Doing my best. :001_rolleyes: I was really only just looking for her actual research because she kept making claims that "the research shows... and I thought she was doing a terrible job of explaining why "the research shows" etc. I honestly was not trying to dig up dirt, just to figure out why her conclusions were so counter intuitive to my experience with GT kids. But I'll walk away now. "Nothing to see here. Move along." Like you, I'd much rather have a focus on awesome people and how they are promoting great math education. Does anyone know Richard Rusczyk? :001_wub: Do you think there is a way to get a major university to hire him to teach one of their edx courses? Though his focus is on gifted students, I think that a problem solving approach is exactly what all students need. Also I think that referring to it as a "problem solving approach" is much clearer language than "mistake friendly culture". That brings me back to the piece of the course that I like. She seems to be advocating this problem solving approach for all students. I think this is a terrific idea. I have always thought that lower performing students have the ability to work problems. Perhaps they need different problems than gt kids, but they can still think. Often teachers are so focused on raising test scores that they just drill lower performing kids on test taking skills: reading comprehension, terminology, how to eliminate wrong answers and make a good guess.The focus for these kids is raising scores "by any means necessary". Which often means just training them to make good guesses and grab for answers. (I don't think this is nearly as prevalent in the homeschool community thank goodness, but it does exist in the schools and in our charters.) What she seems to be advocating is that we actually try to teach these kids the math. I like that idea. But unfortunately this doesn't seem to be what other people are getting from the course. So that is a worry. I am surprised she hasn't mentioned Li Ping Ma's book.

Do you think this type of dispute is limited to Stanford? I was under the impression that it was way more widespread than that. This fall under the heading of "If I laugh at any mortal thing...". I hope you forgive my levity.

No I don't think so, but I didn't see what she was offering to be an improvement for this group of kids.

Oh dear. I hadn't seen that. That is terrible. That was my fear, that it would propagate a negative attitude toward gt students. They get enough negativity by teachers as it is we don't need to give them any more ammunition.

Actually, she advocates giving lower end students harder work. But it seems that in order to do that she winds up simplifying the curriculum that the very top students get. I could see how this might improve average performance (not sure if I believe it does but I am willing to entertain the notion) but I have a very hard time believing that it would be suitable for the top 1% and perhaps not even the top 5% of students who are going to need not just harder and more accelerated math but different math. The lesson is at the 6 minute mark. It is a clip of a model teacher. I think the teacher actually does a pretty good job of introducing fraction division and at the end of the class she introduces the algorithm. So there is some direct instruction going on. More than I even do with my own kids. I stay further away from standard algorithms with them but this is mostly because both kids are dyslexic and I need to adjust for the way they learn. I think your average kid would do just about right learning the standard algorithm after a 20-30 minute class discussion like the one presented. Later in the lesson there is a girl who starts to talk about inverses but she can't quite get it into words or at least not enough to convince anyone in the class. I think the teacher should have helped out more here. The pictures and the abstraction are completely connected and the teacher lost an opportunity for teaching. OK I have to back track. At first I thought she wasn't dumbing the curriculum down but on second thought the kids in the video are a little older than I thought. I was going to initially say that she is failing to differentiate for the top 1% maybe the top 5%. Upon rewatching I would say that this lesson doesn't meet the needs of the top 20% at least. But I think it is a pretty good lesson nevertheless. I certainly think she is making the majority of the kids in her class work. It doesn't seem fluffy or feel good at all. It seems pretty mathematically sound. When kids give her faulty reasoning she gently calls them to the mat on it (she encourages them to try to convince her but of course their reasoning is faulty and they can't). It's a lesson on how to check to see if your math is sound or if you are applying some weird magical thinking to your homework. I actually kind of liked it. But in no way would this work for GT kids. (Well I actually borrowed this to use with my 8 year old but gosh those kids are way older). By the time she is that age she will definitely have moved on. So I have mixed feelings. The methods she is advocating are not bad but she is completely dismissing the needs of GT kids. She claims that gt kids are served in these types of classrooms and says that the evidence backs her up. But I still don't believe her. Doing hard problems, making mistakes, and having a growth mindset are all things that gt kids can benefit from. I follow her that far but putting a gt kid in the classroom example that she gives would be a disaster. FYI I think Pen asked this. I will probably stick around to see what she has to say for the second half of the course. I am giving up on the assignments but I find it kind of interesting (even when I disagree with what she is saying). I went to go look for the article on the Tyranny of the 100% but instead found this...http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/articles.php?page=mistakes So, OK maybe some mistakes are better than others. There is of course a difference between doing math that is hard enough so that you are challenged and make mistakes because you are learning and making mistakes because you are just being dingy. We certainly don't want to encourage sloppiness or carelessness in math. Here it is (Tyranny of the 100%)... http://mathprize.atfoundation.org/archive/2009/Rusczyk_Problem_Solving_Presentation_at_Math_Prize_for_Girls_2009.pdf and the video http://mathprize.atfoundation.org/archive/2009/rusczyk

A physicist, an engineer, and a statistician were out game hunting. The engineer spied a bear in the distance, so they got a little closer. "Let me take the first shot!" said the engineer, who missed the bear by three meters to the left. "You're incompetent! Let me try" insisted the physicist, who then proceeded to miss by three meters to the right. "Ooh, we *got* him!!" said the statistician.

I know, right? I didn't realize that you could get a PhD in Math Ed without a degree in math. No wonder they don't get along. She is trying to speak martian to a Komodo Dragon. IMO Music Ed is way more together. You have to, you know, like play an instrument and play it pretty well to get a credential. You also have to demonstrate proficiency in conducting, multiple other instruments(Tuba, Viola, Oboe...), piano, guitar, singing, sight singing, theory. The expectations are way higher for music teachers. I can't imagine a Music ed professor having an undergraduate degree in Psychology. It just wouldn't happen. Most have PhDs in music and then you have a few Music Ed professors who have more experience working in a classroom. But everyone is expected to be highly skilled on an instrument. :confused1:

https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/joboaler PhD (Mathematics Education) King's College, London University. (1996) MA (Mathematics Education) King's College, London University (1991) BSc (Psychology) Liverpool University (1985)

Before I got my math credential I had a different teaching credential and a math degree. I decided I probably should have a math credential so I made a few phone calls thinking it would be pretty easy to get. You would be (or perhaps you wouldn't be) surprised at how different the requirements are. Apparently there is a math ed degree where you don't really take real math classes except the low level math that one would take at a community college. Then you take math history, math education, math knitting, math sculpture...ok I am being cheeky. But no real math. I had to talk to several math departments to figure out how to fill the state requirements using my regular math classes. The conversations were always kind of funny. I would start by explaining my situation "I have a real degree from x university (a good one)". It was like they had never seen anything like it. I am sure there are a few teachers out there with regular math degrees but not a whole lot. I was finally able to find someone to count my Geometry of Surfaces to count for "geometry" and who would look the other way that I had only taken Calc 3 in college (and not Calc 1 and 2 because I passed out of them in HS and there were no records of this). I did have to take stats and computer programming. Which felt a little silly but whatever. He let me write a paper for the history requirement. He waived the math knitting and basket weaving. That said I worked with some teachers who in spite of having a pretty light math background were pretty enthusiastic an knowledgeable about their content. You know in LiPing Ma's book she talks about Chinese teachers who have very little advanced math but still do a pretty good job teaching. Still for upper level high school classes I do think that a more solid math background is necessary. But OK, so say you have a bunch of real mathematicians teaching public school math. I am not sure this is a recipe for success either. I mean they have a kind of a "different" perspective on the world. I am sure that there are a few of them that could pull it off. But many are really far out there and have no relationship to high school mathematics. They would probably change the entire curriculum. I am not sure this would be a bad thing. It might be quite good. But I think the content would have to change. 9th grade Logic. 10th grade Elementary Number Theory 11th grade Probability 12th Grade ? Mathematicians write things like "Elements of Mathematics" a very cool curriculum but I wouldn't give it to your average kid. I am a bit disturbed that the math ed departments and the math departments can't seem to work together. I'd like see them put down their weapons and learn a bit from each other. I see a few interesting ideas that they seem to have but they (the math ed folks) tend to get all evangelical about things. "We have this great new method of teaching that no one has ever thought about before...it's called encouraging critical thinking." Goodness really? I find this kind of thing very sad.

This is precisely the problem I have with the course. I am afraid that this will be what the teachers take from it. However if we are dealing with teachers that don't understand the algorithm for fraction division (and I think you are right this is often the problem). I am not sure what can be done. It is astounding how low the standards are for math teaching. But I think most of this is coming from elementary schools where the kids don't have access to a real math teacher. So maybe having specialists at the elementary level would improve things a bit. I am not sure. This! Absolutely. I would say probably worse than a bandaid, a complete waste of time money and resources and sometimes completely counter productive. Kind of like the connected math stuff from 10 years ago. Nobody knows how to teach that way and you send a bunch of confused kids home to confused parents. That said I love some of those problems. But they are to be used with great caution. Kind of like chemistry experiments in kindergarten. Anyhow I think you are spot on. The real elephant in the classroom (to borrow the title of her book) is that the teacher has no understanding and enthusiasm for mathematics.

In my experience as a math teacher, many children (and adults) are math wounded. They sit there in class and think the wrong answers to themselves silently cementing magical, wrong, answer grabbing, panic stricken ideas. They are so terrified that they are wrong that they won't say anything. But they are thinking wrong things that don't get corrected. When they get wrong answers it is really tough to get them to talk about their reasoning unless you get on your cheerleader-counselor hat on and say "It's ok, lots of people make mistakes, let's just think about this a little" So much hand holding. So I think the idea of having a mistake friendly culture is to have the children not freak out every time they get an error but instead to calm down and analyze their mistakes. I completely agree that mistakes need to be fixed and that students need to be evaluated but you need to get students to feel comfortable so that they can show you what they are thinking. Not just correcting the answer but correcting the wrong thinking. How many kids do you know that can take the reciprocal and multiply but have no idea what that means? What happens later in life is, if they ever have to take math again they wind up flipping the wrong number or doing some other thing that is close but complete nonsense. So right answers aren't really the holy grail in math. Often mathematicians will try to prove something by contradiction and discover a whole new branch of mathematics. 2+2 doesn't always equal 4. Of course you probably don't want your first graders to be answering that 2+2=1 but this is something that my son would have probably done if he was put in a mixed group class. He'd be so bored he'd answer everything mod3. But that's another topic entirely. Anyhow I am pretty sure what is meant by a "mistake friendly culture" is not encouraging a test with only 40% correct. I think the idea is to encourage kids to look critically at eachother's mistakes so that they understand what they are doing (and perhaps what they were doing wrong). One of my big qualms with this course is that I am afraid much of this will be misunderstood by the teachers and that their take away will be to lower standards. I really don't think this is the intent, but I could easily see someone getting confused.

I'll have to ask him when he gets back from camp. He is kind of beyond the long division thing but I am sure he would humor his math education minded mom. I have yet to really make long division fun. I can make it less painful but fun I haven't achieved. "We do a little long division and then we can go do fun things like fractions and modular arithmetic." That's kind of how we roll here. Spoon full of sugar and all. I think he'd probably go this route. Factor 38 what is it 2*19 ick that's no good at all. Ok well whatever. 18430/2 is 9215 right? (I'm a little tired) Ok now we have 9215/19. Which isn't any better than what we had before. At this point I think he is probably tempted to use some infinite dimensional imaginary vector (I don't know I am just making this up, he is gone at mathcamp and I miss him a little) OK putting back on my serious hat ....I am sure if he had his druthers his answer would involve a fraction not a decimal so he'd probably figure out that 19*4=(20-1)4= 80-4= 76 and (7600+1615)/19 so now we have 400 and 1615/19 and just about now I can see why he still likes the long division algorithm better than this. Um probably 80 here what 80*19 is 80*(20-1) = 1600-80= 1520. I am not sure I even know what I am doing now but I have been working with him for so many years that I am pretty sure this is where he would go. Um 1520+95/19 so what the heck do we have now um 480 and 95/19ths so now we have to only have 4 more so it has to be 484 and oh man I have to figure out how many left over 4*19 is 4*(20-1) 80-4=76 so that woud be 76+19/19 wait a second that's 1 so what is it 5 ...485? But I think I just did the long division algorithm but with fractions. Something tells me he would have liked it better that way when he was little or maybe he would have tried to factor 9215 to see if it had a 19 in it um 5*1843 (that was a little annoying) um not 2,3,5, sheesh 7? I hate dividing by 7. I think at this point he'd go back to the long division like fraction thing. OK putting aside my laziness I see pretty easily that 7 doesn't work. Maybe he wouldn't give up so easily. um 11? I am sure there is a neat trick he knows that I don't (at this point I use my calculator and cheat, I am not proud and after all I know how to do long division the other way just fine) I am thinking it is going to be something kind of annoying so I keep cheating ...19*97 totally annoying I am glad I did. But this is where he would go and after checking 13 and 17 he would still have to divide by 19 which is still almost as irritating as it was before. But I think this is where he would go if he had to but I don't worry about this much anymore since he can do it he just hates arithmetic. I have let him move on. Oh wait I have to put this all together what do we have 19*97*5 is that right so our answer is 97*5 or um 500-15=485 thank goodness. Oh man, I would not have wanted to have to go back and check my work. I could be wrong but this is kind of how I remember it. He usually checks to see if factoring works before he tries to divide. I am not sure at what point he'd throw in the towel and just do regular long division. I am positive he would not use a calculator like I just did to cheat. Even if he really hated the whole thing. He would feel compelled to do it himself.

I just found these two links and want to share. I don't really have an opinion yet except that the whole thing reads like a soap opera. http://www.stanford.edu/~joboaler/ ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/combined-evaluations-version3.pdf and there is more http://math.stanford.edu/~milgram/Jo-Boaler-reveals-attacks-AccusationsResponse-trans.html There seems to be a bit of a skirmish between the math department http://math.stanford.edu/~milgram/ and the education department. https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/joboaler :lurk5: Stay tuned for the next riveting episode "Math Wars" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UREJJfLzBfM This is in Spanish (which I don't really speak) with the audio removed but still...

I think one good way to handle this is to make speed work optional (but maybe encouraged for some). Having fast math facts can be really helpful for some kids and paralyzing for others. My daughter was able to do a little speed work with math facts. She doesn't love it and it is hard for her but she could do it in small doses and I think it was helpful for her. DS not so much. If you try to get him to do something fast he gets slower. It's weird. Only way I got him to get fast enough with math facts was to give him AOPS algebra which was so fun he wanted to work on math 2 hours a day and after a year of this he got fast enough that math facts didn't bother him much. He can hold more in his head than her but is not as good at unpacking it and getting it out. Does that make sense. So for her having a little bit more automaticity before she gets to more abstract work is more helpful/necessary and for him it would have been more of a hindrance. I am a "by any means necessary" sort of math teacher. I mean, if it works...?

From everything you have written, I have complete confidence in you. I assume you have seen this site. Not sure where you are in math right now, but I kind of love this for elementary math. http://www.educationunboxed.com/ My son is really good at math. He is also dyslexic and could not learn any standard algorithm. I had to do math completely out of order with him. He learned all the cool fractions and ratios and algebraic things first. He was also pretty good at multiplying in his head using little math tricks. (7*8 oh that's easy you just take 8*5 which is 40 and add 8*2 which is 16 and you get 56). He could even figure out weird ways to solve bigger problems Disclaimer don't fret if you don't follow my sons circuitous math reasoning, I realize that you are discalculic however I am writing this to illiustrate there are ways to get around not being able to do column multiplication. So say I asked him to calculate 485x38 this might be how he would do it. 485 *38 ok that's just 500*38-15*38 500*38 that's half of 1000*38 that's 38000 ok you need half of that what is that uh 19000. Then you have to subtract 15*38 let's see that's a tricky one. You probably need to take 20*38 what's that uh 760 and subtract 5*38 which is half of 380 ok that's 190 760-190 is 10 more than 760-200 so that would be 570 What am I subtracting that from...oh yeah 19000. So that's 19000-570 That is 30 more than 19000-600 so you get 18400+30 or 18430. But if you gave him a piece of paper with 12+26 he would write 37 and cry if you pointed out his mistake. And it took me two years to figure out that this was a learning disability but you know. I did figure it out eventually. I know this way of thinking might be confusing for some people but for him it made everything easy. I think it's kind of like how the spelling I am teaching my kids is really convoluted and confusing for me (non dyslexic mom) but it is the only way that they can learn. That's kind of extreme but this is what he would do. As a disclaimer this type of math thinking is really confusing to me. It is so much easier for me to just carry number and add things together but this is the way my son had to do elementary math and he got really good at math because I never forced him to do things the way other people did (I did eventually make him at least understand the standard algorithms and he admits that he still doesn't have any good tricks for long division) Anyhow what I am trying to say is that just because you can't do math the way other people can does not necessarily mean you are bad at it. Mathematicians are notorious for being out of the box divergent thinkers. So teaching kids different ways of thinking about math will only make them stronger at it.

Thanks for the references, I'll have to take a look at the book. This is completely counter intuitive to my experience and observation and also from everything I have read about PG kids which says that they do much better when radically accelerated. Sometimes I am so glad I homeschool because it takes so much of the pressure off. Luckily I think I have (almost) made it (son entering sophomore year of high school, not harmed yet, knocking loudly on wood). Here's a third option. Put gt kids in a separate class and tell them that they are there because they need to work harder (not that they are smarter). That's always what I tell my own kids. Not that they are smart, but that they need harder problems to learn.

So far I agree with most of what is being discussed in the course. I liked the teaching examples where the teacher was discussing process and reasoning. In the example the teacher spent about 20 minutes discussing what 1 divided by 2/3 meant. I thought that was kind of cool so I asked my daughter what she thought. I was happy to hear that she does understand division by fractions. It's been awhile since we talked about it. I asked my daughter if I had taught her an algorithm for it. She said "no". I said "good, I'll tell you that later on". I mean she's 8 and she can basically reason out an answer. I actually think it's better to reason things out for a bit longer before introducing algorithms but both of my kids are dyslexic and so it might be just me adjusting for their needs. One thing that bothers me about the class it seems to be pushing for mixed ability classrooms. She talks about research that indicates that mixed ability classes are better for kids but I am skeptical. I want to actually see the research. Perhaps there are other factors that are involved. When I was young the lower classes had the worst teachers. What exactly is causing the difference in student success? It's hard to tell. She says what she thinks but doesn't give enough information for the students to analyse the problem themselves. I find this somewhat ironic and frustrating. Also she uses ability grouping and achievement grouping interchangeably. So I can't tell what she is referring to when she talks about tracking. Ability grouping and achievement grouping are very different. She seems to be somewhat dismissive of any sort of notion of ability. But if you are talking about growing ability, you have to have something to measure it by. I don't know if this is because I have 2e kids or what, but I am kind of protective of my ability to test and diagnose my children's strengths and weaknesses. I think their knowledge of this has been only helpful in their education and personal growth. I do not think that these labels are harmful in any way. To be fair she did not ever come out and say that diagnosing lds is harmful but there seems to be a slippery slope from not wanting to label a students strengths and weakness to not wanting to talk about leaning disabilities. I love all of the emphasis on mistake making. I think this is spot on. Encouraging children to feel positive about mistakes is extremely important for math learning. I didn't know that mistakes actually increase neural activity. That's kind of cool. I get kind of weirded out when Carol Dweck talks about "Growing your math brain." I get an image of Frankenstein. I do agree in spirit though.

This sounds like a good topic for the special needs board. There are a ton of 2e moms over there. My son has a similar gap except he is dealing with processing speed problems (and dyslexia) and not attention. I would say don't wait stuff out, get help early. But don't despair because some things work themselves out in time. In general you want to do what you can as early as possible. This type of disparity can come with all sorts of challenges. For a kid like this the FSIQ is not a relevant number. The GAI is a closer estimate. Other general words of wisdom are teach your child like they are a super-genius but at the same time don't forget to remediate the disability. This can take some juggling. Just make sure to find suitably challenging things that your kiddo can handle. The smart side of my son is at least as difficult (if not way more difficult) than the learning disabled side. If you feed their smart side and keep that happy, then the ld side is much more amenable to the hard tedious work of dealing with a learning disability. Here are some good sources for gifted/2e issues http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/ http://giftedhomeschoolers.org/ http://www.sengifted.org/ http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/ James Webb is a pretty good source for 2e things http://vimeo.com/16263356

No great words of wisdom but I just wanted to chime in to let you know that I have an elephant too. Once and awhile I just want someone to tell me how awesome I am for doing such a monumental job of homeschooling. It's so ridiculously hard sometimes. I hope you get to see the Eides. I wish they were everywhere. I hope one day there are more people out there to help those of us with elephants.

Ack, it's that time the dreaded applying for SAT accommodations time. 2e dyslexic son will definitely need double time in writing but as I read this I start to wonder. Please ensure that the requested accommodations are appropriate for the student. The SAT®, with 50% extended time is 5 hours in length and with 100% extended time is 6 hours and 40 minutes in length and conducted over two days. The student receiving extended time must remain at the test site for the entire SAT testing time, even if the student finishes early. The whole idea of my son sitting for a 6 hour and 40 minute test has me a bit anxious. Any BTDT experiences to share. What worked, what didn't, what would you do differently if you had it to do again?

Thank you so much Kathy, that's just what I needed. I love the idea of having him actually sit in on classes and I will definitely have him check out "the future of you".

Can I join this discussion? DS is going to math camp this year, I am happy to hear that he will get some guidance about future plans. The older he gets the more out of my league I feel. DS's current wish list is a small school, close to nature, lots of abstract math (he's not much of an engineer practical guy...last thing I heard he mentioned an interest in theoretical physics). He has strong west coast preference and probably early access to grad classes. I think what he really needs is a cabin in the woods with Feynman, but I don't see that on the list of colleges. I am thinking Stanford if he can get in, maybe Caltech or Reed (Would it have enough math?...he'd love the laid back liberal arty atmosphere). Would Harvey Mudd be too much on the practical engineering side? Maybe he'll change his mind about the east coast, he doesn't love it. Too many people. And then there's the question of stress. Sheesh. That one is the hardest. He isn't into stress and competition at all. However he is way more stressed out when he isn't able to work at an advanced level. (Hence the dream about the campfire and the bongo drums). He has a year or so to think about this more but he's closer to needing a plan. Maybe after camp he'll have some more ideas. And then there is the getting into the school part. That's a whole other thing. Probably look at a couple of UCs just in case. Lucky, your daughter will love mathpath. It is a transformational experience. My son spent two summers there and I share Kathy's jumping up and down enthusiasm. Kathy, are there really colleges with 50/50 female/male in the math department? When I graduated I think we had maybe 2 or 3 women out of I don't know 30 math majors and this was in the 1990's not the 1950's. I went to a school that was supposed to have a really great math department. It was OK. I was not a stellar student so perhaps my perspective is skewed, but I do know good teaching. I had a handful of really wonderful profs. The others were all good solid mathematicians but not so much teachers. When I watched my first few MIT OCW lectures the scales fell from my eyes and I thought..."That is a good math program". I really think, especially in the undergraduate years, that this type of inspirational teaching is really important. Not all math professors who have the ability to guide students at the graduate level also have the ability to teach undergraduate courses. But then I am not sure if my son will have the same needs that I did back then with things like AOPS, math camps and other opportunities for kids to explore university math prior to college.

I used the AOPS books as a guide. Introduction as Algebra 1 and Intermediate as Algebra 2. They are far beyond the normal curriculum but I figure my child is anything but normal.

OK I suppose I have to answer this. My dyslexic son has been using Killgallon Sentence Composing for High School for about a year now (I think that's the one we wound up getting not Grammar for HS... they are pretty similar though). I recently bought Paragraphs for High school and he has just started. It's a great fit for him. He enjoys these books. And his writing has improved quite a bit. Plus the sentence composing book was a great grammar review. While my son was in the 7th and 8th grade I did some work on essay writing (I kind of jumped to essays because we homeschool through a charter and there's a big essay writing exam in the 7th grade and then you have to write a few for your 8th grade competency). So he was familiar with how to write an essay but once we completed that I backed WAY off. He is still working on fluency in writing. With my DS it's not an issue of coming up with content it's all issues of output and organization. Anyhow, Killgallon seems to work really well for him. Recently, he completed the HS exit exam and it only took him a little over 2 hours to write an essay. For him this is quite a miracle, even for the silly little essays they require on these tests. It was taking him something like two hours to write a paragraph and for him that was the main stumbling block. He'd just get so worn out by the whole process. So don't regret backing off and working at the sentence level for awhile. The examples from literature are really helpful for DS. He feels challenged and at the same time the quality of his writing has skyrocketed. I worried a little about backing off on essay writing but I am pretty confident now that it was the right decision. He'll still need to do quite a bit of essay work before he graduates. But at this point I think he is ready for it and will produce way better work. I agree with Hunter about not being afraid to meet a student where they are at. They will progress faster and with less frustration. Also I think Killgallon is probably a better fit for a gifted dyslexic. If a child is struggling and not demanding super challenging content then it might be better to go with something more explicit like Step Up to Writing. This might be something to check out even if you do go with killgallon. There are some templates from this program online that might be useful, here's one...http://williamsclass...UpToWriting.htm But for DS Killgallon was a great fit because everything else seemed both too easy and too hard at the same time and that was frustrating and Killgallon was just right.

:iagree:When I broached the topic of dyslexia with my son he was actually kind of excited. "Oh yeah, that sounds like me." It was like he joined some prestigious club. And when I actually showed him how to spell and read words phonetically he said something like "Why didn't you tell me this before?" Like I had been keeping some great secret.