My 8 yr old is is gifted. She's in 4th grade in a private progressive school b/c our public schools are pretty bad. As much as we love the school, and although they say they do differentiated education, it doesn't really happen. And the culture of the school kind of discourages singling out anyone for being better in any way than anyone else. Sort of the idea that everyone has their strengths so why make a big deal out of yours kind of thing. All previous attempts to get our dd challenged (esp. in math) have not yielded results.
Our parent/teacher conferences were last week. Her teacher is brand new to the school, and thus not mired in the culture like her previous teachers. This was our first time really talking with her teacher at length and she told us that our dd tested at the far end of all the assessments she did (8th grade was the level she tested for in reading and math). Meaning she's at least at that level, possibly higher. She feels our dd needs a lot more challenge in every area but the question is how to go about doing this? Dh and I have no idea. Our dd is happy socially in class albeit bored most of the time. Only science is fun b/c she doesn't know it yet (learning the periodic table, atoms, molecules). Our main thing is we'd like her to be challenged and engaged, but not given additional or more homework in order to challenge her. So we don't want her getting her regular math hw and harder math on top of it.
Any thoughts on what we might ask for from her teacher? She seems very willing to come up with ideas/solutions to keep dd engaged and challenged which is wonderful. I'd love to have some concrete ideas to present to her if possible.
Our parent/teacher conferences were last week. Her teacher is brand new to the school, and thus not mired in the culture like her previous teachers. This was our first time really talking with her teacher at length and she told us that our dd tested at the far end of all the assessments she did (8th grade was the level she tested for in reading and math). Meaning she's at least at that level, possibly higher. She feels our dd needs a lot more challenge in every area but the question is how to go about doing this? Dh and I have no idea. Our dd is happy socially in class albeit bored most of the time. Only science is fun b/c she doesn't know it yet (learning the periodic table, atoms, molecules). Our main thing is we'd like her to be challenged and engaged, but not given additional or more homework in order to challenge her. So we don't want her getting her regular math hw and harder math on top of it.
Any thoughts on what we might ask for from her teacher? She seems very willing to come up with ideas/solutions to keep dd engaged and challenged which is wonderful. I'd love to have some concrete ideas to present to her if possible.
