“You should reread this thread, there are a lot of claims of being gifted in the 110-130 range. I agree though that these are not gifted and above average.”
I actually reread this thread, because I couldn’t recall a single poster claiming this or talking about anyone else claiming this, apart from some griping about parents thinking their little ones are so special, mostly from you actually. I wondered if I was either completely out of it or being gaslighted.
No, I was right. Not a single poster claiming this in 20 pages. @VickiSoCal and @SculptorDad mention GATE programs with cutoffs at the top 2 to 5 percent, which translates into about a 125 IQ cutoff. A number of posters feel that only the highly or profoundly gifted, with cutoffs varying from 145 to 160, need special attention.
Please reread the thread yourself and quote the PPs to support your assertions before you make others do so. I may have overlooked things, my kids need a lot of attention.
Post #207. Wow! Over 30 elementary kids in a classroom with only one teacher??? Sounds like a parochial school budget to me. Your district needs to budget for at least 50% more for regular teachers. Given salary costs (and other benefit costs) your district would not manage well. Far too many kids to adequately teach according to Wisconsin public school norms I have known. I’m used to schools who double the teacher ratio for impoverished student populations. Resources are also taken with getting kids who immigrate with poor English skills up to speed- that has been a budget buster in recent times. But the blue collar city we left was doing a good job of integrating those kids from several languages. There are also many support specialists for reading et al. I’m proud that the district continues to value gifted education, using a holistic approach (not just test scores) in determining needed gifted educational services. We retired OOS five some years ago and I’m afraid the governor was being less kind to the educational tradition, however.
I recall in HS that they broke rules for numbers to let two extra kids into the Honors English class- 30 students who were together for four years (no AP then) in a class of 270. As a group we were a force to be reckoned with- our junior year teacher feared how we would treat the senior year teacher (his fears were unfounded, we likely tested him more because we subconsciously knew what he could handle). They broke up elementary classes into two smaller ones if numbers were exceeded in son’s district- and ended up with a 3-4 graded class his year since there were too few for a class near 20 of each. Individual attention matters at a young age.
It takes resources to think beyond traditional learning goals. And gifted kids are a very mixed lot- an IQ of 140 compared to 160 is 30 points, like putting a kid with a high average o110 with those of 80 when it comes to learning ability. How does the GT teacher handle the diverse needs of 30 elementary school kids well??? How do they get planning time to figure out how to challenge so many different kids who are at so many different levels?
“Elementary age kids of all levels should be enjoying learning. School shouldn’t be “hard work”
There should be challenges but this idea that kids should be grinding away at age 8 is insane.”
But hard work is also enjoyable. It is hard and exhausting but still much more enjoyable to grind away an hour for challenging math quizzes than sitting idle in a math class that teaches basics that one learned years ago.
The only reason some parents would keep themselves from stopping a gifted child grinding hours or even days for some hard work in math or art might be because they don’t want to disrupt the enjoyment of learning.
Yes- smart kids delight in a challenge. btw- what most will work hard at can be a breeze for the gifted. That is a challenge for their teacher- needing to keep up with them. Actually, all kids delight in being challenged, as long as it is one that can handle. Gives them pride to have mastered something they thought they couldn’t… Given the relatively few hours kids spend in the classroom they should be continuing their education at home. Practicing arithmetic with problem sets, learning spelling words, reading books are all things the class should not be trying to do at the same pace. Kids who need more practice should be shoring up skills after class, not making the rest of the class slow to their pace.
This is not the same as assigning a lot of new material to elementary kids. With middle and HS the art of doing work on one’s own time ramps up. I sometimes wonder that some schools have too many in too many AP classes, given the stories I hear about how much time those students need to do the homework. I also cringe when I see the list of college hopefuls who list so many EC’s and lower gpa’s. Emphasis on the wrong aspects of a good American educational system. A hundred volunteer hours do not replace the B that may have been an A with more time spent…
“… @SculptorDad mention GATE programs with cutoffs at the top 2 to 5 percent, which translates into about a 125 IQ cutoff. A number of posters feel that only the highly or profoundly gifted, with cutoffs varying from 145 to 160, need special attention.”
What I really believe is that top 2 to 5 percent of his/her own class should be receiving some form of gate programs. Not 2 to 5 percent of general U.S. population.
Purely in terms of challenge/boredom, a 125 IQ kid would be fine in a regular grade/class where the majority of the classmates are at that level and therefore the standard curriculum was already adjusted to compensate that. Which happens in private schools and even public schools at competitive metropolitan areas.
Different school districts may have different average IQ norms since a suburban district may be highly wealthy with most parents college educated, unlike US, or even state, norms. Remember posters that it is a continuum, therefore where to draw lines can be difficult. Resources determine a lot. Plus some of those lowest high end kids could struggle in the GT/accelerated class or be bored in the regular one. The tracking of my school days did have merit except for those who, once labeled, never got challenged as they could have been to become better students (better means able to learn more/faster, not grades).
There is a reason NMS does state cutoffs, not a single standard for the entire country.
“what most will work hard at can be a breeze for the gifted. That is a challenge for their teacher- needing to keep up with them.”
I have some experience of this. If you suddenly give an untrained gifted kid a problem that takes 30 minutes to solve, he is likely to give up because he is not trained to focus on a math problem that takes 30 minutes.
But if he was properly trained from early age, than you can give one problem like that and be done for a math session.
Personally, I found MindBenders a great curriculum to both teach deductive reasoning and gradually train them to maintain longer focus as the level goes up. https://www.criticalthinking.com/mind-benders.html
“Practicing arithmetic with problem sets, learning spelling words”
I think those are bad ideas for gifted elementary school aged kids.
“I also cringe when I see the list of college hopefuls who list so many EC’s and lower gpa”
Me too. I don’t get why they don’t get that the holistic admission practice is not really practiced by the majority of colleges and doesn’t apply to the majority of college hopefuls.
@theloniusmonk, you also wrote:
“Sure, I don’t think anyone would disagree with that [re listening to gifted kids experiences] but it has to be the kid talking, not the parent.”
The kid starting school is 5, 6 at most, an age where fitting in paramount. The socially savvy gifted kid notices how few of the other kids around them can do what they do and they start to hide. This tends to affect girls more than boys. S had no idea as a kindergartener that he shouldn’t be reading like a third grader and probably wouldn’t have cared if he did, and read to the younger kids In his mixed age classroom all year. Ds teachers didn’t even know she was reading for the better part of her K year. Sometimes a parents input could go a long way.
“The socially savvy gifted kid notices how few of the other kids around them can do what they do and they start to hide.”
They hide as self protection, after a few disappointing incident that made them realize that it’s nearly impossible to relate them anyway. Not just because they realize that they can do something others can’t.
And this make them look anti-social, fueling the stereotype, while in fact they can socially even more flourish at the right environment.
“Sometimes a parents input could go a long way.”
And it’s a parent’s job to give inputs to teachers for any special points on their kids.
Post #306. Doing basics was for slower learners if you read what I thought I wrote. The concept of homework in elementary school is for kids to shore up material presented most got in class. This was in response to a poster and “hard work”. My kid would have been spending time being engrossed in the challenge. As a gifted speller in early grades he tackled middle and HS 100 most difficult words lists easily while classmates would have been learning them. Anecdote- his good 1st grade teacher would ask him for the spelling of some words she wasn’t sure of she once said.
Kids need to be challenged. One reason some HS A students flunk college- they never needed to study much. btw- then there are the kids like mine who didn’t care if they got top grades. Put in effort they wanted to, based on boredom/interest. Zeroes on homework and 100’s on tests yielded an AP Stats B (5 on AP exam). Not into perfect college grades either. Sometimes perfectionism interfered with getting the job done, other times not talking with a good teacher on how to improve essays (need to cut waay back on material trying to present- a paragraph/page instead of a book), or lack of needing to do problem sets…
Agree with parental involvement as kids often won’t speak up. My five year old never complained but that delight he showed when told he would be with first graders was so memorable I still have the picture in my mind over two decades later. He also never told us how bored he was with a full schedule and many AP courses while in HS when we could have tried enrichment (finally found out after his college days). Different personalities work differently. Some kids are in your face (a real pain) and others more passive about it. I look at H’s passive Indian culture and his/son’s introversion compared to my American/extroverted style. I’m outspoken, H tries to be more “polite”.
Gifted kids are their chronological ages in many ways despite an intellectual age far above it. They still lack maturity and life experiences- they are appropriate for their ages in many things. Kids are usually intimidated by adults, regardless of knowing they are much smarter than their teachers (or, as they may think, their parents- btw- where do they think they got their intelligence from, including inheritance and environment???).
Got carried away. ALL parents of gifted kids have numerous stories to tell, examples to give.
Some adversity in life is strengthening. Son was still 12 when he started as a HS freshman. He had been with the same kids from 6th grade on, so part of that cohort. He was a CC runner with practices ending around the same time as the football players. Many waiting for parents to pick them up (wondered why athletes couldn’t walk the mile or so home before I realized how worn out they became). Later learned some of the older/bigger/average football players found out his age and started to verbally hassle him (this was when he was new and not familiar to others in the large/top CC team) but he was smart enough to turn teasing into jokes on himself. Went a long ways in not being bullied. Got their respect.
And how would they even know his age? He was average for grade size, certainly not the smallest runner. I suspect some other freshman who knew let it out- he was a middle school known student for his awards…).
So many times I wish I could have been the fly on the wall and heard his experiences, although as a parent not knowing a lot makes for far less worry!
Not every extremely bright kid is good at advocating for themselves. My kid sometimes found herself in hot water with verbal communication – she learned some early lessons (like the Gettysburg Address one in 1st grade where her classmates made fun of her for reciting it). Partly as a result of that, she is pretty quiet. I don’t think she would have said to the teacher that she thought she needed harder material or that she was bored, at least not in elementary school. But to a trusted family member, she would when she came home.
That said, it is certainly helpful to show up with test scores or examples of outside project kids are working on, to at least encourage the teacher and administration to consider that this kid needs more than their current class is offering them.
You are mistaking the ability to advocate for yourself with the school with being gifted. It would be much easier if the two went hand in hand, but they don’t.
@wis75, I like and agree with almost everything you are saying. I am just going tangent on related points.
"One reason some HS A students flunk college- they never needed to study much. "
I thought this was most of it. But now I think it is just one reason. A smaller one reason at that for some kids.
The other reason, that can be the main reason, is ADD.
Some kids has natural inability to focus on boring subject, which is really the other side of coin that is high ability to focus on interesting subject. This is how they were born and couldn’t have been really trained over with years of constant challenging work. The “surviving up to high school but flunking in college” result is the same. But it wasn’t the parent’s fault except giving that gene.
The real solutions are, long term coping skills like meditation that takes many years of training and will start to be helpful in their adult professional life, and the short term solution to save their academic career - ADD meds, in my humble opinion.
“Went a long ways in not being bullied.”
While this is an admirable skill, I wonder if it is really necessary to build up this skill at any cost, if the schools didn’t require it which unfortunately often do, since the modern adult life don’t seem to require so much of anti-bulling skill, except at prison.
“Personally, I found MindBenders a great curriculum to both teach deductive reasoning and gradually train them to maintain longer focus as the level goes up. https://www.criticalthinking.com/mind-benders.html”
In addition to that, if you are in Bay Area, Yul Inn’s math courses are amazing and the young gifted kids can spend a whole hour for one challenging and fun math problem. Too bad he is not writing a math book so that people all over the U.S. can use his problems. http://www.funmathclub.com/about.html
As I’ve touched on in other posts, there are numerous other criteria that are critical to acceleration and learning enhancements decisions besides a score on a one time, non-academic test. While IQ is correlated with being bored in class and other factors related to benefits from acceleration, there are numerous exceptions. Plenty of kids with IQ below threshold would be miserable if kept at standard pace, and plenty of kids with IQ above threshold would be miserable in some types of acceleration and/or be academically unsuccessful.
For example, a key factor in predicting future academic success is past academic success, which while correlated with IQ, has numerous exceptions. For example, if a student is behind most of the class in English and getting poor grades because of reading comprehension issues, then accelerating him in English is probably a bad idea, regardless of how high his IQ is or how brilliant he is in mathematical analysis. Along the same lines, knowledge of curriculum can be critical, both the current curriculum and higher level material.
Another key factor in both boredom in class and academic success is personality. Does the student like to learn? Does he study and do homework assignments? How does the student feel and react when the class is at an easy or challenging pace? How does the student react when other students in the class are better at the subject than he is? How is his emotional maturity? As I mentioned earlier, my uncle was quite gifted, yet he failed to graduate from any ivy-type college because he was not interested in learning the material at that time. He later did graduate from a different college, paying out of his own pocket, I believe he saw college as a necessary step for the type of job he wanted, more than out of an interest in learning. I don’t think shoving extreme acceleration down his throat would have helped the situation, although he may have benefited from a more personalized approach.
Another important factor is the default pace of the classroom and alternative learning options. I mentioned that my mother attended a small, rural grade school that had essentially no honors/accelerated/learning enhancement options besides skipping a grade, making it a choice between skipping a grade and or no acceleration. The default pace of the class was also likely slower than typical public HSs in the United States. A different group of students would benefit from skipping a grade in this environment than in one with other alternative learning enhancement options, or one with a faster default pace.
Alternative learning enhancement options and need for enhance can also vary by teacher, as well as by school. For example, I was bored out of my mind in math throughout the vast majority of my early education, but 7th grade was especially bad. I sometimes figured out my own methods for solving problems in math, rather than using the book method, in one case deriving a primitive version of calculus. My 7th grade teacher was a real stickler for regurgitating material with little thought and showing work in exactly the steps he listed, so I did quite poorly in this environment, almost to the point of not being selected for acceleration. However, other teachers were generally more accommodating. For example, 9th grade teacher suggested I pursue independent reading of textbooks and other material instead of attending class, which worked quite well for me.
I could go on, but the point is not considering the individual student and environment and instead only considering a score on a one time, non-academic test will produce a lot of flawed acceleration decisions and a lot of flaws in generalizations about whether students are bored and how students feel about different class paces.
@Data10, "For example, a key factor in predicting future academic success is past academic success, which while correlated with IQ, has numerous exceptions. "
I would like to add an exception; Being born in the wrong time and wrong place. Fortunately, some of them can be cured by taking alternative education approaches, including attending college in U.K. where you only need to focus on your major without worrying about other uninteresting subjects. You could just read math for all four years and academically be successful.
The PISA results are interesting. However, if what the PISA test measures doesn’t align with the average US school curriculum in 9th or 10th grade, then the grade to grade improvement would be minimal. Measurement issues aside, if a student is significantly above some national benchmark, it’s often because they’re attending a more advanced school(which as you allude to correlates with SES) or in the advanced track within a school system. Either way, they don’t necessarily need to be accelerated, or aren’t ready to be accelerated, as they’re already in a challenging environment for them.
@wis75 wrote in post 309: “Different personalities work differently.”
It’s amazing how different 2 highly/profoundly gifted kids can be, not just in terms of their personalities and what works for them, but also in terms of how their giftedness expresses itself. Not all are spelling champions at a young age (my gifted son is a profound visual-spatial learner, and like many of such kids has relatively poor spelling and handwriting skills) or teach themselves math. They will be well ahead of most other students in most areas because of their general intelligence and ability to learn quickly, but their passions and the form in which that their giftedness best expresses itself may be very idiosyncratic. And they may respond very differently to different learning styles.
Post 309 also mentioned “enrichment”, a complex subject in its own right, but one that hasn’t been discussed much in this thread. Enrichment may work better than simple acceleration in many cases, though it may be harder to provide.
I was reading this thread with big interest - I have two kids (and lots of their friends) who suffered through elementary/middle school boredom.
There are two things I don’t quite understand: one is why such a fixation on giftedness, IQs, etc.
Kids can be ready to go ahead in any subject for all kinds of reasons. Yes, they may be gifted or their parents might have (wrongly!) pushed them through or they may just like the subject enough to study on their own - doesn’t matter. They are still ready, regardless of how they arrived there.
Consequently, why the idea of letting them advance in specific subjects is little explored? Sure, there is tracking used in middle school (at least for math) but elementary grades are left out and very little if any challenging material is offered. And even for “advanced” classes it doesn’t always work very well (hello, Common Core!)
For some reason, at least in our district the problems mostly end in high school (maybe because they do allow to take different levels of classes regardless of classification).
I think the biggest obstacle in schools today to letting students advance at their own pace is that the existing materials and scheduling of teachers doesn’t support it. If you push a kid ahead in math, the advanced math class they move to might meet at the same time as the English class or foreign language class that is appropriate for that kid. It isn’t “little explored”, it is just logistically challenging given the teacher/textbook model common in schools today. We really need more flexible materials and assignments as a starting point.
I think the other obstacle CAN be administrators and/or teachers who aren’t supportive. I’m still remembering that 4th grade teacher who was convinced I’d cheated on a reading comprehension exam when I scored higher than he could – that guy NEVER gave me a scrap of more advanced work the entire year I was in his classroom. I loathed the man. But in 6th grade, I had a teacher who had a knack for assigning us projects and work that we could dig into as deeply as we wanted to. He saw my potential and challenged me, and I loved being in his class.