Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?

"Banty" wrote in message
...
And what other needs are not being tended to because the teachers are
trying to
catch the kids up. Or arranging those all important take-with assignments
and
grading separately said take-with assignments, that parents who pull kids
out of
school are so proud of themselves for arranging?

When we took Julian out of school to go to Italy last year, we had to sign
an independent study contract. The school has a sheet of suggested
activities that is used for every grade. The teacher checks off the items
she wants your child to do and may also send along additional worksheets and
assignments that would have been done in the classroom. I got the impression
from our teacher that she knew what the curriculum would be well in advance
and that putting together this packet for us was not a big issue. When we
returned, I turned in the packet of completed work. I never saw it again. As
far as I know, she never "graded" or reviewed it in any way. So I don't
think it caused her to have to do much extra work. Of course, Julian was in
kindergarten at the time. The amount of effort required to provide
independent work for students in higher grades would be much more
significant.

My neighbor, who is a kindergarten teacher herself, just took her first
grader out of school for a little over a week on an independent study
contract. I have a hard time believing she would do this to another teacher
if she thought it would create a huge burden for that teacher.
--
Be well, Barbara
(Julian [6], Aurora [4], and Vernon's [19mo] mom)

This week's special at the English Language Butcher Shop:
"Use repeatedly for severe damage." -- Directions on shampoo bottle

Daddy: You're up with the chickens this morning.
Aurora: No, I'm up with my dolls!

All opinions expressed in this post are well-reasoned and insightful.
Needless to say, they are not those of my Internet Service Provider, its
other subscribers or lackeys. Anyone who says otherwise is itchin' for a
fight. -- with apologies to Michael Feldman

Banty wrote in :

Amazing what use can be made of summer and spring and holiday and other
breaks.
Say - Thanksgiving break is coming right up in a scant few weeks! What a
wonderful time to visit a family member who may not be with the world much
longer.

Doesn't that depend on whether you think the relative will still be around
for Thanksgiving? If they are really ill, maybe that four weeks is too long
to wait.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

x-no-archive:yes
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

Nevermind wrote:

Wow -- is ability grouping common in the UK? If I understand
correctly, it has been all but wiped out of public schools in the U.S.
It sounds like wonderful common sense to me.

Ability grouping isn't the problem - TRACKING is the big bad no no.
Tracking means that a la '1984', once one is put on the dummy track,
one can never test out of it to get more challenging material even if
a mistake has been made because of some physical handicap or the like
or because of prejudice against a specific group. Ability grouping
has always been done, and hopefully always will be.

It sure isn't wiped out in the public schools
here. In my sons' school they ability group for math
and reading in every grade past kindergarten (except
it seems that they don't in the center based GT program,
which I suppose makes sense). They have as many groups
as they have teachers for that grade. So, this year
there are something like six first grade teachers, so
they have seven reading groups (each teacher has one,
plus there's a reading specialist) and six math groups.
The groups are relatively fluid, so children who need
to move up or down accordingly. Seems to work like a
charm.

I don't know about primary grades, but in middle school (6 to 8) we
team taught which meant that four teachers had about 120 to 135 kids
to teach English (pardon me - Language Arts), Math, Science and Social
Studies. We usually grouped the kids for math and for language arts.
The kids moved from one teacher to another for their classes, but were
not necessarily in the high group or the low group for all the
classes.

So a kid in the high group for math could be in the middle low group
for LA. LA was often done by spelling and reading ability. It was
even possible for a child in the 7th grade to go to the 8th grade
algebra class, or for one in the 8th grade to go to the high school
for an advanced math class.

[Reading was taught by every teacher in the school and was divided up
according to ability - so as a 6th grade teacher, I had an 8th grade
reading class. The reading specialist had the hardest group - the one
who needed the most hand holding and the PE teacher had the easiest
group to teach i.e. those students who could be basically left to read
on their own. This meant that the classes could be very small where
needed.]

grandma Rosalie

Vicki wrote:


Do you know... does this mean that to get this law changed for our state we
would have to work at the national level?


Probably both. The federal laws provide a structure that
encourages certain things, and then states build on that, and
school districts build on it further. You'd have to find out
the details of precisely what is driving the rules in your
situation to find out how high up you'd have to take things,
or whether you'd be able to find an accommodation or a loophole
lower down the food chain that would solve your particular
situation.



I don't think dd would suffer from missing 20% of class (but I'd been
leaning more towards 10%). I thought taking dd out would be *easiest* for
the teacher. Shows how much I know! I hadn't expected teacher would do
anything to "make up" work for dd. The point was to give the class time to
catch up without dd sitting there spinning her wheels. Reading people's
objections, it seems I've misjudged how much work a teacher has to do when a
child misses. This must have to do with record-keeping and evaluation, not
with actual teaching. I don't care what marks dd receives at this point,
but I suppose the school cares, and must record them.


Yes, that's the problem. Not only that, but even
without any mandates, if your child didn't have to do at
least something equivalent to what the other kids were
doing, that could generate a lot of resentment from the
other kids--which could be a rather serious issue since
it seems to be the socialization that is driving any
attempt to remain in the school!


I don't expect much from the school in terms of education--they are passing
time. I hadn't articulated this, but as long as dd was having fun with her
friends, I thought we could bide our time and she would (eventually) get an
education at school. This part-time home school idea was so that she could
get *some* education until the public school kicked in. And stating it,
that's probably pretty stupid on my part: I should ask that they teach dd
*something* in the time she is there.


That would be my leaning, personally. They *should*
be providing an education for her! It might not be absolutely
perfect for her individual situation, but it ought to be at
least in the ballpark. I think it's perfectly reasonable for
you to ask that they find *some* way to accommodate her needs.
After all, if she were on the other side of the bell curve
and were really struggling with the material you would accept
that, would you?


We don't have a separate program for kids who excel academically. They've
pulled four kids in dd's grade into one class and have them do some
different activities, but this is limited, and has been new ground here.
Funny as it may sound, I'd prefer dd not be pulled out for a lot of
"specials" away from her class, prefer she not be singled out. I'd prefer
that she be taught within the classroom. Yeah, I know. I've been told that
a really good teacher can teach to a lot of different levels within one
classroom and that everyone will benefit. I think dd's teacher is good...
but that kind of teaching doesn't seem to happen here.

I do need to ask at teacher conferences that teacher actually teach my
child, and ask how she will measure that. If it will be less work for her
to actually teach dd, it would be easier for me, and better for dd. I just
don't see it happening in-class, so all the trouble of having her pulled out
of class are still there, and then some. Oh well. Their record-keeping
would be easier. And I'd be being reasonable. Joy ;-)


They should at *least* be able to provide some guided
individual study, with you helping out. That's not ideal--
they should be able to provide an education without punting
a lot of the responsibility to you, but it beats having her
bored to tears in class.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Donna Metler wrote:


However, I don't think it's fair to ask
the teachers to come up with two weeks of individualized assignments for a
given student (when a child is on homebound, the homebound teacher takes
over most of the planning, only occasionally consulting with the classroom
teacher), the grading, and trying to get the child caught up, or for the
teacher to be assessed and blamed based on the child's performance on tests,
when the parent has chosen to pull the child out of school for several weeks
at a time.


Yes, this is another factor to be taken into account--
if a child isn't doing well in a class on these standardized
tests, the *teachers* and *administration* are held accountable.
That's what all this "accountability" stuff means. When you
(the figurative "you") jump on the accountability bandwagon,
that means you are actively transferring *YOUR* responsibilities
(and the privileges that go with them) as a parent to the
teachers and administrators. They're not going to accept being
accountable for your child's performance if they have no
control over what your child does when.

Best wishes,
Ericka

In article ,
toto wrote:

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 01:09:58 -0600, "Vicki"
wrote:

My parents took us out of school for two weeks every winter, right after
xmas holidays. We'd drive down to Mexico and stay 4 weeks. This was our
family vacation and our xmas present. We missed hearing about what everyone
got for xmas, we reconnected with family, got away from the pressure of
teenage groups--helped us keep balanced. And my father got sun, which
reduced his seasonal depression (even tho we didn't know what that was
then,) and this made our winter with him bearable. I think it's hard to
judge accurately what is best for another family. Under the laws now, I
think we'd all have been truants and my parents would have been served
notice. Yee haw. Long live the totalitarian state.

Unfortunately, we had families like this in the high school I taught.

Guess how many did not get the math homework in algebra and geometry
because they missed so much? I'm afraid that I don't believe that
*most* students can afford to miss so much of these classes at least
once they hit middle and high school.




Apparently, this is fairly common in families from Mexico. I've heard
of at least one school district with a substantial percentage of Mexican
families that has altered it's schedle so that they TAKE four weeks off
at this time of year.

Cultural differences in things like this are a challenge in culturally
diverse areas. Unless a school has a certain percentage of Jewish kids,
for example, they don't schedule days off on Jewish Holy Days -- though
those kids are entitled to take the days off. Same for Muslims or
anyone else who is not Christian. Even among Christians, those who
celebrate on Epiphany (12th night) instead of Christmas Day don't get
that day off.

I wish we had a better way to accomodate everyone's needs, both cultural
and religious. In elementary school, if a child is doing well I think
they ought to be able to be more flexible. By high school, I don't see
how a child CAN miss two extra weeks without it having an effect on
thier schooling. But even if the schools WANT to be more flexible,
current political climate is making it more and more difficult.

meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

x-no-archive:yes
"Jenrose" wrote:

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...
Banty wrote:
snip
Our rule is "If you're bored and you tell me, it means you want a job to
do."

That's why most kids won't admit to being bored. I think that
attitude *in school* is kind of counter productive. It is different
for a parent at home who is dealing with the 'I'm booored mom, there's
nothing to do." type thing, and I'm assuming when you say that is your
rule that it is in your role as a parent that you are telling the kids
that.

(Right?)

However, I also believe that children ought to
receive a reasonably appropriate education, and children who are
way out there on the bell curve really aren't being served without
some accommodation. With a little flexibility and willpower,
most gifted kids *can* be accommodated, at least to some degree,
in a normal classroom. I was in a "normal" classroom for all
of elementary school (several different schools) and most of
my teachers were willing to make all sorts of arrangements to
keep me learning in a reasonable way. Sure, I was occasionally
bored, but I don't see that as a downside. However, in most
cases I *was* able to do more than just slog along with
material I'd mastered years before.

This is my pet peeve, and can be summarized by a rant I had with some old
school friends a couple years ago. I said to my friend who is now an English
teacher, "Do you realize that someone taught the class I was in the
difference between nouns and verbs every single year from the time I was in
second grade until I hit 12th grade lit class?"

Another friend who was listening (whose mother *was* an English teacher...)
said, "But I still don't know the difference..."

Either your friend was pulling your chain, or she knows but can't
verbalize it or she had some disability that prevented her from
learning, or she was just so uninterested that she never really tried
to learn.

I knew the difference in 2nd grade, the first time they taught it. She never
did learn. And there is the problem in a nutshell. WHY should a kid who
already has learned something several times over, sit through it one more
time because many kids will *never* get it?

So what would have them do - not let the kids who 'don't get it'
advance with their classes? [With no child left behind good luck on
that] Give up on them ever getting the concept? What should be done
with those kids.

If it is an important concept to get, I would be more concerned with
the kids who don't get it, and would tell those kids who did get it to
stop whining. Or better to offer to help out with those kids who
didn't get it.

same thing in the same way year after year, constantly reviewing, rather
than looking for another method which might work better? An operational
definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over again while
expecting different results.

This isn't so much a *school* problem as an educational establishment
(teachers college) and individual teacher problem. Schools rarely get
into exactly how teachers teach. Some teachers are master teachers
and can present stuff in different ways. Some are journeyman teachers
who do an adequate job, and some are intern or apprentice teachers and
remain so their entire lives, doing it the way they were taught or the
way they started and never changing. Even some teachers that are
highly respected are like that.

The hope would be that the person one had as teacher who failed to
teach the concept last year will be replaced by another person who
uses a different method this year.

I was ready for more challenging work. It took until 7th grade to really get
it--I felt like I spun my wheels from 4th through 6th grades because there
was so darn much repetition. Three wasted years. I would have loved to go

I was quite different - I did not find math, even arithmetic fun or
challenging or easy, although I had no problem with the social
sciences, english or biological science.

into advanced math really young... algebra was fun for me and I adored
calculus--but could not get the school to let me go ahead. It takes me about
1/4 the repetition it takes most people to "get" a math concept--I finally
quit doing homework until the night before a test because it drove me nuts
going over the same things day after day. So I read science fiction books in
class, crammed for the test, and aced it, then promptly forgot what I
learned. I "played the system" and ended up with great grades and *no*

If you forgot what you "learned", then it might have been better for
you to be bored doing stuff over and over so that you would remember
it.
academic discipline.

I think that lack of academic discipline is something that affects
lots of bright people. It cannot be blamed on the schools.

Everyone always told me that I should make an outline and then write
something, and I resisted that. I would write the piece first, and
then make an outline from it. The pieces that didn't fit, I would
rework until it fitted the outline, and then redo the outline etc. I
thought that an outline stifled my creativity. It wasn't until I took
a writing course where I was forced to turn in an outline before I
could have written the article that I finally came to terms with
outlining.

(This was in the days before computers and cut and paste - I used to
type stuff out and then lay it out on the floor and cut it up with
scissors and paste it back together, and then retype.)

What I see today, though, is that while there are
still some teachers/administrations willing to be flexible
and make these accommodations, much of the flexibility has
disappeared. I'm not sure why that is. Some is due to
these accountability and standardization programs. Some
may well be due to other factors. And, of course, I'm
sure there are many people who *do* find acceptable
accommodations and are reasonably happy with the results.
I do seem to hear from more people now, however, that
they've tried to find reasonable accommodations and
haven't been successful.

There is a *lot* that parents, and especially the child herself or
himself, can
do outside school to develop themselves and supplement their own
learning.
Hobbies, clubs, scouts, outside reading, travel.


Absolutely, and I've always been a big proponent of that.
Still, that doesn't totally excuse allowing school to be a
waste of time when there are usually simple and not-too-intrusive
things to do to alleviate at least *part* of that problem.

If the school funding is cut to the point that they cannot meet other
than minimum goals the blame must be laid at the feet of the voters in
the district. Or it may be that the district can't attract able
teachers due to location or inability to pay. This is not always the
school's fault.

Exactly. One thing a wise teacher allowed me to do was to pretest out of
given units. She'd hand me something else to do if I aced the pretest--and I
usually did.

I took a course once where after I went through the class, I got a
lower grade on the post test than I did on the pretest. (Now this was
not a big difference - I got 48 out of 50 on the pretest and 47 out of
50 on the post test - the questions were virtually the same.) :-{


And, BTW, there's 180 days of school a year, covering only about 2/3 of
a work
day for each day. There's *plenty* of time for that outside school.
IMO by far
most of the reasons parents take their kids out of school for
'enrichment' it's
really a matter of parental convenience such as cheaper travel, etc. I
can
fully understand why schools are cracking down on some of this.

I also agree with that. I don't really get the notion
that every child must be catered to as an individual in every
single way.

I agree with this too. Because the majority of my daughter's education is
interesting and challenging for her, I tell her to suck it up and take it as
a speed challenge when someone gives her an assignment that is ludicrously
easy. Orchestra for example... they handed out a basic music theory
worksheet on note values. She's been playing for 4 years and sightreads
better than most adults. She's got incredible pitch and an innate sense of
rhythm and she's a natural at math and she *knows* this stuff. She griped
about it being too easy, and so I said, "See how fast you can finish it."
She was done within 5 minutes. And then we let the orchestra leader know
that he can feel free to toss extra challenges her way.

Does she have to take orchestra? Maybe it would be better to have her
in some other program.

The other problem with things like this is if the kid begins to feel
superior to other kids who are not as able. dd#2 had some problem
with this with her son who had always played baseball with kids a year
older than he was. When his mom decided to move him back with his age
group he was a whole lot better than almost all of them, so she had to
tell him that if he wasn't trying to do his best, then he was letting
the team down, and that he should always do his best. When he was
able to accept that, his attitude and his performance improved.

If that's your definition of an acceptable
education, homeschool or hire a tutor. (I realize that in
some cases, that really *is* the only way to get any sort
of acceptable education, but that doesn't apply to the
majority of kids.) If you are part of a class, I think
it's reasonable for students and parents to be thoughtful
about the effects of their requests/actions on the teacher
and other students in the class. Some things are just too
intrusive to be reasonable, IMO. Other things, however, are
quite reasonable, and should be implemented wherever necessary
to provide the best education possible.

For me, seeing how incredibly well the teachers manage to bring together a
wide range of skill levels at my daughter's school, it really seems like a
shift to a different model might really help a lot of these classroom
situations. Shouldn't all the kids be getting a richer education?

All kids aren't interested in or capable of absorbing a richer
education.

I have to say that the only times I'm REALLY bored is when I have to
listen and respond to something that's boring - like a story that my
mom has told me many times before. Where it is rude to read a book or
watch TV or compute or do needlepoint or do the crossword puzzle,
because I have to pay attention and be ready to respond. Normally in
school, once I'd figured out where the teacher was going with
something that I knew, I'd just read or think about something else.

As an adult, I've formed the habit (whether the lecture was really
dull or not) of outlining what was said in the text book margins.
(where I owned the text of course) That kept me busy finding where the
same thing or close to the same thing was said in the textbook.

Although in some particularly egregious cases, I have resorted to
making a list of the teacher's mistakes in pronunciations or the
number of times he says some particular pet phrase. I look very busy
and studious as long as no one actually reads what I've written.

grandma Rosalie

On 29 Oct 2003 07:45:10 -0800, Banty wrote:

In article , Donna Metler says...



If you want that much flexibility, homeschool. Or find a private school
which caters to parents. Don't ask a public school to do the work of
homeschooling for you so you can take your child anywhere you want to take
them.


Hear-tell private schools get a lot less of that.

Once a parent has paid dearly for the specific setting and paid the teacher for
his or her curriculum and teaching work out of pocket, the whole
vacation/family/play vs. mean-ol'-inflexible-school outlook changes
considerably!

Amazing what use can be made of summer and spring and holiday and other breaks.
Say - Thanksgiving break is coming right up in a scant few weeks! What a
wonderful time to visit a family member who may not be with the world much

Im a little ambivilant about this. We use a department of defense
school. They dont allow unexcused absences. They do however,
consider the opportunity to travel the continent in which we live
(Europe) a valuable education in and of itself. Therefore, we can
take children out with prearrangement, and I have done so.

Yes, one can travel in the summer and school facations, but that
doesnt always work with our parent schedules, or with the crowds. So
I would say I have taken my son out about two weeks in the past year.
It has been well worth it. We do the planned assignments in advance,
and it has never been a probleem.

Barb
longer.

Banty

In article ,
Penny Gaines wrote:

Banty wrote in :

Amazing what use can be made of summer and spring and holiday and other
breaks.
Say - Thanksgiving break is coming right up in a scant few weeks! What a
wonderful time to visit a family member who may not be with the world much
longer.

Doesn't that depend on whether you think the relative will still be around
for Thanksgiving? If they are really ill, maybe that four weeks is too long
to wait.

I would add that the four days we got off for Thanksgiving might not be
enough time. At least for me, getting TO my relatives takes a full day
and costs a lot of money; spending the $$ to spend only two days there
is problematic. However, by adding 3 days out of school and work, one
could travel on a Saturday, stay for a full week, and travel back on a
Sunday.

meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

writes:

One tends to hear of very bright primary-age children being good at
mathematics/sciences rather than literature, and I wondered if that was
because some aspects of literature are closed to prepubescents? One cannot
imagine children making much of (say) 'The Flea' or 'To his Coy Mistress',
even if they understand the words and even the concepts. Or am I completely
wrong?

My cynical thinking on this is that the math talents are less ignore-able than
the reading. For one thing, kids who read at a high level don't always read at
their highest level -- I read plenty of Ruth Chew (easy readers, but very
well-written and good stories) at the same time as I was reading William Mayne
or Elizabeth Enright or Frances Hodgson Burnett, or for that matter dipping
into Dickens and Charlotte Bronte. For another, lots of people think of all
"children's books" (that aren't obviously easy readers, nor yet big thick
things with small print) at about the same level. They have NO CLUE how much
harder _Tom Sawyer_ is than _The Bobbsey Twins_. Furthermore, you get the "oh,
s/he may enjoy it, but s/he doesn't REALLY UNDERSTAND what s/he's reading, does
s/he?"

With math, if a kid says, "It's my birthday in 5 days, so I'm 6 years and
360/365ths, which is seventy-two seventy-thirds," you can't very well ignore
it. (I made up this example, not having a good math story to hand.)

Oh, and a lot of people think math is "real" and reading is just stories, so it
Doesn't Count.

However, it does happen that some teachers are much more interested in the
early readers than the early calculators (given that many teachers in the early
grades are much less interested in math than in reading), and are more likely
to suggest that a child who reads a lot may be gifted.

Children's early creative writing, too, is often put down as just being
imitative, or as indicating "a great imagination," but not real brains. Plus,
you need a certain amount of background to get anywhere with history. I can
remember one of my daughters asking the most acute questions about the US
electoral system, at the same time as she had difficulty remembering which war
her grandfather fought in -- she rather thought it was the Civil War.

--Helen