Talking to school administration tomorrow, advice? - Page 2

[kathymuggle]

I posted before reading the update....

Great news, OP, I hope your DD has a great year.

Kathy

[RandiFlowers]

Originally Posted by kathymuggle

Follow up with a nice letter confirming what was discussed.

Taking this last step subsequent to any conversation or meeting has proven to be a life-saver time and time again. It's amazing how much is "forgotten" by teachers & admin if there's not a paper trail to remind them. These follow-up letters also serve to clarify anything that may have been left hanging, and if you write the letter first, you get to frame the clarification on your terms.

[EXOLAX]

Originally Posted by Lollybrat

My son is only 5, so I havn'e been where you are, but I can see us having this issue in a few years.

What does the enrichment math consist of? It seems to me that most of the math taught in elementary school is arithmetic. As a result many kids (and teachers and parents) tend to think that math and arithmetic are the same thing, but really there is so much more to math than that. Many people say they don't like math or they think math is boring, when they really mean arithmetic.

So is the enrichment math just more arithmetic or does it branch out into other areas of mathematics? There are so many areas of math that could be presented to keep your child challenged: logic, sets, patterns, game theory, geometry (not high-school geometry, the really interesting stuff), probability, etc. Many of these areas can be introduced to a young child who is bright and interested. Do they do these types of things in enrichment? If not, are they willing to consider them?

They use the Everyday Math curriculum which goes by units; time, money, measuring, fractions, geometry, algebra, etc.. In Enrichment they use Singapore materials for each given unit. So if you show mastery of before the 2nd grade EM geometry unit starts you go to enrichment and do Singapore 2nd grade geometry 3 days a week.

DD is a numbers girl and we know that. The admin said she wanted DD's 3rd grade teacher to start the year immediately working on DD's overall perception of math. She explained that she feels DD is one of those kids who 'gets numbers', who only needs to be explained something once or twice before she's mastered it. When DD asked for specific challenges she was asking for long division, high level algebra, multiple digit multiplication, fractions. The admin wants to broaden her view and take her outside the numbers box and hold her accountable. This is where the weekly logic activities will come in, as well as conversations with the teacher. I'm encouraged that the suggestion above was exactly where the admin went on her own.

Though, we still haven't directly addressed the 'review/boring' work issue which won't come until they complete the testing. We'll have to come up with a way to help DD with that. So far everything that's been discussed has been supplementation.

[rainyday]

Hi Exo,

Great news on a lot of fronts. I do have concerns, though, that they haven't addressed the boring-work issue. I don't think it's a problem for a child to have to do some boring work, but I do think it's a problem when all or most of their main schoolwork is composed of things they mastered long before. I don't think it puts a child in a fair position to have to do all of the regular work plus all of the extra (interesting/more appropriate) work as well. It's as if the child gets punished for already knowing things when they just get extra work to do. Was this year's teacher at the meeting? Do you think she would be receptive to allowing your daughter to skip some of the review work once she has demonstrated mastery on it? Another poster had some nice ideas about how to demonstrate mastery without making it become drudgery.

Plus, as I'm sure you know, broadening her view is great, but if she is still expected to complete the regular curriculum at the regular pace, she will continue to have issues with boredom. At some point, a child who is advanced enough needs subject acceleration, not just logic activities.

Is this coming year's teacher strong in math? Does she understand the subject well? I've found that teachers who don't have a passion for math and really understand it have a hard time understanding kids who are a bit asynchronous in their math development. In my experience, such teachers tend to equate strong computational skills with high math ability, and they don't tend to really understand high conceptual understanding in the same way. We've found that many teachers' ideas of how to help an advanced math student involve just more computation work which has unfortunately led to a lot of frustration for us and our child!

[Miss Information]

Great news on the update. I worry too about dd1. She's going into 2nd grade this year and complained that most of last year was review. But rather than letting me go to the teacher to ask for more challenging work, she wanted to learn multiplication and division at home.

I fear it will be worse for dd2 (who is going into K) - BUT...dd2 had a great solution for me. When we went to the library yesterday, she asked me for "books on math", so when I asked the librarian, she showed me the math for kids section.

I found a great Time-Life Series of math books that read more like books such as Alice In Numberland, The Case of the Missing Stripes, and The House that Math Built. Now, of course at 3rd grade, it would be "too easy" for your dd, but I'm throwing it out there because it's the coolest thing I've seen lately.

It has a series of fun math riddles and stories and spanned it covers basic math concepts, geometry, area, money, fractions, logic, deductive reasoning, measurement and other things in a really fun way.

I got the idea for cake fractions from this book.

I also got a book called Real World Math for Hands On Fun. What I liked about it was that it covered different concepts and how they are used.

We've built a part of a "truss bridge" out of popsicle sticks using triangles and comparing it to a "bridge" made out of squares and testing them to see which one is more rigid. And there's other things like making a pyramid out of sugar cubes (like I've been wanting to do).

I realized THAT'S what I want my girls to get out of math. I think there is so much more to math than they ever let on in school.

We have Saxon Math in our school's which IMO is better than EM, but terrible for advanced students with their heavy spiraling technique. I've already warned dd1 of this and asked her to let me know when she wants more and we'd work on it. We do supposedly have one of the better teachers for 3rd grade, so I'm hoping she's amenable to working on solutions during school. Dd1 had *some* extra enrichment in first, but it wasn't much more than she already got.

I wish they'd would have gotten creative like that in my day, but man, math was so dry and boring. I would have eaten that stuff up like I did with science (loved chemistry, physics and biology because it was hands on).

[EXOLAX]

Originally Posted by rainyday

Great news on a lot of fronts. I do have concerns, though, that they haven't addressed the boring-work issue. I don't think it's a problem for a child to have to do some boring work, but I do think it's a problem when all or most of their main schoolwork is composed of things they mastered long before. I don't think it puts a child in a fair position to have to do all of the regular work plus all of the extra (interesting/more appropriate) work as well. It's as if the child gets punished for already knowing things when they just get extra work to do. Was this year's teacher at the meeting? Do you think she would be receptive to allowing your daughter to skip some of the review work once she has demonstrated mastery on it? Another poster had some nice ideas about how to demonstrate mastery without making it become drudgery.

Plus, as I'm sure you know, broadening her view is great, but if she is still expected to complete the regular curriculum at the regular pace, she will continue to have issues with boredom. At some point, a child who is advanced enough needs subject acceleration, not just logic activities.

This is our concern for the start of the year. We are not sure how she is going to react to still having to do the 'boring' work. At the end of the meeting we asked for advice on that and the admin said "She still needs to do her work" but that once achievement testing is complete they will work to come up with a plan. I believe they are hopeful that DD was being honest in her negotiations when she said "I will agree to do the boring work well if they give me challenging work" by giving her supplemental material at the start of the year. They also hope that by telling DD "We know you already know this, we know it is review for you but we need you to do your best" that she will respond. We plan to try to redirect her as we did last year with the approach of 'this work isn't about learning math. It's focus work; lessons in paying attention to detail and checking your work'. Last year we taught her 'casting out 9's' as a check method to try to make even the easy work more challenging but I'm not sure what else to do there. I am really torn on this though. I understand there's a process we need to go through but I must admit I was more hopeful testing could happen prior to the start of the school year.

Originally Posted by rainyday

Is this coming year's teacher strong in math? Does she understand the subject well? I've found that teachers who don't have a passion for math and really understand it have a hard time understanding kids who are a bit asynchronous in their math development. In my experience, such teachers tend to equate strong computational skills with high math ability, and they don't tend to really understand high conceptual understanding in the same way. We've found that many teachers' ideas of how to help an advanced math student involve just more computation work which has unfortunately led to a lot of frustration for us and our child!

DD's 3rd grade teacher was not at the meeting and I know very little about her. She is not a seasoned teacher (this is her 2nd year) but I hear she is passionate and excited about teaching. I do know that they don't intend to give her more computational work because they know she can do it. That's why they plan to try to broaden her view and do more logic, word problems and analytical math with her. We'll see how she responds to that as well because she loves the computational work.

I feel like we're going to have to toe the line a little bit longer on this one and wait it out until her achievement test results come back. We're treading very carefully with how we discuss this with DD because of how she's responded to their negotiations in the past. We'd hate to make promises to her and then have them not met again. Who knows what she would do then.

Oh. The school hired a math tutor to work with the math enrichment specialist. He's knew this year and they want him to shadow for awhile before he starts working with the kids. They did offer him up as a resource once we get the test results back and they feel he's ready. Apparently he is very strong in math but lacks kid expertise. The school is aiming for having him work with DD starting mid-year as well. I imagine if I just completed my masters in mathematics I would love to work with a kid who was passionate about math and begged for more challenging work. I hope that works out well too.

[EXOLAX]

Originally Posted by RandiFlowers

Taking this last step subsequent to any conversation or meeting has proven to be a life-saver time and time again. It's amazing how much is "forgotten" by teachers & admin if there's not a paper trail to remind them. These follow-up letters also serve to clarify anything that may have been left hanging, and if you write the letter first, you get to frame the clarification on your terms.

Thanks kathymuggle and RandiFlowers for this reminder!

[Bekka]

Taking notes for when we get in this place with ds in the next year or two...