On Jan 28, 3:25 pm, pete wrote:
Our 10 year old son is in the 4th grade at a private shool. We
suspect that our 10-year old's specific class is substantially less
acedemically gifted/oriented then is our son; our third-grade
daughter's class is doing math problems much more advanced than that
of our 4th grade boy's class. Our sone typically gets all his math
and reading work none in the first 25% of the class time and reads for
pleasure for the balance of the time. He is not being pushed to work
hard and still gets top grades. Our son and his friends are the
athletes in the class and as he cares to be connected with them, will
do most anything to avoid circumstances that might, in his perception,
cause him embarrassment in their eyes - this mostly pertains to his
wanting to hide his many books to disguise his voracious reading
habits because his school friends do not think learning is 'cool'.
Left in this environment, we fear our son might possibly succumb to
additional pressures and cease to care about obtaining good grades in
school. 1.) should we move him to a more acedemically challenging
school? 2.) will doing so burn him out on learning altogether? 3.)
when is a child better off being the be smartest in slower class vesus
being average or less in class of smarter children? 4.) at what age
does this stuff matter...can one wait until high school and what are
the risks of leaving him in current environment?

I suggest you talk with the teacher and the principal, if necessary,
to find out if there are other options. This year DS2 started 4th
grade declaring that he hoped Math would finally be hard this year.
He's in a full-time gifted classroom that works out of the 5th grade
book, but after the first 2 weeks, it was clear that he still wasn't
being challenged. We asked his teacher what she could do, like we've
done every other year. Every other teacher told us that he would be
given enrichment activities or could work independently from a
different book. That has slightly appeased my son, but he still
hasn't felt challenged. This time however, we actually got someone
willing to work with us to find not just a passable solution, but one
that actually meets his needs and helps to create a path forward for
years to come. We spent a week discussing options and in the end, got
permission to send him to the Middle School for Math. He's now in an
accelerated pre-Algebra class that he loves. He's still getting As on
everything, but he feels that he's finally learning, not just doing
busy work.

What are his thoughts? At 10, he's certainly old enough to contribute
to the discussion. I'd ask him how he feels about being top of the
class vs in the middle. When DS1 was accepted into a full-time gifted
classroom in 3rd grade, he was very excited about the chance to
actually be in the middle of the pack. He said he knew that teachers
can't accommodate everyone, so if he was in the middle, he would have
the best chance of the teacher actually teaching to his level. As
mentioned above, DS2 likes to be challenged, but he also takes great
pride (a little too much sometimes :-) ) in being at the top of his
class.

Annie