Reply to APS is failing my gifted child

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm not from DMV but I recognize all of the symptoms presented here from my local district which is safe, clean, cheerful and great for average students.

Gifted is a euphemism.  We should all recognize that.  Many of us had that tag as kids without being geniuses.

People want their kids to be appropriately challenged when the kids demonstrate good classroom behavior, can rapidly complete assignments, are reading well above grade level, and have good math skills that would permit advancement to material in the grade(s) ahead.

Current detracking trends in education unquestionably are worse for the learning and skill mastery of the top end of the classes.  At my school, they also failed to make good on enrichment worksheets.

My kids were bored a lot in school until high school when ability tracking became more possible.  We don't have APs for all.  Kids have to step up.

However, as others pointed out, my kids did have to develop social skills.  And had more time to be kids.  As I told them, the time to get serious is high school.

I'm one of the many who recommended reading for interest.  That can help a lot.

Also, if your kid is 2 grades ahead in competence for a subject, you may be able to insist on an IEP.  Schools usually resist "gifted" IEPs at the elementary level but they do exist.  Throw around the FAPE buzzword and see if you can get specific advanced needs addressed.[/quote]

They are way more than 2 grades ahead. But I thought gifted kids are not disabled and you need some sort of disability for an IEP. They are not autistic or anything.

I don’t want to advance my kid in school, I want them to be a kid and have a social life.  But all the supplementation in the world is not going to help the pain of having to sit through basic phonics lessons every day and the other simple stuff.

I really wanted to avoid moving because it’s a pain but it looks like that’s what will need to happen. Thanks everyone for the input. [/quote]
The basics phonics stuff can have value.  Many gifted kids learn to read in preschool before they've been explicitly taught more advanced phonics blends.  It can be helpful to see these explicitly taught, catagorized, and applied to words, even if it's not preventing the student from reading.  It can give them skills to approach even harder words.  It's helpful if the teacher differentiates by asking students who have the ability to apply the phonics skills to more challenging words, but that doesn't always happen.[/quote]

True. But gifted kids don't need all the fluff that slows down lessons waiting for other kids to discover that there are 26 letters in the alphabet and that each one can have multiple sounds individually and in pairs. Kids learn at different speeds and by making some kids wait unnecessarily all day, every day at school, you are basically making them hate school and resent other kids getting all the attention. Gifted kids are kids, too, and since they are kids, they also need to be the focus of attention as much as gen ed kids or sped kids or EL kids. Too often teachers take a high intelligence level of kids and equate it to maturity level and expect gifted kids to act and react as if they are mini-adults.[/quote]
No APS third grade classroom is still introducing the alphabet.  I've seen the 95 phonics books and it's not going through the 26 letters.  It's covering more advanced blends and combinations.  A quick Google of the APS phonics curriculum for 3rd grade shows words like delight, explain, discreet, succeed, exclaim, banshee, floating, and complain.

A phonics lesson in third grade usually lasts less than 5 minutes and then kids are into doing the assignment.  The advanced kids finish quickly.  The other kids take longer.  My kid manages to read a few hundred pages a day of her novel waiting for other kids to finish.  I find this pretty ridiculous--they should be giving her more to do.  But I also don't think she's mired sitting through long lessons.  That's not how teachers teach these days.  [/quote]

Hmmm... I was talking about elementary school in general using the posited phonics example to explain why its a fallacy to say that gifted kids can just do the phonics lesson like the other kids. Gifted kids need separate lesson plans from competent teacher that understand how gifted kids learn. There are books about this. And remember the 1000 books before kindergarten thing or whatever it is? My kids probably read closer to 1000 books per year all throughout their elementary school years, many at school. And yes the teachers were encouraging more reading but it was only as a pacifier because they were overwhelmed with teaching sped and EL kids, and making sure bullies didn't bully. I had to tell them to stop making my kids read. The different levels of kids have no business being in the same academic classroom -- there's no learning by osmosis. And people need to stop talking about learning how to deal with different kinds of kids-cum-adults. Private K-12 schools don't subscribe to this. Most competitive colleges also don't have this problem with all kinds of kids taking the same courses and neither do most workplaces (colleges, corporate, tech, law, medicine, etc.) that most gifted kids will end up in. No offense intended but that's more like community college or retail sales. This is not what co-existing means.

Also, my kids were forced to read picture books (oops I mean graphic [i]novels[/i])) and color maps and pictures with crayons, among other advanced technical skills, in high school in more than one class so I'm glad these skills were reinforced in K-5.[/quote]

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