Gifted but not excelerated - How so you teach these kids?

[Robin Hood]

School is going along fine but lately my 9yodd has been giving me guff. She is beyond what we are doing but yet she she takes hours to do it so I can't tell where she is except to just keep on. I have kept her behind (3rd grade instead of 4th) because of slowness and immaturity, but she is bored stiff. I can tell some of her incorrect answers are wrong out of laziness and not because she doesn't know the material.

 

Teachers repeatedly tell me that they would rather have an overcrowed room than to teach gifted kids. I have tried to get her into an evaluation with the public school for help in how to teach or place her, but in every school, I get not a single return call. Considering it's CA where all the hoopla is, I am surprised not a teacher nor councelor is interested in helping me place this child of mine.

 

How does one handle a gifted child who refuses to do the work? Could it be hormones?

 

Have any of you ever let them do their own scheduling with success? I wrote what she has to cover today on the board and walked away.

 

She is not an accelerated learner, so I am posting here, but she doesn't seem to fit in any catagory I see on this board either.

[Jenny in Florida]

If it were me, though, on the basis of having taught a couple of gifted kids, I'd try bumping her up academically. Generally, when either of mine starts acting up about school or taking forever to do things or making lazy mistakes, it's because they are bored. And the cure for this around here has always been to give them more challenging work.

 

It sounds as though you are pretty set against accelerating, though. So, I'm not sure what else to suggest.

 

--Jenny

[Robin Hood]

That is actually where I am heading. I just don't know if it is a good idea. In my anger this morning, instead of harping on her, I started giving this some considerataion. I am wondering if I could start with grammer. I am afraid to push her in math. We have had lots of tension on that in the past. She still has trouble with forming letters quickly and neatly, so I don't push her with too much writing either.

[Claire]

I would definitely give her more challengine material to work with.

 

Concerning the writing, it's possible she has fine motor problems or dysgraphia. Some children are helped by Callirobics, especially those who need strengthening of fine motor skills. My dd's dysgraphia is primarily neurological in origin so Callirobics did not help her.

 

A lot of more advanced work can be done orally. What grammar program are you using?

[Robin Hood]

R & S. So many of you say it can be done orally and we do, but some just seems like it needs to written. Diagramming and using words in sentences, such as adjectives which we are now studying, seem like it would make more sense to them if they wrote them, no? yes? I thought that if I jumped a grade, it might be the same lay out with a bit more difficultly ie: 5 units of 25 lessons all taught in the same order. no? yes?

 

I'll have to try the Callirobics. She is a little tomboy and I do believe she is developing the same way as boys; larger muscles groups then smaller and finer. My other 9yodd had beautiful, straight, adult like handwriting at age 6. It is hard work not to compare capabilities.

[Claire]

I think R&S has a lot more writing assignments in it than Shurley. Shurley comes with a workbook and a lot of it is fill-in-the-blank type of stuff, or mark-the-nouns-in-the-sentence exercises rather than writing out full sentences.

[nitascool]

I second Jenny in here statement about bumping her up. It has helped my ds with the "guff" every time... except math.

 

I have really liked Step-By-Step Grammar I and II (a 4th-7th grade program). It's comprehensive and it teaches diagramming from the beginning. It doesn't have a lot of busy work or tons of writing... and for a writing reluctant child I'd have them just draw the lines rather then rewriting the sentences. It has been great for my ds who is grammatically accelerated, but at grade level in writing. The only thing I don't like about the program is that it categorizes Articles as Adjectives, but we have just explained that they are both to our ds.