeting your child's needs.

- Don't discount the value in repeating certain basic concepts even if your child is very comfortable with them. In math, in particular, there can be value especially in covering basic concepts multiple times because it leads to a level of fluency that will benefit them as they move into more complex math. A child can be totally comfortable with addition/subtraction in 1st, but will still benefit from spending time on it because there's a difference between "comfortable with the concept, understands the function" and "can quickly and accurately solve problems without needing to think much about it." Unless your child is a math savant, they probably don't have that fluency yet even if they are already working on multiplication/division in terms of comprehension.

- Now is a good time for your child to start learning productive methods for dealing with boredom in class. I was a very accelerated child in elementary school, and while there was a G&T program, I still remember spending many hours in classrooms reviewing topics I knew backwards and forwards. During that time, I had a teacher who encouraged me to use curiosity to make even familiar, easy subjects more interesting. She would tell me to pay attention to the lesson even if it was easy, but when it was over, write down at least one question on the topic that the lesson did NOT answer. So an example would be be, after a lesson on exceptions to phonics rules, I might write down "But why do some words break the rules and some don't?" And then she would either give me an answer or help me find a resource that would tell me. And that's how I became interested in etymology of words as a child. To this day, I have a pretty unceasing curiosity about a really broad range of subjects, and my profession relates directly to this practice, and I'm very good at both asking provocative, useful questions, and figuring out how to answer them. And that started because I was a bored 2nd grader who initially wanted to zone out during lessons because I'd already finished my worksheet in the first 2 minutes of class and thought I knew everything I needed to know. I did not, and I remain grateful to that teacher for making the effort to show me that and giving me tools for reaching further and higher. This is something you could also do at home with your child regarding both lessons at school and any homework assignments coming home that seem boring or too easy for them.

GL.

Thank you. I really appreciate this thoughtful response and the tips on how to approach the teacher. It also sounds like you had an exceptional teacher who was attuned to your needs!

DC is very fluent in basic math concepts at this point--I'm in higher ed myself in a related area and knew early on the value of repetition/reinforcement. Which is just to say I wholeheartedly agree, though I think there will come a point where no more repetition is needed. I like the suggestions about finding things to be curious about. (I love etymology too.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The day my first grader was pulled out for her routine reading evaluation with the reading specialist, she'd sneaked my collectible copy of The Lord of the Rings to school and was reading it in class. For the next 3 years she was in that school, the reading specialist never let me forget it!

Yes, gifted or precocious kids get bored in any and all group primary settings. It's the first experience, for most of them, that they are outliers and have to work on skills other than academics: patience, tolerance for nuisance, and generally biding your time until something interesting crops up. Sometimes kids act out because they're bored. I just gave my kid more appropriate books than my precious, thin-leafed, gilt-edged edition of LOTR! She stayed quiet in a corner and read. She still does that in 8th grade, despite being in all the most advanced tracks her public can offer (including being bused to the high school for math). The English teacher whispered to her as a joke: "DD, you read too much".

So ask the teacher for differentiation, supplement outside of school (BA is great! DD loved it), make learning fun, get them into a cerebral activity (violin for DD but could be chess or whatever) and a sport, and exhort them to patience in class, with all the books they can carry, or maybe a Kindle, if the teacher allows it.

Thank you for your reply--It cheered me up. I appreciate the ideas. In terms of asking for differentiation and allowance to read outside material, I'm a bit nervous because I do not know the teacher very well yet. (DD didn't start at this school until mid-semester last year.) I don't want to come across the wrong way, lest the teacher get annoyed, offended, etc. Do I just wait and see?

DP. A few options here, depending on how passive you want to be with the situation.
1. You could request a conference, frame it more as being worried that DD is having trouble adjusting to the new school, see what the teacher says, and then segue into her being bored. It's not at all a direct approach, but it shouldn't annoy the teacher or make her view you as *that* parent.
2. If you have some documented test scores that show your child is far ahead (did she do iready and get very high scores? Did she have testing from her previous district?), be more direct that your child is struggling because she needs more challenge. If you don't want to burden the teacher, offer suggestions for enrichment that require no effort on the part of the teacher.
3. Have your child just take a BA workbook or whatever chapter book she's reading, and then ask the teacher if she could do that in place of the ST math or Lexia. The worst outcome is that the teacher says no.

The problem with asking to skip Lexia or ST Math is that our family strongly suspects FCPS higher ups are pushing teachers to get kids to log MORE hours on those time wasters. We've had multiple teachers switch from giving meaningful assignments to saying "just do ST Math" even for kids who are in advanced math. Similar push for Lexia. It's horrible and the kids would definitely get more out of just about any other learning website in far less time, but without a push at the school board/Gatehouse level I don't know how this ends.

They absolutely are pushing more ST Math. Some teachers hate the program and are willing to let the kids do other things instead. Others are not. It doesn't hurt to ask, and if the teacher says your kid simply must do ST Math, then ask the teacher to set it at a higher grade level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Other tips or solutions you came up with to get through this? I was thinking maybe DC should have skipped a grade but I didn't want to put DC in with older kids.

Depending on just how far ahead your kid is in math, you could look into having your child skip a grade or two in math, but remain in their regular grade for all other subjects. FCPS does allow this, but your kid would have to be pretty far off of the charts for the school to consider it.

Thank you. So how would it be determined if kid is 'off the charts'? How will they know? I am happy to talk with teacher/principal when the time is right and make a case, but I feel nervous about it and would obviously prefer if it was just something that became known to them from knowing DC's work.

It won't become known to them from your kid's work, because the teacher won't assign anything to facilitate that. The best approach is to have absurdly high test scores that support your case. If your child had taken 1st grade iready and had scores indicating that your child was at a 3rd or 4th grade level, that would help. They would then still test your child on their own.

If your child is comfortably doing BA 3 or 4 problems, you could request that the school test your child for a possible math skip. The teacher and principal absolutely will roll their eyes at you behind your back and assume you're one of the many parents who think their children are much more gifted than they actually are. But they should do the testing, and your kid's performance will speak for itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in the 99th percentile for both math and reading according to iReady and she does not complain about being bored at school. I think they differentiate and I also think they work on enough social emotional skills that she is still very occupied. She also will often be called upon to help kids who are struggling which I think is a great skill for her.

I'm glad she's enjoying it and you're happy with it, but this is considered poor practice for teaching gifted learners. It might be great for her as a person but academically it's not as valuable as learning at your own level. There's study after study on this.

My kids had a teacher who could differentiate well in 1st grade and it made all the difference in the world. All of them - same teacher for each - were given reading on level and had access to on-level material in the classroom library. Fluently read middle grade chapter books. The kids who were advanced in math were, on a unit by unit basis, given advanced work if they qualified for it. It was great.

And we've never had a teacher since who could differentiate like that. Teachers like that are (understandably, because it's hard) unicorns.

I am the PP you quoted. She also gets Level II AAP Services. I guess I will look more into this but I still don't mind it. My other child has special needs similar to those of the kids I am thinking about in her class so perhaps that is coloring my view toward it.

[Anonymous]

I would have a conversation with the teacher and see what they are doing in the classroom. I wouldn't worry about upsetting them by asking for a discussion, it is a reasonable request.

My son was advanced in grade 1 and there was a lot of repetition for him and the biggest benefit to him was socially meeting other kids and making friends. I wouldn't discount the social benefits. I also know there is a lot of hate for Lexia on here but it helped test my son's reading comprehension in first grade when he was an advanced reader.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Other tips or solutions you came up with to get through this? I was thinking maybe DC should have skipped a grade but I didn't want to put DC in with older kids.

Depending on just how far ahead your kid is in math, you could look into having your child skip a grade or two in math, but remain in their regular grade for all other subjects. FCPS does allow this, but your kid would have to be pretty far off of the charts for the school to consider it.

Thank you. So how would it be determined if kid is 'off the charts'? How will they know? I am happy to talk with teacher/principal when the time is right and make a case, but I feel nervous about it and would obviously prefer if it was just something that became known to them from knowing DC's work.

It won't become known to them from your kid's work, because the teacher won't assign anything to facilitate that. The best approach is to have absurdly high test scores that support your case. If your child had taken 1st grade iready and had scores indicating that your child was at a 3rd or 4th grade level, that would help. They would then still test your child on their own.

If your child is comfortably doing BA 3 or 4 problems, you could request that the school test your child for a possible math skip. The teacher and principal absolutely will roll their eyes at you behind your back and assume you're one of the many parents who think their children are much more gifted than they actually are. But they should do the testing, and your kid's performance will speak for itself.

DC started mid semester and didn't complete iReady (yet; not sure if/when he will). I don't want to incur eyerolls because I know how much power the teacher has re: AAP referral (the HOPE).