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I was like this in school - even after they skipped me, and moved me up to the top level, school was still ridiculously easy and boring. I sat there enraged that I was wasting my life bored in a classroom, forbidden from reading under the table, for so many years of my life. I tested 6 years ahead of grade level, consistently, year after year. When I was going into 7th, I was moved to a fairly good private school, and sometimes, it was a little better, but mostly not. The problem was that I never, ever had to work in school, and by the time I finally was challenged, at an Ivy, I didn't know how to work hard at anything, unless I was very interested in the material.
I really wanted to avoid this for my first child, who was very much like me. We looked at private schools, chose one that we thought would be best, since it had dual language curriculum. Didn't matter - still was way ahead, bored. We skipped him, moved him, tried to find the best setting. Finally by the time kid was about ten, we realized that social placement was more important than academic placement. We tried to provide a lot of outside enrichment - music, sports, travel, etc. Honestly, I feel that the end result was not very good. Kid never learned to work hard at something unless he was very highly interested in the material (just like his mother). He did wind up fairly well adjusted, socially.
If you have a kid like this, who is truly way ahead in school, I think your only option is to look for the best private school in the area and place her there. Usually there is one school in the area which is truly academically superior to the others. You may have to speak with an educational consultant in your area to find out which one that is. For elementary school, the one in my area is so small that when we went to see it, the first grade classroom had four kids (all boys), sitting around a table with one teacher, being run like a governess tutoring a family - the kids all were working at different (advanced) levels, consulting with the teacher one by one as needed. We knew one boy there. He showed us, "Look, I'm doing fourth grade math!" We knew that academically, this was the right setting for our child. But we also knew that socially it was not the same experience that he would get at a larger school, and so chose the dual language school, where he spent half the day in a second language.
You do the best you can, as parents, and hope for the best outcome. I desperately wanted my children not to experience the same terrible, prolonged, soul-killing boredom that I had. And yet, when I look at the outcome for my kids, I'm not sure it was any better than what I had, despite our best efforts.
If we weren't in the middle of a pandemic, I'd recommend speaking with the teacher about adding an extra twist to your daughter's assignments in terms of upping the difficulty. But we ARE in the middle of a pandemic. For that reason, I would read up on whatever your daughter is working on so you can take the conversations to the next level - give her some fun facts, little-known tidbits of information so she feels like she has a stronger grasp of what she's learning. You're going to have to be the one to create challenges for her until things are back to normal.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Agree that age 6 is not when to apply academic 'challenge' adequacy. Ask the teacher! So many other ways to augment interest and value of their learning capabilities. Foreign languages, music, art.... I'd be using any and all opportunities. By age 12, I would have a gifted / bored student very engaged and responsible for tutoring peers. As with employees... When you hold them responsible for bringing their peers into as complete understanding and performance as they think they are, best learning is teaching and making sure your students understand to completeness.
Thinking back 60 yrs.... Getting placed in advanced course work was not the best academic and schooling experience for me. Basically, I got everything I needed by grade 10, but essentially most courses from grade 7 -12 were a waste. Certainly grades 10-12 were totally useless. (And socially a nightmare, since I had to go from a country school (zero social issues) to a city school (a lot of peer pressure / fights / bullying via several cultural groups)). Fortunately I had 3 jobs during HS and left home by age 16 and lived in my old truck.
So glad my kids had none of that. When they showed college proficiency after grade level 9, they were able to attend and enroll in academic 100+ level courses. (funded by state since 1993)
One thing to bear in mind when looking at things like skipping grades is that there's a difference between being gifted and being precocious, and that it's possible to be both. Kids who hit psychosocial developmental milestones earlier tend to pull ahead academically compared to their peers of otherwise similar intellect, but the gap is often temporary as the other kids also hit their "mental growth spurts." This tends to happen in early elementary and then again in preadolescence.
I'd also caution that just because a child is bored of working on something, doesn't mean they've mastered it. Clever kids tend to have little tolerance for repetition, but unless we're talking about true savants, some degree of repetition is required to lock in key skills and knowledge.
Of course, these two things may or may not apply to this situation. Just something to think about.
In the meantime, look for fun ways to challenge the kid. One of the biggest issues for students who find school easy is that they don't learn to deal with real intellectual challenges, so when a challenge does eventually come up (often at the college level) they don't have the toolset to tackle it, nor to deal with setbacks. So start building up that mental and emotional stamina now.
If we weren't in the middle of a pandemic, I'd recommend speaking with the teacher about adding an extra twist to your daughter's assignments in terms of upping the difficulty. ....
Upping the difficulty means the teacher has to do extra work, which they don't like. Our oldest was in the 'gifted" program in her school which was supposed to include "upping the difficulty." Nope, all the teachers did was up the volume. If the rest of the class had to work the odd problems for homework, she had to work both odd and even. If the rest of the class had to write two pages, she had to write five. No increase in difficulty, just the hours of homework.
Quote:
Originally Posted by StealthRabbit
.... By age 12, I would have a gifted / bored student very engaged and responsible for tutoring peers. As with employees... When you hold them responsible for bringing their peers into as complete understanding and performance as they think they are, best learning is teaching and making sure your students understand to completeness.
This get's tossed out a lot, but reality is it doesn't work that way with kids. Instead you've placed a kid in a position where they have responsibility without the authority to perform that responsibility. Makes the kid resentful ("why am I doing the teacher's job?") and make the kid being "taught" resentful ("you aren't any better than me!"). Ultimately the advanced kid gets pulled down and becomes the target for bullying.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frostnip
...
In the meantime, look for fun ways to challenge the kid. One of the biggest issues for students who find school easy is that they don't learn to deal with real intellectual challenges, so when a challenge does eventually come up (often at the college level) they don't have the toolset to tackle it, nor to deal with setbacks. So start building up that mental and emotional stamina now.
This gets brought up a lot with the unspoken part being the less advanced kids did develop study skills and coping skills. That hasn't been my observation. Schools don't general teach study skills, and the only coping skills most of the rest of the students develop is "whatever is good enough to pass.' The biggest reason advanced kids aren't affected by the grades they often get is college is "good enough isn't good enough" and the bizarre scoring used by many college professors leaves them confused and uncertain of "just what do I have to do to get a good grade in this class?" (IE when the grades range from 5 to 45 and 45 is a B, how do you calibrate that?).
It seems to me that first grade is as much about being with her peers and adjusting to the structured school environment, than it whether she is “bored” or not. If she is truly above average, I’d wait for the schools gifted learning program to kick in in 3rd grade. As others have said, give her experiences and enrichment outside of school.
I would specifically avoid treating her as if she’s different from (better than) the other kids.
Your daughter is young. Give yourself (and her) a break. No pressure yet. She'll have enough pressure later on in school. I'd let her enjoy being a 6 year old. Childhood goes by quickly. When faced with the many pressures of adulthood she'll remember a carefree childhood.
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life."
One thing to bear in mind when looking at things like skipping grades is that there's a difference between being gifted and being precocious, and that it's possible to be both. Kids who hit psychosocial developmental milestones earlier tend to pull ahead academically compared to their peers of otherwise similar intellect, but the gap is often temporary as the other kids also hit their "mental growth spurts." This tends to happen in early elementary and then again in preadolescence.
I'd also caution that just because a child is bored of working on something, doesn't mean they've mastered it. Clever kids tend to have little tolerance for repetition, but unless we're talking about true savants, some degree of repetition is required to lock in key skills and knowledge.
Of course, these two things may or may not apply to this situation. Just something to think about.
In the meantime, look for fun ways to challenge the kid. One of the biggest issues for students who find school easy is that they don't learn to deal with real intellectual challenges, so when a challenge does eventually come up (often at the college level) they don't have the toolset to tackle it, nor to deal with setbacks. So start building up that mental and emotional stamina now.
+1
This is the heart of the matter. It's very difficult at age 6 to separate early brain maturation from superior ability. Consider, for example, that the majority of early readers are normal readers by third grade. Or that some late readers will catch up. I did not learn to read in 1st grade. Only in 2nd. By third grade, I was scoring at the 8th grade level on standardized tests, not that it mattered much (terrible schools when I was growing up).
Be wary of private schools, too. We went that route with our kid, and found out that the well regarded prep school had a one-size fits all philosophy. True, they aimed higher, but not that high.
We had (have) a precocious kid who had some great years and some not so great ones. The better teachers, like her 1st grade teacher, used material from the third grade with our kid. We also found extension opportunities through the school, several of them not publicized. Kid found a decent sized urban HS to be a mental playground, since they were large enough to offer a variety of classes at a variety of times, and kid had a counselor willing to be flexible. College was even better - a true academic playground.
Off the top of my head, I recall two places that offer testing and resources for strong learners: Belin-Blank Center and Center for Talented Youth (CTY) at Johns Hopkins. My kid went to camps sponsored by CTY and loved the experience. These places also offer testing, advice and resources.
Location: Was Midvalley Oregon; Now Eastside Seattle area
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I want to reiterate and echo what many have said.
At this age, the 3R's are less important than the socialization.
DS, rebelled because he could not tolerate the learning isolation. Learning advanced material meant less to him than being with his peers which was always a year or 2years older than him.
I want to reiterate and echo what many have said.
At this age, the 3R's are less important than the socialization.
This is consistent with the research on radical acceleration, where researchers interviewed folks as adults who, as kids, skipped multiple grades and started college early.
Yet similar research, which studied early teens who were already in college found that they had two groups of friends, their age matched peers and their intellectual peers.
Human beings are complex!
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