What elementary school did your gifted child thrive in?

[Anonymous]

Ok. There are levels of gifted (Feynman, tortured genius or merely Mark Zuckerberg). Let's focus on one small but quantifiable slice, namely kids who do well on the AMC 12 competition. For those who don't know, this is a high school math competition in the sequence that culminates in the American Math Olympiad and the Putnam.

This nice study examines the kids who scored really well in the AMC 12 (100, which is equivalent to 99th percentile of all US high schoolers or higher).

https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/manuscript_and_appendix.pdf

The main conclusion is that after removing magnets, charters and private schools from their comparison pool, they find that the school environment, in terms of advanced classes, contributes to high achievement on this test (Zuckerberg scored >120 when he was a high schooler). Interestingly, DCPS has had 0 kids in this pool in the last 5 years. Local privates like Sidwell, GDS etc. routinely place 1-2 students each in this pool.

The bottom line is that if one is looking to nurture mathematical giftedness, DCPS is not the place to be and it does a sub-par job of doing so. While high achievement in math may not be an unalloyed good, it is possible that school systems such as DCPS can increase the number of such students with some effort. The potential benefits might be quite large.

[Anonymous]

Above 135 or 140, you start having problems. These people understand things very quickly and get bored easily in school. They question existing systems and are more skeptical. Bc they are less than 1 percent of the population, schools are not going to create systems for them. I'm still not sure what the best thing is for these kids -- homeschooling? Lots of tutoring? Outside interests like instruments?

My IQ was tested at 144 as a child, DH's at 162. DH was and is the consummate underachiever -- he attended unimpressive state schools and made pretty average grades. He is incredibly smart and knowledgeable about arcane things, and can do any type of logic puzzle or math problem, but he has a very difficult time fitting in to the social culture of institutions (like his former law firm). Oddly, he did do well in the military.

We have one smart, hardworking kid and one highly gifted kid (152). Life is much easier socially and grade-wise for the smart, hardworking kid. My highly gifted kid gets bored easily and wants to talk about weird things that no one else is interested in, which can be especially hard for a girl. She grasps concepts and reads quickly so has not really learned how to work hard. Her grades are good but not representative of her abilities because she rushes through things. She doesn't see the point of some assignments and so doesn't do them. Public school is not a good fit for her, even in an accelerated program. She is frequently in her own world (yes, she is neurotypical, which is why we had her tested). And she is not particularly academically oriented -- she wants to be an animator or graphic artist. I worry about her, her mental health, and her ability to function in the world in a way I don't worry about my other child.

[Anonymous]

I've been a teacher in DCPS for 15 years. I teach at the JKLM (this is for the racists out there who believe only smart kids exist at a JKLM). I've taught lots of bright kids. Kids reading several levels above grade expectation; can do "challenging math", were probably early talkers as infants and have great vocabulary. Out of all of those students, I've had exactly one truly gifted student- the kind of kid you remember 13 years later. Could beat adults in chess and was a classical pianist at the age of 5. Could decode any college level text I put in front of him. The parents didn't worry about challenging him academically- they wanted him to have a normal childhood and to have friends his age.

The point in mentioning this kid? Every year I get parents who want to talk about their exceptional child because the kid can read Harry Potter in 1st grade and are bored with Zearn. If your child is freakishly exceptional- the teacher will say something about it like suggest testing (RARELY HAPPENS- again, one kid in my entire career). Also, most parents who think their kid is exceptional don't realize their child has other deficits- usually social/emotional stuff .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've been a teacher in DCPS for 15 years. I teach at the JKLM (this is for the racists out there who believe only smart kids exist at a JKLM). I've taught lots of bright kids. Kids reading several levels above grade expectation; can do "challenging math", were probably early talkers as infants and have great vocabulary. Out of all of those students, I've had exactly one truly gifted student- the kind of kid you remember 13 years later. Could beat adults in chess and was a classical pianist at the age of 5. Could decode any college level text I put in front of him. The parents didn't worry about challenging him academically- they wanted him to have a normal childhood and to have friends his age.

The point in mentioning this kid? Every year I get parents who want to talk about their exceptional child because the kid can read Harry Potter in 1st grade and are bored with Zearn. If your child is freakishly exceptional- the teacher will say something about it like suggest testing (RARELY HAPPENS- again, one kid in my entire career). Also, most parents who think their kid is exceptional don't realize their child has other deficits- usually social/emotional stuff .

NP. Your example is nice, and your point is well taken, that kids with an FSIQ of 130 might not be 'that' kind of gifted, but those kids DO need that their parents worry about challenging them academically, more so than the chess genius example you described. They need to keep learning, and not learn to be bored in class.
Other than wishing those parents would realize their kid who reads Harry Potter in 1st and is bored with Zearn isn't a truly gifted child, do you give them reading and math at a level they will benefit from, or do you just shrug that they'll be fine? If there truly are that many kids reading HP in 1st, why don't you teach those kids at their level, instead of insisting on picture books with 10 words a page, and some more Zearn, until they check out? I hear of differentiation, I have heard teachers say "differentiation is what we do" year after year, but on the ground, what they do is shutting up the parents, and not differentiating anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been a teacher in DCPS for 15 years. I teach at the JKLM (this is for the racists out there who believe only smart kids exist at a JKLM). I've taught lots of bright kids. Kids reading several levels above grade expectation; can do "challenging math", were probably early talkers as infants and have great vocabulary. Out of all of those students, I've had exactly one truly gifted student- the kind of kid you remember 13 years later. Could beat adults in chess and was a classical pianist at the age of 5. Could decode any college level text I put in front of him. The parents didn't worry about challenging him academically- they wanted him to have a normal childhood and to have friends his age.

The point in mentioning this kid? Every year I get parents who want to talk about their exceptional child because the kid can read Harry Potter in 1st grade and are bored with Zearn. If your child is freakishly exceptional- the teacher will say something about it like suggest testing (RARELY HAPPENS- again, one kid in my entire career). Also, most parents who think their kid is exceptional don't realize their child has other deficits- usually social/emotional stuff .

NP. Your example is nice, and your point is well taken, that kids with an FSIQ of 130 might not be 'that' kind of gifted, but those kids DO need that their parents worry about challenging them academically, more so than the chess genius example you described. They need to keep learning, and not learn to be bored in class.
Other than wishing those parents would realize their kid who reads Harry Potter in 1st and is bored with Zearn isn't a truly gifted child, do you give them reading and math at a level they will benefit from, or do you just shrug that they'll be fine? If there truly are that many kids reading HP in 1st, why don't you teach those kids at their level, instead of insisting on picture books with 10 words a page, and some more Zearn, until they check out? I hear of differentiation, I have heard teachers say "differentiation is what we do" year after year, but on the ground, what they do is shutting up the parents, and not differentiating anything.

My EOTP kid got this kind of differentiation, including moving on to the junior high math software in fourth grade with other kids and texts appropriate to reading level & some looping up for English. I had my issues with classroom management by the upper grades but I never felt like my kid was ignored. Teachers teach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been a teacher in DCPS for 15 years. I teach at the JKLM (this is for the racists out there who believe only smart kids exist at a JKLM). I've taught lots of bright kids. Kids reading several levels above grade expectation; can do "challenging math", were probably early talkers as infants and have great vocabulary. Out of all of those students, I've had exactly one truly gifted student- the kind of kid you remember 13 years later. Could beat adults in chess and was a classical pianist at the age of 5. Could decode any college level text I put in front of him. The parents didn't worry about challenging him academically- they wanted him to have a normal childhood and to have friends his age.

The point in mentioning this kid? Every year I get parents who want to talk about their exceptional child because the kid can read Harry Potter in 1st grade and are bored with Zearn. If your child is freakishly exceptional- the teacher will say something about it like suggest testing (RARELY HAPPENS- again, one kid in my entire career). Also, most parents who think their kid is exceptional don't realize their child has other deficits- usually social/emotional stuff .

NP. Your example is nice, and your point is well taken, that kids with an FSIQ of 130 might not be 'that' kind of gifted, but those kids DO need that their parents worry about challenging them academically, more so than the chess genius example you described. They need to keep learning, and not learn to be bored in class.
Other than wishing those parents would realize their kid who reads Harry Potter in 1st and is bored with Zearn isn't a truly gifted child, do you give them reading and math at a level they will benefit from, or do you just shrug that they'll be fine? If there truly are that many kids reading HP in 1st, why don't you teach those kids at their level, instead of insisting on picture books with 10 words a page, and some more Zearn, until they check out? I hear of differentiation, I have heard teachers say "differentiation is what we do" year after year, but on the ground, what they do is shutting up the parents, and not differentiating anything.

I'm not the teacher PP, but here's my experience as the parent of just such a child. Super early talker, huge vocab, cooperative-ish and bright, good on self-regulation and fine motor, basically the kind of kid who's teed up for academic success in early elementary. Toted Harry Potter to the first day of Kindergarten and was great at addition and subtraction on Zearn. But reading something for pleasure isn't the same thing as being able to read and fully understand it. DD loved to read Harry Potter and could pronounce the words mostly-correctly, but she was missing huge swaths of the content (this is why kids read Harry Potter over and over again-- they understand more as they grow). Her writing skills were lagging behind the reading. She read too fast and comprehension suffered. She was reading the words of Harry Potter with her eyes, but she wasn't understanding it *at grade level* or guided reading level or whatever it is. So at school, she often was assigned shorter passages and books that *seemed* much below her level, but as texts to comprehend, retain, and respond to in writing, they *were* at her level. Same for math-- while she had some abilities far above grade level, there were major holes in her skill set. She wasn't mature enough to do the kind of multi-step math that older kids do, and her conceptual frameworks were basic. Her math was intuitive and lacked disciplined reasoning and problem-solving. At our EOTP Title I, she got the kind of customized, personalized attention to address those gaps, and we were thrilled with it. Nobody shrugged and said she would be fine. There was plenty of differentiation. Sometimes that looked like 1:1 time with a teacher or specialist. Sometimes it looked like spending a bit of time in a different grade's classroom. Sometimes it was a computer game for math fluency practice. Now, I never held any illusions about her being "gifted", because everyone in my family is like this and we all turn out to be competent adults rather than super high achievers. So I was fine with all of this and appreciated the school's careful attention to her individual needs.

Bottom line, if you're unhappy with your school's differentiation or attention to your child, that's a problem with your school and I hope you can address it with the teachers. They may have a good explanation for why they are doing the things they are doing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ok. There are levels of gifted (Feynman, tortured genius or merely Mark Zuckerberg). Let's focus on one small but quantifiable slice, namely kids who do well on the AMC 12 competition. For those who don't know, this is a high school math competition in the sequence that culminates in the American Math Olympiad and the Putnam.

This nice study examines the kids who scored really well in the AMC 12 (100, which is equivalent to 99th percentile of all US high schoolers or higher).

https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/manuscript_and_appendix.pdf

The main conclusion is that after removing magnets, charters and private schools from their comparison pool, they find that the school environment, in terms of advanced classes, contributes to high achievement on this test (Zuckerberg scored >120 when he was a high schooler). Interestingly, DCPS has had 0 kids in this pool in the last 5 years. Local privates like Sidwell, GDS etc. routinely place 1-2 students each in this pool.

The bottom line is that if one is looking to nurture mathematical giftedness, DCPS is not the place to be and it does a sub-par job of doing so. While high achievement in math may not be an unalloyed good, it is possible that school systems such as DCPS can increase the number of such students with some effort. The potential benefits might be quite large.

Interesting example, Richard Feynman supposed had an IQ of only 125, he talked about it often! I also would not call him tortured... He was really accomplished and seemingly a very delightful person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been a teacher in DCPS for 15 years. I teach at the JKLM (this is for the racists out there who believe only smart kids exist at a JKLM). I've taught lots of bright kids. Kids reading several levels above grade expectation; can do "challenging math", were probably early talkers as infants and have great vocabulary. Out of all of those students, I've had exactly one truly gifted student- the kind of kid you remember 13 years later. Could beat adults in chess and was a classical pianist at the age of 5. Could decode any college level text I put in front of him. The parents didn't worry about challenging him academically- they wanted him to have a normal childhood and to have friends his age.

The point in mentioning this kid? Every year I get parents who want to talk about their exceptional child because the kid can read Harry Potter in 1st grade and are bored with Zearn. If your child is freakishly exceptional- the teacher will say something about it like suggest testing (RARELY HAPPENS- again, one kid in my entire career). Also, most parents who think their kid is exceptional don't realize their child has other deficits- usually social/emotional stuff .

NP. Your example is nice, and your point is well taken, that kids with an FSIQ of 130 might not be 'that' kind of gifted, but those kids DO need that their parents worry about challenging them academically, more so than the chess genius example you described. They need to keep learning, and not learn to be bored in class.
Other than wishing those parents would realize their kid who reads Harry Potter in 1st and is bored with Zearn isn't a truly gifted child, do you give them reading and math at a level they will benefit from, or do you just shrug that they'll be fine? If there truly are that many kids reading HP in 1st, why don't you teach those kids at their level, instead of insisting on picture books with 10 words a page, and some more Zearn, until they check out? I hear of differentiation, I have heard teachers say "differentiation is what we do" year after year, but on the ground, what they do is shutting up the parents, and not differentiating anything.

I'm not the teacher PP, but here's my experience as the parent of just such a child. Super early talker, huge vocab, cooperative-ish and bright, good on self-regulation and fine motor, basically the kind of kid who's teed up for academic success in early elementary. Toted Harry Potter to the first day of Kindergarten and was great at addition and subtraction on Zearn. But reading something for pleasure isn't the same thing as being able to read and fully understand it. DD loved to read Harry Potter and could pronounce the words mostly-correctly, but she was missing huge swaths of the content (this is why kids read Harry Potter over and over again-- they understand more as they grow). Her writing skills were lagging behind the reading. She read too fast and comprehension suffered. She was reading the words of Harry Potter with her eyes, but she wasn't understanding it *at grade level* or guided reading level or whatever it is. So at school, she often was assigned shorter passages and books that *seemed* much below her level, but as texts to comprehend, retain, and respond to in writing, they *were* at her level. Same for math-- while she had some abilities far above grade level, there were major holes in her skill set. She wasn't mature enough to do the kind of multi-step math that older kids do, and her conceptual frameworks were basic. Her math was intuitive and lacked disciplined reasoning and problem-solving. At our EOTP Title I, she got the kind of customized, personalized attention to address those gaps, and we were thrilled with it. Nobody shrugged and said she would be fine. There was plenty of differentiation. Sometimes that looked like 1:1 time with a teacher or specialist. Sometimes it looked like spending a bit of time in a different grade's classroom. Sometimes it was a computer game for math fluency practice. Now, I never held any illusions about her being "gifted", because everyone in my family is like this and we all turn out to be competent adults rather than super high achievers. So I was fine with all of this and appreciated the school's careful attention to her individual needs.

Bottom line, if you're unhappy with your school's differentiation or attention to your child, that's a problem with your school and I hope you can address it with the teachers. They may have a good explanation for why they are doing the things they are doing.

This. Thank you!
- Teacher

And, my child was tested for the opposite reason you had your child tested for. She hit the ceiling with many of the subtests. Her FSIQ was a 155 which stunned everyone. She's in a "higher" guided reading group working on comprehension. Her teacher pushes her in math. She has her needs met. But she's not exceptional.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been a teacher in DCPS for 15 years. I teach at the JKLM (this is for the racists out there who believe only smart kids exist at a JKLM). I've taught lots of bright kids. Kids reading several levels above grade expectation; can do "challenging math", were probably early talkers as infants and have great vocabulary. Out of all of those students, I've had exactly one truly gifted student- the kind of kid you remember 13 years later. Could beat adults in chess and was a classical pianist at the age of 5. Could decode any college level text I put in front of him. The parents didn't worry about challenging him academically- they wanted him to have a normal childhood and to have friends his age.

The point in mentioning this kid? Every year I get parents who want to talk about their exceptional child because the kid can read Harry Potter in 1st grade and are bored with Zearn. If your child is freakishly exceptional- the teacher will say something about it like suggest testing (RARELY HAPPENS- again, one kid in my entire career). Also, most parents who think their kid is exceptional don't realize their child has other deficits- usually social/emotional stuff .

NP. Your example is nice, and your point is well taken, that kids with an FSIQ of 130 might not be 'that' kind of gifted, but those kids DO need that their parents worry about challenging them academically, more so than the chess genius example you described. They need to keep learning, and not learn to be bored in class.
Other than wishing those parents would realize their kid who reads Harry Potter in 1st and is bored with Zearn isn't a truly gifted child, do you give them reading and math at a level they will benefit from, or do you just shrug that they'll be fine? If there truly are that many kids reading HP in 1st, why don't you teach those kids at their level, instead of insisting on picture books with 10 words a page, and some more Zearn, until they check out? I hear of differentiation, I have heard teachers say "differentiation is what we do" year after year, but on the ground, what they do is shutting up the parents, and not differentiating anything.

I'm not the teacher PP, but here's my experience as the parent of just such a child. Super early talker, huge vocab, cooperative-ish and bright, good on self-regulation and fine motor, basically the kind of kid who's teed up for academic success in early elementary. Toted Harry Potter to the first day of Kindergarten and was great at addition and subtraction on Zearn. But reading something for pleasure isn't the same thing as being able to read and fully understand it. DD loved to read Harry Potter and could pronounce the words mostly-correctly, but she was missing huge swaths of the content (this is why kids read Harry Potter over and over again-- they understand more as they grow). Her writing skills were lagging behind the reading. She read too fast and comprehension suffered. She was reading the words of Harry Potter with her eyes, but she wasn't understanding it *at grade level* or guided reading level or whatever it is. So at school, she often was assigned shorter passages and books that *seemed* much below her level, but as texts to comprehend, retain, and respond to in writing, they *were* at her level. Same for math-- while she had some abilities far above grade level, there were major holes in her skill set. She wasn't mature enough to do the kind of multi-step math that older kids do, and her conceptual frameworks were basic. Her math was intuitive and lacked disciplined reasoning and problem-solving. At our EOTP Title I, she got the kind of customized, personalized attention to address those gaps, and we were thrilled with it. Nobody shrugged and said she would be fine. There was plenty of differentiation. Sometimes that looked like 1:1 time with a teacher or specialist. Sometimes it looked like spending a bit of time in a different grade's classroom. Sometimes it was a computer game for math fluency practice. Now, I never held any illusions about her being "gifted", because everyone in my family is like this and we all turn out to be competent adults rather than super high achievers. So I was fine with all of this and appreciated the school's careful attention to her individual needs.

Bottom line, if you're unhappy with your school's differentiation or attention to your child, that's a problem with your school and I hope you can address it with the teachers. They may have a good explanation for why they are doing the things they are doing.

This. Thank you!
- Teacher

And, my child was tested for the opposite reason you had your child tested for. She hit the ceiling with many of the subtests. Her FSIQ was a 155 which stunned everyone. She's in a "higher" guided reading group working on comprehension. Her teacher pushes her in math. She has her needs met. But she's not exceptional.

Yikes, meant 145!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been a teacher in DCPS for 15 years. I teach at the JKLM (this is for the racists out there who believe only smart kids exist at a JKLM). I've taught lots of bright kids. Kids reading several levels above grade expectation; can do "challenging math", were probably early talkers as infants and have great vocabulary. Out of all of those students, I've had exactly one truly gifted student- the kind of kid you remember 13 years later. Could beat adults in chess and was a classical pianist at the age of 5. Could decode any college level text I put in front of him. The parents didn't worry about challenging him academically- they wanted him to have a normal childhood and to have friends his age.

The point in mentioning this kid? Every year I get parents who want to talk about their exceptional child because the kid can read Harry Potter in 1st grade and are bored with Zearn. If your child is freakishly exceptional- the teacher will say something about it like suggest testing (RARELY HAPPENS- again, one kid in my entire career). Also, most parents who think their kid is exceptional don't realize their child has other deficits- usually social/emotional stuff .

NP. Your example is nice, and your point is well taken, that kids with an FSIQ of 130 might not be 'that' kind of gifted, but those kids DO need that their parents worry about challenging them academically, more so than the chess genius example you described. They need to keep learning, and not learn to be bored in class.
Other than wishing those parents would realize their kid who reads Harry Potter in 1st and is bored with Zearn isn't a truly gifted child, do you give them reading and math at a level they will benefit from, or do you just shrug that they'll be fine? If there truly are that many kids reading HP in 1st, why don't you teach those kids at their level, instead of insisting on picture books with 10 words a page, and some more Zearn, until they check out? I hear of differentiation, I have heard teachers say "differentiation is what we do" year after year, but on the ground, what they do is shutting up the parents, and not differentiating anything.

My EOTP kid got this kind of differentiation, including moving on to the junior high math software in fourth grade with other kids and texts appropriate to reading level & some looping up for English. I had my issues with classroom management by the upper grades but I never felt like my kid was ignored. Teachers teach.

Which school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. There are levels of gifted (Feynman, tortured genius or merely Mark Zuckerberg). Let's focus on one small but quantifiable slice, namely kids who do well on the AMC 12 competition. For those who don't know, this is a high school math competition in the sequence that culminates in the American Math Olympiad and the Putnam.

This nice study examines the kids who scored really well in the AMC 12 (100, which is equivalent to 99th percentile of all US high schoolers or higher).

https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/manuscript_and_appendix.pdf

The main conclusion is that after removing magnets, charters and private schools from their comparison pool, they find that the school environment, in terms of advanced classes, contributes to high achievement on this test (Zuckerberg scored >120 when he was a high schooler). Interestingly, DCPS has had 0 kids in this pool in the last 5 years. Local privates like Sidwell, GDS etc. routinely place 1-2 students each in this pool.

The bottom line is that if one is looking to nurture mathematical giftedness, DCPS is not the place to be and it does a sub-par job of doing so. While high achievement in math may not be an unalloyed good, it is possible that school systems such as DCPS can increase the number of such students with some effort. The potential benefits might be quite large.

Interesting example, Richard Feynman supposed had an IQ of only 125, he talked about it often! I also would not call him tortured... He was really accomplished and seemingly a very delightful person.

I meant that there are different kinds of genius. The Feynman kind (he topped the Putnam by the way and much to John Nash’s chagrin he never did). But the bottom line is that nurturing achievement in math is a good thing and DC doesn’t do much of a good job in that regard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lots of gifted folks on both sides of the family and DC is appearing that way at age 5. I know it’s early, but wondering if you had a similarly bright child who did well in a DC elementary, where did they go? What made the school a success and would you recommend it for others?

DC is full of gifted people. Anywhere is fine.

[Anonymous]

If your child is gifted won’t they seek out intellectual pursuits. It’s not the 80s. Kids can take Yale classes on YouTube.

My nephew in a different city is quite bright. Doing 4th grade math in first grade. Reading at that level too. But he has no intellectual curiosity. He doesn’t play well w kids his age (only child too). Both my brother and sil have no interest in getting him GT classes outside of a few Outschool things based on his interests.

He needs to learn to engage w people who are not like him. Kids who don’t memorize the periodic table for fun. He needs to do badly at something like art and learn from it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been a teacher in DCPS for 15 years. I teach at the JKLM (this is for the racists out there who believe only smart kids exist at a JKLM). I've taught lots of bright kids. Kids reading several levels above grade expectation; can do "challenging math", were probably early talkers as infants and have great vocabulary. Out of all of those students, I've had exactly one truly gifted student- the kind of kid you remember 13 years later. Could beat adults in chess and was a classical pianist at the age of 5. Could decode any college level text I put in front of him. The parents didn't worry about challenging him academically- they wanted him to have a normal childhood and to have friends his age.

The point in mentioning this kid? Every year I get parents who want to talk about their exceptional child because the kid can read Harry Potter in 1st grade and are bored with Zearn. If your child is freakishly exceptional- the teacher will say something about it like suggest testing (RARELY HAPPENS- again, one kid in my entire career). Also, most parents who think their kid is exceptional don't realize their child has other deficits- usually social/emotional stuff .

NP. Your example is nice, and your point is well taken, that kids with an FSIQ of 130 might not be 'that' kind of gifted, but those kids DO need that their parents worry about challenging them academically, more so than the chess genius example you described. They need to keep learning, and not learn to be bored in class.
Other than wishing those parents would realize their kid who reads Harry Potter in 1st and is bored with Zearn isn't a truly gifted child, do you give them reading and math at a level they will benefit from, or do you just shrug that they'll be fine? If there truly are that many kids reading HP in 1st, why don't you teach those kids at their level, instead of insisting on picture books with 10 words a page, and some more Zearn, until they check out? I hear of differentiation, I have heard teachers say "differentiation is what we do" year after year, but on the ground, what they do is shutting up the parents, and not differentiating anything.

NP. Why are parents giving HP to their 1st grader? Why the need to rush things? They only have so many days when they will read picture books and the rest of their whole tween-teen years when they can read HP. I think parents are losing the chance to foster kids' imagination by skipping over "easier" books. So many people I know boast about how their kids zoom through math workbooks ahead of their grade. Why do that? If they are willing to do the work, why don't you give your kids depth of knowledge and teach them logic or some such other math subject? I think parents who think their kids are gifted because they read or do math 2 grades above their current class are bonkers. Like PP said, a teacher will contact you if there truly is something going on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been a teacher in DCPS for 15 years. I teach at the JKLM (this is for the racists out there who believe only smart kids exist at a JKLM). I've taught lots of bright kids. Kids reading several levels above grade expectation; can do "challenging math", were probably early talkers as infants and have great vocabulary. Out of all of those students, I've had exactly one truly gifted student- the kind of kid you remember 13 years later. Could beat adults in chess and was a classical pianist at the age of 5. Could decode any college level text I put in front of him. The parents didn't worry about challenging him academically- they wanted him to have a normal childhood and to have friends his age.

The point in mentioning this kid? Every year I get parents who want to talk about their exceptional child because the kid can read Harry Potter in 1st grade and are bored with Zearn. If your child is freakishly exceptional- the teacher will say something about it like suggest testing (RARELY HAPPENS- again, one kid in my entire career). Also, most parents who think their kid is exceptional don't realize their child has other deficits- usually social/emotional stuff .

NP. Your example is nice, and your point is well taken, that kids with an FSIQ of 130 might not be 'that' kind of gifted, but those kids DO need that their parents worry about challenging them academically, more so than the chess genius example you described. They need to keep learning, and not learn to be bored in class.
Other than wishing those parents would realize their kid who reads Harry Potter in 1st and is bored with Zearn isn't a truly gifted child, do you give them reading and math at a level they will benefit from, or do you just shrug that they'll be fine? If there truly are that many kids reading HP in 1st, why don't you teach those kids at their level, instead of insisting on picture books with 10 words a page, and some more Zearn, until they check out? I hear of differentiation, I have heard teachers say "differentiation is what we do" year after year, but on the ground, what they do is shutting up the parents, and not differentiating anything.

NP. Why are parents giving HP to their 1st grader? Why the need to rush things? They only have so many days when they will read picture books and the rest of their whole tween-teen years when they can read HP. I think parents are losing the chance to foster kids' imagination by skipping over "easier" books. So many people I know boast about how their kids zoom through math workbooks ahead of their grade. Why do that? If they are willing to do the work, why don't you give your kids depth of knowledge and teach them logic or some such other math subject? I think parents who think their kids are gifted because they read or do math 2 grades above their current class are bonkers. Like PP said, a teacher will contact you if there truly is something going on.

I absolutely agree with this. Kids who are pushed this way in early elementary often end up rebelling later in life.