AJ's Clubhouse

New Gifted Blog

2011-01-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

The Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University has started a new blog, "Talent Talk." Click here to check it out.

Making Connections, Creating Opportunities

2010-12-03T09:50:00.001-08:00

When AJ isn’t worried about being persecuted for doing extra homework, I think he really enjoys Latin. He seems particularly interested in the ways in which Latin intersect with real life. I’ve been going out of my way to point out Latin roots, not just in our Latin lessons but also when we’re reading out loud or even watching TV. AJ was reading one of his 90 gazillion books about space the other night and he got a look on his face that suggested a bulb had just burned on over his head. “Mom, does ‘astronaut’ mean ‘sailor to the stars’? Because it sounds like astra and nauta.” Exactly right, AJ. Suddenly language is seeming more meaningful to him, imbued with history and poetry.

At our parent-teacher conference last week, I mentioned to his teacher that I’m teaching him Latin at home and this week his spelling list was drawn from words related by common Latin and Greek roots. Coincidence? Maybe. AJ’s not the only kid that gets the challenge words. But they weren’t the words on the regular challenge list. I think she made the list because she knew we’d been working on it. Big points for the teacher in my book.

Yesterday, when we sat down to do Latin, I could tell AJ was tired and not so into it. I turned to the next story and he groaned. It was long. We started to translate, but he was getting frustrated with all the new vocabulary and with the fact that he kept forgetting some of the little words that come up all the time. I slammed the book shut. “Let’s try something different.”

We’ve been flying through the textbook and are nearly done with it already. He picks things up so fast that it’s easy to do, but with language, you need processing time. I think it’s time to slow down and try some new things.

I sat down at the kitchen counter and wrote out the words to the first verse of “Adeste Fidelis.”

“Do you recognize this, AJ?”

“Hmm. I think it looks kind of familiar.”

“I’ll sing it for you. Maybe it will sound familiar.”

So I sang the verse. He recognized it, but didn’t remember the words in English or in Latin. I turned him loose to translate it. He’d had almost all the vocabulary. I just had to coach him through the imperative verb forms. He wrote his translation out. Then I wrote out how we sing the carol in English and we talked about some of the things you need to do when translating poetry or song lyrics that are different than just a straight translation. He was fascinated.

And then we sang it together, first in English, then in Latin.

“Are we done?” he asked when we finished.

“Yup.”

“That was more fun than regular Latin. Can we do it again?”

Lucky for me there are plenty of Latin carols to draw on this month. And as soon as we dig out the Christmas decorations, we’ll work on my Latin copy of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. That’s going to blow his mind.

* * * * *

Yesterday’s study session was at an interesting intersection between a couple of different trains of thought I’ve been pursuing this week. One is an email exchange I had with our school district’s curriculum director. I’d sent her a link to a project of the Society for American Music that seeks to help teachers to use music in teaching American History. They are running a training institute this summer and have already got a website up with helpful links and suggestions for specific ways to incorporate specific pieces into history curricula. The site will eventually have lesson plans as well. I’m really excited about this project, as was the curriculum director. At a juncture where many schools are axing their music programs, this kind of approach seems very promising. If I can teach music in Latin, surely we can teach it in History. How else can we blend the arts into the mainstream public school curriculum?

It also came up in my meeting this morning with the director of the gifted ed program at the local community college. We were sitting down to brainstorm ideas for bringing extra-curricular classes into our public school district and were considering waysto construct classes that would a) appeal to a lot of kids, b) be rigorous enough that parents would pay for it but would also c) be fun enough that the kids would be enthusiastic to functionally extending their school day. So we were thinking: what makes classes fun? Mixing the arts into other subjects is one of the things we came up with.

I’m not sure I really have a point here. If I do, it’s maybe that it’s easy for us musicians (and educators too) to think of the arts as an end in itself, but it they are also valuable as a methodology. AJ got both language and music yesterday. And history too, because I took the opportunity to talk about classical Latin vs. church Latin when he asked why there were so many Christmas carols in Latin.

However, I’m not sure how I’m going to explain Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit.

Problem Solving

2010-10-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

Our district still hasn't managed to work out the extra-curricular after-school program for gifted kids that they'd said they'd put in place, so I've been researching other alternatives that could be volunteer run. I have come across several team problem solving competitions that sound intriguing.
Two of them are international:

Destination Imagination

Odyssey of the Mind

And one is for the state of Illinois:

Future Problem Solving Bowl

There are several things that appeal to me about these programs.

1. It's not school work, but it draws on things kids need to know in school.
2. The problems require multiple skills, which encourages them to work in teams where members have different strengths
3. There's a social component.
4. It sounds really fun.

Does anyone know anything about these programs? I am wondering how difficult they might be to implement at our schools.

Science videos from NPR

2010-10-11T08:59:00.001-07:00

Last week, my mom pointed out a video she thought AJ would like at National Public Radio's site. We liked it so much, that we went in search of others. Here is our catalog of science videos by NPR commentator Robert Krulwich collaborating with cartoonist Odd Todd.

How Much does a Hurricane Weigh?

A five part series on carbon and its role in global warming:

Carbon 1
Carbon 2
Carbon 3
Carbon 4
Carbon 5

Ants that count

The Crow Paradox

How much heat can you take?

All of these videos are informative and fun to watch. Our only complaint is that there aren't more of them.

Midterms

2010-10-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

For the first time ever, we got a midterm report from AJ's teacher. We are continuing to learn that AJ's teacher this year doesn't do things like everybody else. While some kids are struggling with that, AJ seems to be thriving. He is taking greater responsibility for his work and is less inclined to take the easy way out. We are still seeing some mighty basic math homework a lot of the time, but not all the time. AJ, who has brought home straight As since he started getting grades, actually seemed proud of his grades this term. I think he had to work for some of them. And I think he's starting to learn that working means you're doing okay, that you're not supposed to know everything before you start. If the only thing AJ gets out of this year is the message that working is worthwhile, then the year will be a success as far as I'm concerned.

There were three other areas of note that came out of the midterm report.

1. AJ's teacher had the students evaluate their own progress, and their self-assessments were included with the midterm report. I asked AJ about it and he said it was really hard to do. He did, however, offer a fairly accurate assessment in most areas. Although I did think that his high rating on listening in class was undercut by the five warning slips also included (these were handed out throughout the year to date), as each one was for talking in class. He's his mother's son, for sure.

2. As I mentioned in a post at the beginning of the summer, AJ's school has adopted the Accelerated Reader program for guided reading. This involves standardized tests for level assessment. Each book a student reads for independent or in-class free reading is assigned a number of points based on length and difficulty. After each book is completed, the student takes a computerized test of 10-20 questions about the book. The questions are quite detailed and it is not uncommon for students to have to test more than once. After a successful test (which I believe is defined as 80% or higher, although I'm not sure about this), points are assigned to the students account. If the student gets all the questions right, they get full points. If they miss a question or two, they'll lose a few points. Students need to accumulate a certain number of points in their accounts each trimester. The idea is to motivate students to read and to encourage them to read more challenging books, which garner them more points. Readers with greater ability will be expected to earn more points per term than those who are still struggling with the basics.

In principle, I think this program can work. But the book level system is highly flawed, as I mentioned in my previous post on lexiles. AJ's teacher is using book level rather than lexile number. They are basically different ways of stating the same information. The book level is defined by grade level. For instance, a book that is deemed a good reading level for an average fourth grader in the middle of the year will be level 4.5 (month 5 of fourth grade).

Up until now, they've been able to read whatever books they like. But the Midterm Report informed us that from here on out, the only books that would count toward the point totals are the ones that fall within their reading range. AJ's level has been determined to be between 4.5 and 8.9. I'd say that's probably about right in terms of ability. It's better than it could have been -- he's testing at an advanced high school level. The problem is, he likes to read a lot of books that are in the 3.8-4.4 range.

The latest example: Diary of a Wimpy Kid was assessed at 5.2, nearly a grade level above Adam Rex's The True Meaning of Smekday, a much more challenging book from both the standpoint of vocabulary and subject matter, which is registered as 4.5. Smekday was just barely inside AJ's reading level. It's his favorite book at the moment. If it were one point down, he wouldn't have been allowed to read it. If any of you has read both of these books, can you explain the book leveling? It's a mystery to me.

I'm all for pushing AJ to challenge himself with reading. I think he often cops out of things that are a little harder than he's used to because he's afraid he won't succeed. But the book levels seem so random to me that I'm not sure of the value of the cutoff. The AR program does try to acknowledge age appropriateness with their book search system as a separate category from reading ability, for which I commend them, but as I pointed out in my previous post on the subject, the age assignments are frequently random (although not as downright inappropriate as some of the things we found on lexile.com).

I'm a little concerned that AJ is feeling like his book choices are not good enough, like his reading is not up to par because many of the books he likes are below his assigned level. In order to encourage him, this weekend I took him to the bookstore to pick out a new reading book. He came home with Pseudonymous Bosch's The Name of This Book is Secret (book level 5.6). He is loving it and is excited that there are more in the series. So we're good for now, at least.

3. We discovered a really not-so-good result of the school day that is now 45 minutes shorter than it was last year thanks to budget cuts: they can't teach science and social studies at the same time. They are alternating science and social studies units. How can kids not have both subjects all the time? I read Obama's sweeping statements about the education reforms that we need, about having a longer school year, blah blah blah. I have one thing to say to him: Show me the money.

Afterschooling update

2010-09-09T16:00:00.003-07:00

With bigger classes, no gifted and a shorter school day, AJ and I decided to do some after school homeschooling. While some of it involves enhancing his daily lessons especially in math, most of our time is spent on learning a new language.

The language AJ picked was Latin. I’m not sure why he decided Latin was a good one but I was happy about it because a) I had Latin in school and b) I’ve been wanting to relearn the grammar, which I seem to have largely forgotten.

I have to admit, I did not do a whole lot of research into curriculum. The homeschool pages recommending Latin curricula were almost entirely including Latin for religious reasons. And that’s just not us.

Instead, I picked the Cambridge Latin Course. I used the course in high school Latin myself and I already owned the first two books of the series, which saves us some big bucks. Plus their website has some helpful tools on it, including games and self-quizzes for every chapter. A warning, though, to those who use Chrome as their browser of choice: some of the components are not compatible. We switch to Firefox before heading to the site.

We’ve also located some online flashcards for the series, which let AJ study vocabulary on his own.

I’ve already written a little about what I like about Cambridge Latin. I was a little nervous about using it with a 9-year-old, but it seems to be working out well. He likes the humor of the stories – yesterday he learned how to say “dirty poem” (versus scurrilis!). I like the way the stories keep circling back on vocabulary so it’s easy to learn. And we both like reading the culture sections.

I wasn’t sure how the grammar issue was going to go. AJ’s had some Spanish in an after school program, but it was strictly conversational and largely aural/oral. They didn’t discuss things like conjugation or even much about masculine/feminine/neuter. But the book explains grammar so logically, with one main point per chapter (or “Stage” as they call it), that AJ is all over it.

The book is very translation oriented like many Latin books. But to keep AJ interested, we’ve been reading out loud and doing some of the translations orally, others written. I agonized for a while about pronunciation. In school, I studied classical Latin. But I’ve spent much more time as a singer working with church Latin so in the end, that’s what I decided to teach. I’m more familiar with it and less likely to make mistakes. And really, it doesn’t matter. I’m more concerned with giving him a connection to the language than about what it really sounds like.

Every chapter ends with an exercise that includes a list of English words with roots based on the chapter’s Latin vocabulary. You have to match the English words with their definitions. We’ve been using these exercises as a springboard to talk about English vocabulary, which has been fun. I’m not sure where I’m going with it. AJ’s been really interested in the Scripp’s Spelling bee, so maybe we’ll work on some vocabulary/spelling games as well.

So, so far,so good. I’m liking our afterschooling routine. Even with football practices every night, it seems to be working.

Executive Function

2010-09-08T10:35:00.000-07:00

Normally at this time of year, I post about our back to school experiences with gifted at AJ’s school. But this year, there’s not a whole lot to tell, at least not yet. They’ve been in school for two weeks now, but there is still not a lot coming home and they are about to launch into round one of standardized testing (STAR and MAP) for the year.

But while I can’t talk much about academics, there is one thing I am definitely happy with about school, and that’s about the way his teacher is teaching study skills.

Like many gifted kids, AJ has some problems with what psychologists like to call “executive function.” To say he is not good at organizing himself is an understatement. He has classic absent-minded-professor syndrome. He forgets things. He loses things. He starts on one task and gets distracted by some shiner more exciting thing in the middle and forgets what he was doing. We have tried and tried to help him with routines and lists but nothing has worked. But this year, things are better, at least as far as schoolwork goes.

There are two reasons that AJ himself has identified for the improvement. One is actually a result of the overcrowded classes: no desks. Because they sit at tables instead of desks, AJ can’t shove stuff in there never to be seen again. Instead of desks, they keep their important stuff in fabric pockets that go over the backs of their chairs. These pockets are small and you can see everything in them, so there’s nowhere for things to hide. Most supplies are shared by the tables, so they are stored in a shared space and don’t get lost either.

The second tool, though, is something that is actually part of the curriculum: The Binder. The binder organizes all their school work. The teacher talks to them about it, let them decorate the cover, and showed them how to put it together. It’s an awesome tool. But mostly I just love that the teacher is backing up what we try to do at home. In the past, we’ve given AJ a calendar and a folder system to help him remember his homework, but without the teacher helping him with it at school, it failed.

The front pocket is for parent-teacher communication only. Inside the 3 rings, there is a zip pocket for money – both the real money that goes back and forth to school and the fake money that AJ’s teacher uses for certain types of rewards. We’re not quite sure what happens with the fake money yet, but AJ is already loaded. After the pocket are several pages of sheet protectors containing the monthly lunch menu, the weekly spelling list, and any other lists of terms to be studied. Next is an assignment book with a page for every week. Each day, the students write in their homework in each subject and other due dates and tests. Each time they finish an assignment, they check it off. Parents sign off on it weekly. After the assignment is a red Velcro pocket folder. This is where the daily assignments travel home to get completed and put back in the folder for the return trip. After this are several divided sections, each with its own stash of lined paper. So far these haven’t been much used, except for the daily journal section, which includes a story the class is writing one sentence at a time each day and a sheet protector with a list and explanation of the parts of speech on one side and a list of proofreading marks on the other.

Thanks to this binder, AJ always knows where his homework is and we always know what he’s supposed to do. It’s not up to his memory. It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful now, and it will be even more wonderful when he heads to middle school next year and has more responsibilities.

How about you, parents/teachers: do your children struggle with organization? What are some of the tools in your box?

Book Review: Steven Caney, Steven Caney’s Ultimate Building Book

2010-08-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

Book Review:

Steven Caney, Steven Caney’s Ultimate Building Book
Philadelphia: Running Press Kids, 2006

A couple of weeks ago at the library, AJ and I may have stumbled on the best book ever written. Or at least “the coolest book ever written,” says AJ.

Steven Caney’s Ultimate Building Book has it all. It’s entertaining. It’s interesting. It’s philosophical. It encourages free thinking and free play. And if you were stranded on a desert island, it might even help you survive. If you had a whole stack of these books, for instance, you could build a shelter with them, as books do a good job at withstanding compression (see pages 354-355).

The Ultimate Building Book is extremely comprehensive. It’s a big book and might be daunting if it weren’t so engagingly written. The first part of the book covers all kinds of structures, large and small. It discusses the different people involved in building and offers an overview of architectural style and history, not just of buildings, but of many kinds of structures. There’s a section on architecture in nature – how animals build things and what we can learn from them. And there’s a big discussion on tools, which doesn’t just talk about things in your toolbox. I found all of this very interesting to read and especially enjoyed some of the sidebars, particularly one discussing the bridges of Merritt Parkway, which I loved as a child growing up in Connecticut, and another telling the story of the town of Roosevelt, NJ, which I knew nothing about but am now completely fascinated with. . There are also chapters on style and scale, on invention and inspiration (and how to find it).

The second half of the book, though, is where AJ’s attention is firmly focused. It’s all about projects. Many of the projects relate to the architectural and construction ideas introduced in the first section. In the books introduction, the author says he had originally set out to write a book about making toys out of common building sets, and some of this is in evidence in the projects. But many of the projects use creative, cheap materials that are often easy to scavenge at home. There’s an entire chapter on building out of rolled up newspapers. Many of the projects use basic geodesic dome construction technology. Some of the projects are things I’ve seen before, but most are new. I was particularly taken with a set of giant Lincoln logs made out of cardboard paper towel tubes filled with expandable insulating foam. And I am seriously considering building the small greenhouse made out of PVC pipes for my garden. AJ has his eye on another PVC pipe project, a sort of sculptural sprinkler made out of a crazy array of capped pipes with holes drilled into them at a few key places. There are Rube Goldberg machines and marble tracks. There are forts and games and puzzles. There are a whole bunch of projects made out of food, including dominos made out of crackers and M and Ms, totem poles made out of fruit, and a set of building blocks made out of Jello and ice cube trays. And there are some remarkable projects made out of nothing but coat hangers and zip ties.

At the end of the book is an appendix “For Parents and Other Teachers” that talk more about the projects, the building sets he refers to and how to buy and use toys to maximize open-ended play.

I cannot put this book down. It’s overdue at the library, because every time I pick it up to take it back, I end up sitting down to read something. Then I have to show it to AJ and we end up getting up and doing some project or another. This book has made us look differently at the things in our house and at the house itself. Although we’re already somewhat prone to environmental consciousness, this book has inspired us to find new ways to use things we might otherwise have thrown away. This is why I think it may be the best book ever written. It has inspired us, given us tools, spurred us to action. This is what books for children should be. This is what any good book should be.

I regret that I have only two thumbs to give to this book. Maybe if I constructed some gigantic skyscraper-like prosthetic thumbs out of cardboard tubes and glue, my review would come across with a more accurate level of enthusiasm.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go convince my husband to let the grass grow a little so we can make a maze in our back yard. The instructions are on page 556-557.

Book Review: Belly Up by Stuart Gibbs

2010-08-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, AJ found that he had some money left on a bookstore gift card and we headed off to spend it. After wandering through the bookstore for a while, he ended up with a book neither of us had ever heard of before, Belly Up by Stuart Gibbs. AJ was attracted to the large cartoon hippo lying on its back with its legs in the air and xes for eyes. Clearly this was a book about a dead hippo.

But it's much more interesting than that. Belly Up is a terrific murder mystery that keeps you guessing until the bitter end. It takes place in a zoo and is full of interesting information about animals and zoos, which AJ loves. But what he loves even more is that it is funny. Teddy is a smart and somewhat cynical 12-year-old kid, the son of the Funjungle's resident ape expert and wildlife photographer, who suspects the recent death of the zoo's mascot was no accident. Teaming up with the celebrity daughter of the zoo's wealthy owner -- and with a little help from mom and dad -- Teddy sets out to find out how Henry the Hippo really died.

Belly Up is Gibbs' first book and it's a good one. It's also a particularly good one for gifted readers, I think, because it's a smart and interesting story and the vocabulary is more complicated than you often see for this age group. That said, some reviewers at Amazon have expressed discomfort with some of the language, which includes some minor swearing. Personally, I didn't find anything too egregious but if you are the kind of parent who is less tolerant of that kind of language, you might want to preread the book and see what you think.

My one beef with this book is the editing. It is possibly the worst copyedited book I have ever read. And that's saying something. There were so many extra words and omitted words, that it detracted from the story. AJ and I were reading it together and it got to the point that when we'd sit down to read, AJ would say "how many mistakes do you think we'll find tonight?" The most problematic of the errors is when one of the minor animal characters changes it's name in one chapter from Henrietta Hippo to Hildegarde. I was half tempted to mark up the book and send it back to the publisher. This author deserves a better showing than this. It's a terrific story well told. The book's quality should match the work the author has clearly done.

But if you can get past the errors in the text, AJ and I each give Belly Up two thumbs up. We hope there may be a sequel, or at least another book, from Gibbs in the not-too-distant future.

2010-08-16T20:29:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Hoagies Gifted, some timely advice to pass on to your kids' teachers about how to integrate gifted kids into a mainstream classroom.

The article doesn't present anything you don't probably already know, but it's a nice succinct list with links to articles for further reading about each topic. Many of these are useful for parents as well as teachers.

The 10 ways to integrate gifted children into the classroom are::

1. Learn to identify your gifted students
2. Communicate with your gifted students' parents and previous teachers
3. Understand it may be harmful for gifted students not to be academically challenged
4. Go beyond test prep
5. Use cluster groupings
6. Create open ended assignments
7. Maintain a positive social atmosphere
8. Encourage pursuit of outside interests
9. Offer praise for hard work instead of level of knowledge
10. Make good use of modern technology.

Classics

2010-08-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

Last night I checked the school website for the first time in months. I noticed there was still a link for gifted, even though the program has been eliminated by budget cuts. I clicked it.

“Due to budget cuts, the gifted program has been eliminated. Any differentiation for students will come solely from the child's classroom teacher. If you have any questions you can contact XX, former gifted resource teacher.” The former gifted resource teacher will be teaching fifth grade this year. At another school.

In a week and a half, AJ will start fourth grade. We've decided to leave him in his current school and grade, at least for now. It will be his fifth and last year at his elementary school (our district starts middle school in grade 5). It’s the first year we will have no formal assistance with his curriculum, the first year class sizes will top 30 (AJ’s grade will be one of the most overcrowded at 34 per class), the first year with a 5.75 hour day instead of 6.5 hours. We don’t really know what to expect out of this year or even what to hope for in terms of teachers. There are just too many wild cards.

On Wednesday, the class lists will go up and on Thursday, we’ll be meeting with whoever will be AJ’s teacher for the next nine months. At this point, it’s kind of a formality. The school has an enormous file on AJ. But it makes sure that the teacher’s seen that file and lets us get a sense of what to expect and how we might be able to help with his curriculum. And the preparation for the meeting gives us a chance to think about what we want AJ to accomplish this year. Now that AJ’s getting over, I want to include him in some of the thinking. What does he want to accomplish? Does he want to do some projects? Learn something new? Have more time to practice piano or make some art?

We are trying to view this period of change as an opportunity. The shortened day gives us time to do more work at home, which may ultimately be a good thing. I've always thought a combination of public and home school would be good for him and now we have a chance to try it. I suggested to AJ that we work on a foreign language and he picked Latin. He’s had some Spanish, so he’s able to read some basics already. Thanks to Percy Jackson, he’s interested in mythology, which we’ve approached to date solely from the Greek side. But he knows the Roman names from his interest in astronomy. His fascination with all things disaster led him to do some reading about Pompeii, so he knows a little about the culture from there.

Although Latin is not my strongest language – I had several years of it in high school, but didn’t much pursue it beyond the Latin I use as a musician or during the time I was a music director for a schismatic Catholic church that did the pre-Vatican II Mass where everything was Latin but the homily. But I didn’t have to think twice about a textbook. We’re using the wonderful Cambridge Latin Course, which unlike many Latin texts, teaches it as if it’s a living language. There is a ton of cultural information in the books and lots of beautiful pictures. Although I used the book in high school, there is nothing here inappropriate for a bright nine-year-old. Best of all, the series’ website (see link above) includes online activities for the books, including a feature called “explore the text” which lets you read the texts in the book with the option of clicking on any word to get a definition. These materials are free. If you’re not confident enough teach Latin yourself, there’s even a distance learning option for a fee. We had our first lesson today. I’m hoping it holds his interest. We’ll let you know how it goes!

The Horned Dilemma

2010-07-13T11:14:00.000-07:00

I realize things have been quiet over here for a while. It’s not for lack of subject matter. I have a whole lot of posts planned, including one on teaching critical thinking, one on the challenges of encouraging both good work habits and creativity in gifted kids, one on this fascinating article on the decline in creativity, and a book review.

But we at Spy Headquarters have been wrestling with both the serious illness of a close family member and some pretty big decisions regarding AJ’s education. Six weeks before school starts again, we still don’t know what we’re doing. And so it’s been hard getting my head out of that place.

I know, I know. You all have been reading about our school woes for months. But we’re getting down to the wire and here’s where we are:

Gifted School. We are lucky to live not too far from a school that serves as a model for gifted education to the country. I visited several months ago and was absolutely blown away by what they do there. Their facilities are not impressive – they are housed in a former public library with overflow into a strip mall next door and it doesn’t offer ideal functionality. It’s a little crowded and shabby in places. But all the things you want to see in a school that really matter are there – great and enthusiastic teachers, engaged and happy students from a wide variety of backgrounds. An incredible curriculum. But there are two things standing in our way and they are large. The lesser of the two is the commute, which would require us to spend roughly 2.5 hours a day in our car schlepping AJ to and from school, unless we moved or opted to spend the day in the library near the school. The bigger of the two is the price: about $18K/year. The second one is a deal breaker. We simply can’t afford it. If someone offered him a free ride, I would figure out a way to make the logistics work. It has been universally recommended by everyone from the psychologist who did his IQ testing to his school gifted teacher to the Elite University that first tested him and which runs gifted enrichment programs. But even if I had the money to pay for it, I’d have to think about whether it might be better spent taking AJ places – to Egypt, where his uncle and family will be moving in a few weeks, to Europe – and learning what he could in that way. $18,000, as an old friend would say, is a lot of samoleans. That’s more than my annual salary my first year out of college (which was, admittedly, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth). This option has been ruled out for the moment. We may try to apply this fall and see what kind of aid we get for the following year.

Catholic School. Early on we considered the Catholic school in our town, but quickly ruled it out. Class-sizes were large, the curriculum was unremarkable, and the religious practice too archaic. But a week or so ago we visited a school a couple of towns away. This school has won a major national award, one that is not easy for a school to get. It’s also in a different and less freakishly conservative diocese than our town. The town itself is one of the wealthiest in the state and has an excellent public school system (it, too, is having financial woes at the moment, although not as bad as ours). Their facilities are great and their technology and technology instruction the best of any of the schools we looked at, with interactive whiteboards in every classroom and a huge computer lab with all computers less than a year old. The teachers have great reputations and the curriculum is more advanced than our public school and includes a number of things that the public school does not offer: Spanish, music, art, computer class, etc. Class sizes are smaller. There is a certain amount of differentiation built into the system. Each grade has three teachers: two classroom teachers and a resource teacher. For reading and math, the students within a grade are divided into three levels, with each of the teachers taking one level. The downside: no gifted education and the differentiation that’s built in might not be enough. And there’s still tuition to be paid, although it’s more like $5500. A lot, but at least something I can imagine scraping together somehow. This morning I talked to the parent of two children who’ve attended the school. Next year, she’s taking the older one out and putting her in her public school’s gifted program (which is unusually good – they have self-contained magnet programs starting in third grade). I talked to her about why she liked the school and why she was taking her child out and what she would do if the public school program weren’t an option. She felt the school would be better than the public school, but that getting what you need for your child depends entirely on the willingness of an individual teacher to differentiate. She was strongly advocating in our position advocating for a grade skip. She thought a grade skip plus the built in differentiation would be a decent substitute for a gifted school.

Public school. The pluses: it’s free and it’s close and all of AJ’s friends go there. And while there’s no gifted program and few amenities, after four years there, I know how to get things done. So I wouldn’t have to start over with another system. They are adding built in differentiation in math next year, which should help with our biggest problem. The day will be short, so there will be an extra hour available for homeschooling to make up for deficiencies in the program. The downside: no gifted, no art, no music, no gym, no foreign language, huge classes, no money and probably more cuts coming. I come back to the possibility of grade skipping. In fifth grade there is a stand-alone gifted classroom. Classes are still large, but he’d be with kids closer to his level. But is acceleration the right thing for him?

Mr. Spy and I are really on the fence about acceleration. If AJ were a girl, I’d probably jump in and do it. But there are several reasons why I’m concerned. The first is the sports issue. AJ loves sports. LOVES them. He is dying to be old enough to be on a school team – it’s one of the things that excites him most about going to one of the private schools, because they have teams starting in grade 4. But if he skips a grade, somewhere down the line he’s not going to be able to play because he’ll be too small for his grade. For a child who thinks of himself as an athlete, this could be a real problem. The second is that his gifted teacher, while certain he could handle a skip academically, was concerned about his maturity. More specifically, she was concerned that he is not always confident enough to speak up about things and usually waits for someone else to say something or for someone to ask him directly, to force him to respond. He’s a follower in class, not a leader. And she thinks that to survive with older kids, he needs to be more of a leader.
And so we’re really pretty much where we started. Except that school starts in a few short weeks. I keep waiting for a sign telling us what to do. It feels important this decision. We’re at a crossroads and the road we want to take is closed. So now we’re left guessing which of the remaining roads will get us to the destination most quickly, or most enjoyably.

The Lexile Problem

2010-06-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, at my annual year-end meeting with our school’s principal to talk about transitioning AJ into the next teacher, he mentioned AJ’s latest MAP test scores. “Have you seen his scores?” he asked me. At that time, I had not. “They are very high. I mean, VERY high.”

AJ’s school started MAP testing this year and AJ loves it because it challenges him. Although I am generally not a fan of the rapid increase in frequency of standardized testing – there were four testing periods this year, each lasting over a week – I think the nature of the MAP has helped teachers understand AJ a little better. If nothing else, it’s demonstrated to the school, using a tool it knows and trusts, that he needs individualization in class.

The MAP, which stands for “Measures of Academic Progress” is a computer-based self-leveling test administered by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA). You can read what NWEA has to say about it here. The test is designed to be administered to all grades K-12 – it’s not limited by grade-level editions, so kids with advanced skills can go as far as their brains will take them. This can be an advantage, although the farther you go, the more concentration is required. This is sometimes a problem for younger kids with advanced skills, so the scores at the upper levels of the test are not always reliable. In one educators’ board where I was reading about the test, a teacher was saying that not all gifted kids turned up in the 98th percentile or higher on both reading and math, but most did in one or the other. And some liked the test for kids with test phobias or certain types of learning disabilities, because the test isn’t timed. Students can take as long as they want to figure out the answers to the questions. The test ends after they’ve made a certain number of errors.

Schools have the option to take the test multiple times during the year and most do, because this allows them to gauge student progress. AJ’s school takes it once each trimester. The repetition of the testing allows teachers to get a number for “student growth” -- the difference of the scores between test iterations. With the final report card, we got a printout of all AJs scores and a number that represents his growth in each segment of the test – in the case of AJ’s school, there are scores for Math and for Reading.

AJ’s math scores are very high, but his growth was lower than average. This is typical of kids performing at the high end. And his pattern of growth was a zig-zag – the second trimester’s score was lower than the first, but the third was the highest of the three. I expect the math scores are generally less high as compared to the reading scores, because these tests are achievement tests, not aptitude tests. In order to get a really high score, you would probably need to have had some exposure to the topics it deals with. AJ’s score suggests that he correctly answered some questions about algebra and geometry, which he’s never studied. But that’s where he topped out. At some point you need to know the rules and may not be able to just figure things out.

The reading scores were a different story. He started high, in the 99th percentile and still made steady upward progress. His final score was well into the zone expected for a high school senior. His growth score was also more than 4 times the norm for his grade. The difference in growth between math and reading is, I think, partly a function of the way he has learned language skills (largely on his own and at home) versus math (mostly at school). I also think the school has done a better job at meeting his needs in reading. He hasn't been getting much above-level math, so it's not surprising he didn't progress as much there.

For reading, there is an additional score, the lexile. The lexile is a measure that teachers use for assigning reading. Huge numbers of books are given a lexile score or range. Armed with your child’s lexile number, you can go to lexile.com and look up books that might be appropriate for his/her reading level. AJ’s lexile was surprisingly close to the maximum possible score on a test designed for K-12.

And this is where things get complicated for a kid like AJ. AJ’s school has just started a new reading program where students are supposed to read a certain number of books from their lexile range. So I went to lexile.com and typed in his number. I came up with a long list of books, many of which appeared on my college and graduate school reading lists. The Confessions of St. Augustine. Assorted works of Walter Benjamin. Novels by Faulkner and Joyce. John Donne’s sermons. The biography of composer Anton Webern written by one of my former professors was deemed on the low end of his lexile range. This made me laugh. Hard. AJ may be able to handle the vocabulary in these books, but there’s no way he’s ready to really read them (I’m not sure I’m even ready to read some of them), nor do I think he’d be likely to have any interest in them. He just finished the third grade. He thought the Marmaduke movie was funny. There's more to books than a lexile score. Does the lexile even mean anything?

Fortunately, lexile.com allows you to cross-reference by the age of the reader. Unfortunately, though, most of the books are miscategorized or not categorized at all, so the age limitation is pretty useless. A search of fiction for ages 9-15, for instance turned up only 25 books, several of which would have been inappropriate (Harold Bloom’s biography of Stephen King, for instance). And a number of appropriate books from the full list – Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events books, for example – didn’t appear on the age-limited list. Moreover, some of the books had puzzling age ranges applied to them. Why, for instance, is the very academic book African-American Women’s Health and Social Issues, edited by Catherine Fisher Collins, labeled for ages 8 to 12?

I am working under the assumption that the school will not hold to AJ’s lexile range. While I’m certainly open to him reading as broadly as he wants to, I don’t see the point in him reading things that his experience will not allow him to understand just because the book has the correct number. For kids like AJ, it is a real challenge to find books that challenge their reading and thinking skills, but which also engage them by being well suited to their experience and interests.

So what’s a parent to do?

1. Get recommendations. Ask teachers, ask friends, search the boards at Hoagie's Gifted. A few years ago Freshhell and I started making a list of books that worked for our kids. We’ve continued to update the list with things our own kids have read and suggestions from others, including many readers here. You can find the list here. There’s also a permanent link to it in the sidebar. It's a list I turn to again and again.

2. Preread. When he was younger, I used to preread all of AJ’s books. Now I can’t keep up with his speed, so it’s lucky for me that he’s old enough that he can find his own books. But prereading let me figure out where problem areas might be so that I could be prepared to discuss them. For instance, when he was reading a book that took place in the Civil Rights era, I didn't want him reading the word "colored" without context and without talking about racial language. It turned out, though, that AJ totally didn't understand the term had anything to do with race. He figured the character that someone called "colored" had tattoos (he was 6 at the time). I was glad to be able to help him understand the story, but I also was reminded that kids reading books that are out of their experience often either gloss over or reconfigure the things they don't understand to fit in with what they know.

3. Read together. We are big on social reading in this house. At bedtime, Mr. Spy reads with him first and then I do. Sometimes AJ wants to read out loud for a while. Sometimes I do all of it. Currently, AJ and I are reading Roger Lancelyn Green’s The Tale of Troy, which is a retelling of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey that I loved as a kid. The vocabulary is pretty challenging (and a little old-fashioned), there are a lot of unfamiliar names, and a lot of references to the culture of ancient Greece that AJ doesn’t know about. Reading the book together lets us talk about some of the unfamiliar words and fill in the background. I’m also able to connect the dots to the Percy Jackson stories he’s read, with also draw on Greek mythology. Reading together allows for a deeper experience with a book.

4. Free range reading. While pre-reading can help a child find the right book, and reading together can help with deeper understanding, it's also important to let kids explore on their own. Like AJ, I was an advanced reader. When I was seven or eight, I was given special permission to use the adult collection of the public library. Children had different library cards that only allowed them to check out from the children’s section. But I got an adult card and could go anywhere. Freedom! My mom turned me loose. I don’t remember what I checked out on that first trip, but I remember taking my time. It seemed like such a big responsibility to pick the right book. But soon I was wandering through there regularly. I read a lot of literature that was perfect for me. And I remember being slightly obsessed with a book called Ginny about a girl who’d been in a terrible accident and nearly died but who had a long but miraculous recovery. At some point, I discovered the shelf with Colette books and found a book “Claudine at School” that seemed to be about a girl not much older than me. I checked it out. I didn’t understand a lot of it, but I read it. I read all the Claudine books. Maybe I shouldn’t have. But honestly, the only thing I can remember from them now is how her nanny or maid had breasts like melons. I thought that was hilarious. I do remember picking them up again when I was older and being properly horrified. But I just didn't understand all the stuff that makes Colette Colette when I was in elementary school, and so I kind of ignored it. So yes, I read some inappropriate books, but so what? Most of the time I checked out books from the kids section anyway. I thought they were more fun. But I got the message that I could read anything and could make my own decisions about what is right for me. And isn’t that more important? It was to me. Still is.

5. Own books. Last week, Laura Miller wrote in Salon about a study that correlated household book ownership to the level of education achieved by children in the household. The study suggested that even more than socio-economic status, having books yielded better school performance, the more books, the better. Having a lot of books in your house sends the message to your kids that books and reading matter. Encouraging your kids to prowl through the shelves can encourage “free range reading” – a safari right in your own home. And having books in your house means there's always something to do.

6. Make connections. When the books are hard, it’s easy for a child to get discouraged. When AJ has expressed an interest in something challenging, I usually try to provide some backup, some other activities that get at the topic from a different angle. With the Troy book, for example, we found some easier reading at the library that filled in some of the background holes. We’ve looked at pictures of Greek art and will look at some in person in a week or two when we pay a visit to the Art Institute. We’ve looked at maps. I showed him the journal I wrote and photos I took when I went to Greece with my sixth grade class after studying ancient Greece in school. And we’ve signed him up for a class on mythology with a couple of his friends who are also interested in it. I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m too overbearing. It’s not really the way it came about. It’s AJ’s interest that has guided us. But by expanding the boundaries of the project beyond the covers of one book, I hope I’m giving him the tools to make his own explorations.

I’m sure there are more. How do you handle the reading level/age disconnect? What do you recommend?

Our Courts

2010-05-16T19:53:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I read an interview somewhere...I can't seem to figure out where...with Sandra Day O'Connor, who was talking about her retirement project, the website, ourcourts.org. The site, which has been running for a couple of years, aims to remedy what O'Connor sees as a deficiency in civic education by presenting material on civics and law for middle school students and teachers.

I will confess, we have not yet read much of the really informative stuff on the site. But we have played and learned from some of the games on the site, which are designed to be used in conjunction with classroom materials -- lesson plans are also offered on the site. The games seem perfectly suited to his level as a gifted 3rd grader, but are also kind of fun for me to play. My last civics lesson was in high school government class my senior year. I spent most of the class trying to stay awake and listening to the kid next to me tell stories about working in his family's funeral home. The one useful thing I learned in that class was how to file my taxes. I do thank my government teacher every year for that. But there's plenty for me to learn.

AJ hasn't shown any special curiosity about the law and courts, so I wasn't sure how he'd take to this. But he likes computer games and I thought the cartoon characters and basic animation would attract him. I also knew that he'd talked about Brown v. The Board of Education in school as part of a Martin Luther King Day unit. I noticed that one of the games, "Argument Wars," included that case as one of the options.

Tonight I tried out the Brown v. BOE version of "Argument WArs" on AJ and not only did he have fun, but the game really got him thinking about different ways to interpret text. We had a discussion about how "separate but equal" could have been considered constitutional. He had to put together evidence to make his case for Brown. He did an excellent job and he learned about the case, about legal procedures, about the interpretation of law, and about making an argument. When he'd finished the game, which took about 10-15 minutes to play, he wanted to try again with another case right away. Unfortunately for him, it was bedtime. But we'll be revisiting it soon.

There are two other games on the site, which AJ has yet to explore. "Do I Have A Right?" allows you to set up your own law firm -- staff it with people with a variety of specialties, match client cases with lawyers with the correct specialties, take care of waiting clients, etc. It's maybe not quite as specifically informative as "Argument Wars," but it still requires some critical thinking, particularly in the area of client-attorney matching. The clients come in with stories like, "I organized a protest in a public park because I think kids should have the right to get their drivers licenses when they are 12. Do I have a right?" You have to decide whether the client has a case. If you think so, then you need to match him/her with an attorney who specializes in the proper area of the law (all the lawyers I used were focused on a particular Bill of Rights amendment). Out of this part of the game, you learn what the various amendments are and you have to figure out how to categorize the cases. But you also have to figure out how to run the law firm as a business. You need to diversify your staff, to win enough cases to allow you to hire more lawyers. You also have to provide your lawyers with a good working environment, or they don't win as many cases. And you need to provide a pleasant waiting area for your clients, or else they storm out with the word RAGE steaming over their heads. My favorite part of this game, though, is the fact that all attorney-client conversation is characterized as "yadda yadda yadda." Every lawyer I've mentioned this to has said, "Yeah, that sounds about right."

The third game, "Supreme Decision" takes you inside the workings of the Supreme Court. A judge escorts you through an initial hearing and afterwards tells you that the other 8 judges have split their decision and that she needs you to cast the deciding vote. You then have to eavesdrop on the other judges who have broken into four pairs, each discussing another aspect of the case. You have to demonstrate that you understand the issues each pair is discussing and that you know which side is supporting which party to the suit. Then you get to vote for which argument you think is the more compelling.

AJ and I agreed that all three games are more interesting, more fun and more educational than most "educational" games out there. The only drawback we can see is that it appears that game options might be too repetitive for replay to be much fun -- once you've visited all the cases on "Argument Wars," for instance, there might not be enough to interest you to come back for more. But these games are well suited as curriculum enhancement, which is what they were designed for. And if it gets my 9-year-old thinking in some new directions, it's definitely worth a visit.

Wrapping up the third grade

2010-05-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

There are only a few more weeks of the school year left. I feel like every year ends with drama. Last year at this time, we had received the off-the-wall results of AJs OLSAT and the subsequent news that he hadn't qualified for the gifted program. We took him for WISC testing and then heard that he'd hit the test ceiling, and thus more than qualified for the program. It was a bumpy roller coaster ride, but in the end, we felt good about his next year, because FINALLY we were going to get some help from the school district through its formal gifted program. Unfortunately, thanks to drastic budget cuts, we are ending this year in worse shape than ever before. The gifted program is gone, as are art, music, P.E. and anything else that could possibly termed "enrichment." Class sizes will be increased by 8-10 students next year. It's grim.

Every year, I try to schedule an end-of-year meeting with AJ's teachers to make sure I have a good handle on what has happened over the course of the year. I ask pretty much the same questions every year. What types of curriculum modifications have been enacted? What has worked and what hasn't? What does the teacher see as AJ's biggest challenges going forward? What does she think are the most important things for his next teacher to know about him? What can we, as parents, be doing to help him and support his teacher? And this year, I also asked about how the classroom teacher had been working with the gifted coordinator. Next year, there will be no gifted coordinator, and I wanted to know in what areas the next teacher might need extra support.

While I know, at times, AJ has wished for more challenge in class, I basically think he's had a good year. And after talking to his teacher today, I can see why. She may not have clicked with him in the same way as his first grade teacher did, but she clearly gets him and enjoys working with him. Her descriptions of him rang perfectly true. She is a calm and gentle soul and has found ways to help him take responsibility for himself that have worked beautifully with him. For instance, when he kept forgetting to put his gym shoes away after gym, she started putting them in the lost and found at the end of every day. After a couple of weeks of never being able to find his shoes and having to take extra time away from gym to walk down to the office and look for his shoes, he finally started remembering to put them away in the first place. I wonder if I can figure out a way to do this at home?

She asked me in the end about the multi-grade class. One of the things that is happening is that in order to maximize class size (a financial necessity, unfortunately) there will be one class of mixed 3rd and 4th grade next year. When I filled out the form for my requests for next year, I had requested no multi-age. It's not so much that I'm against it -- I think it can work very well, in fact. But the combination of the new multi-grade with the large classes, no aides and the fact that AJ will be on the higher end of the multi-grade has made me think that it is a terrible idea. But after talking to a few other people, and after hearing that one of the gifted teachers at another school I've heard good things about is going to be the teacher for the multi-age at AJ's school, I suspect the gifted cluster will be in that class, and it's more important to me that AJ be with his peer cluster than that he be in a single grade class. How will AJ do there if that is, indeed his placement? I'm not sure. But in some respects, that's the least of our problems for next year.

So tomorrow I'm off to talk to the school principal to find out more about what will happen and to arrange a meeting with AJ's next teacher, whoever she will be, in the fall. I am trying not to feel like we're back where we started. Progress has been made. We have more evidence, more experience under our belts. But it is discouraging to be looking once again at a struggle for services.

Looking at Art Online

2010-04-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

Like many school districts around the country, our district is making drastic cuts next year. Among the many devastating losses is the art program and the wonderful teachers who run it. Consequently we've been spending some extra time thinking about how to do more art at home.

Art was a big part of our daily lives when AJ was younger and was home more of the time. But since going to school full time, AJ's home art projects have tended toward the unsupervised. His school teachers do a great job at not only teaching concepts and techniques involved in making art, but in connecting those same concepts to the work of well-known artists. We're going to need to bring more of that back into the home next year.

Lucky for us, the fantastic Art Institute of Chicago is only a train ride away, and we go there as often as we can swing it. There are a number of other museums and galleries still to be explored as well. But what about the days when we can't get away?

There are a number of great art resources on the web that have brought virtual museums to life.

The Louvre offers a virtual tour of its galleries online. We also like the Louvre ap for the iTouch/iPhone. While it only has a few paintings, it does a great job of representing them. And the ap is free.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC has some great art games for children that grownups will probably enjoy as well.

And the Art Institute of Chicago has a page of online resources that include education tools for both adults and children.

AJ's art teacher also makes use of digital art programs at school and AJ loves to play with them at home.

The art teacher's favorite is Art Rage, which retails, in its full version, for $80. Not a small software investment. But the teacher says that it does the best job of mimicking the techniques of real life materials. For example, when you paint, your brush will start to run out of paint after a while, allowing you to contour your work as you would with actual paint.

But there are free programs as well. AJ and his friends love Tux Paint, a program designed specifically for children that builds in silly sound effects to go along with their artwork.

For 3-d, Google Sketchup is fantastic. It's a complex program that can be used for some pretty serious adult projects, but after a tutorial, it's simple enough that children can use it too. AJ is designing his own town and loves the ability to look on all sides of his buildings, even from underneath.

Do you have favorite online resources for art? Tell us about them!

Top Ten Myths in Gifted Education

2010-04-08T11:54:00.000-07:00

Tamara Fisher of edweek's blog Unwrapping the Gifted posted today about myths of giftedness and gifted ed. Her post is a great summary, but this video, made by Baltimore students, is its pièce de résistance. This should be required watching for all who work or live with gifted children.

Why Music Matters

2010-04-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

As I've been sifting through all the arguments for maintaining the arts in a school curriculum in the wake of the budget cuts that removed them from our schools, I came across this. Possibly the most convincing argument yet.

Rube Goldberg machines

2010-03-02T10:41:00.001-08:00

Earlier today, courtesy of the facebook incarnation of Hoagie's Gifted, I was introduced to the new OK Go video for "This To Shall Pass." As I understand it, this video was created for the internet and is not the "official" video. In any case, it's got one of the best Rube Goldberg machines I've ever seen:

AJ and I are collectors of videos of Rube Goldberg machines. I was fascinated by them as a child and drew endless plans for them, some of which are still floating around my house. AJ found one a few years ago and has been similarly intrigued. Here are some of our favorites:

Mythbusters takes on Goldberg in their Christmas show:

We also like the Goldberg-esque devices that turn up in the Wallace and Gromit series of films. Our favorite is from the opening of Curse of the Were-Rabbit. You can see it at Gizmodo, which lists the top ten Rube Goldberg machines to appear on film.

Do you have any favorites we've missed? Have you tried any of your own? Tell us about them in the comments!

Flexibility in Education

2010-02-23T17:30:00.000-08:00

YES.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/01/free-form_gifted_education_for.html

Mathalicious

2010-02-23T07:05:00.000-08:00

Lately, I've been trolling homeschooling sites looking for ways to supplement what AJ's learning (or not learning, as the case may be) in school. This morning the site Homeschool Recess posted a link to a site called Mathalicious. Mathalicious is aimed at middle schoolers. What attracted me was this statement on their splash page:

Here, we’re guided by a simple philosophy: Math isn’t something you learn, but a tool you use to learn about other things. Our mission is to help transform the way math is taught and learned by focusing not only on skills but on the real-world applications of math, from sports to politics to video games to exercise.

If you’re a teacher, parent or student, we invite you to use our content in your homes and classrooms. So poke around. Have some fun. Get some smart.

Content is organized by subject area (e.g. "fractions and decimals" or "probability and statistics") and can also be sorted into one of three levels: "middle school math," "algebra I," and algebra II." This is not curriculum, but individual lesson plans that could be an after school project or a supplemental exploration in class or in a gifted program. All of them use math to explore some real world question. For example, in the most recent project posted, mathalicious looks at calculating the area of a TV screen and other screens, explains aspect ratios and theories of Pythagoras, etc. It includes detailed worksheets and files to use with geometer, a geometry software program.

Check it out!

Administrative post: Please ignore

2010-02-21T21:05:00.000-08:00

Technorati is having trouble finding this blog. Hopefully this will do the trick:

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Teaching Art

2010-02-21T07:33:00.000-08:00

As we're facing the elimination of art and music education in our school district next year, I've been looking for ways to teach it at home. Here are some art lesson plans from the Denver Museum of Art aimed at K-5.

Physics Experiments

2010-02-11T07:28:00.000-08:00

Physics Central

A modest proposal

2010-02-02T17:05:00.000-08:00

At the risk of looking like a sock puppet for the New York Times, here's an interesting proposal about the ideal elementary school classroom, a day based on immersion rather than memorization and rote exercises, a schedule that can only be supported in a less test-dependent environment. What do you think?

Math series at The Opinionator

2010-02-01T09:34:00.001-08:00

Steven Strogatz, a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell, is blogging at the New York Times' Opinionator about math for the next several weeks. In today's post, he talks about his plans for the series:

I’ll be writing about the elements of mathematics, from pre-school to grad school, for anyone out there who’d like to have a second chance at the subject — but this time from an adult perspective. It’s not intended to be remedial. The goal is to give you a better feeling for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it.

His first post starts with preschool and includes a video from Sesame Street that addresses the question, "Why do we need numbers?" You can read his post here

Sciency things

2010-01-29T12:02:00.000-08:00

I've been collecting links for a post on science resources that I haven't had time to write. But we've been stumbling on some great websites lately. Here are a few to get you started. What are your favorite science sites for kids?

General Science

Watch They Might Be Giants science videos. We like "Meet the Elements" the best.

Cosmography

The Scale of the Universe. Use the slider to compare the sizes of things from quantum foam to the universe itself. (Courtesy of Green-eyed Siren)

Physics

A spectacular Rube Goldberg device with everyday objects. (via Dedicated Elementary Teacher Overseas)

A stylish simple machines game from the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

Into the Abyss

2010-01-05T19:34:00.000-08:00

I got a call back from the headmistress of one of the school’s I’d contacted. It would take a miracle for this school to work out, but if I could design my own school, it would be pretty close to this one.

The school is K-8, with one class per grade, each of which Is 16-18 kids. They have Spanish twice a week starting in kindergarten and then every day in middle school. They have music twice a week and one long art class per week. This is all fairly standard for private schools.

The school sits on 50 acres of forested land, with ponds and streams and they take full advantage of it. Kids spend hours a day outdoors, not just for gym and recess but for classes. The school emphasizes environmental studies and science classes often take them to explore the land around the school. The various subjects are integrated into general units. When they are studying the Civil War in history, they will be reading novels about the Civil War in English. There is also a character-building curriculum. While that name gives me pause and suggests several big brother-like ideas. But what it means is that they talk about philosophy and ethics and ask a lot of why questions. In that Civil War unit, for example, they also talk about whether there is ever a good reason to have a war, why wars happen, what are some alternatives.

Although this school is not for gifted children per se, the headmistress spent most of her career as a gifted teacher, first as a homeschooler of her own large family, then as a professional. We talked about the pros and cons of homeschooling for a while as well. A number of her articles appear on Hoagie’s. And interestingly, she used to be the gifted teacher at AJ’s current school. We talked about that too.

Mr. Spy and I are making plans to go visit the school, although I really think the chances of AJ being able to attend it are nearly zero. But I'm curious too about how such a school works. I'm excited by the idea of a place that uses its own environment as a catalyst for learning.

If you could design your own school, what would it be like?

Applications

2009-12-30T17:28:00.000-08:00

I've been investigating possible school options for next year. We may stay put. Or homeschool. Or we may get lucky and win the lottery making private school an option. I'm looking at them, in any case. We are lucky to have quite a few private school options in our area, including several specifically for gifted children. Unfortunately, most of them cost significantly more than sending my kid to the University of Illinois for a year. Admissions procedures for these schools vary, but are mostly a pretty straightforward, with some kind of cocktail of forms to fill out, recommendations to obtain, and test scores to submit. One school for gifted children, however, also requested a five-page, twenty question parent questionnaire. I was kind of intrigued by the questions, although I suspect answering them will send me back to that catatonic state I inhabited my senior year in high school. Some of the questions ask the parents to assess the child's schooling and list extracurricular activities. A few other questions:

• What kinds of building or artwork does your child do? Please describe your child's favorite building or art materials and the work that he or she creates.

• Does your child like to make up stories, plays, rhymes, or intentional puns? Please describe any ways in which your child has used language creatively.

• Please describe how your child adapts to the spatial environment. For instance, does your child give you directions on how to drive or walk to a familiar destination? Does he or she show an understanding of how to find his or her way around the neighborhood? In other familiar places?

• Does your child play a musical instrument? Or demonstrate musical, artistic or theatrical ability?

• With whom does your child share interests?

• What does your child like to do:
a) When playing or interacting with others (children or adults)?
b) When alone?

• How does your child react to new situations and people?

• Describe your child's verbal language (vocabulary, sentence structure, clarity, etc.)

• Describe your child's attention span. How does it vary in different situations?

• What are the things that you and your child enjoy doing together?

• How does your child respond to parental directions?

• Does your child show an awareness of concern for global issues? If yes, please give examples.

These are pretty interesting questions, but also, I think, a bit invasive. On the one hand, I think they'd get a pretty good idea of what AJ's about if I filled these out. And I like that they seem to be trying to get at a variety of ways of being gifted, although I'm not sure it will really accomplish what they are hoping. On the other hand, I'm not sure why some of these things are any of their business. If the public school asked us about some of these things, I might be inclined not to answer. As if that weren't enough, there is also a recommendation form that needs to be filled out by a current teacher. About half of this form asks the teacher to assess not the student but the parents, specifically whether the parents are clear-headed as to their child's abilities.

Worrying

2009-12-16T21:29:00.000-08:00

Has it really been nearly a month since I've posted here? It's not for want of things to write about, only that the news on the gifted education front is depressing.

AJ, while having his snack today said, "I wish I could have challenge every day." He proceeded to tell me about the things they're doing in his challenge class, which meets once a week on Mondays. Next year he was supposed to get a second day. But it is not to be. Next year, there will be no gifted program. It was one of the first things on the chopping block.

"I wish you could too, AJ," I said. "But next year I don't think you'll have it at all.

"Aren't there gifted schools?"

"There are and they're great, but very, very expensive. I wish I could send you there."

And here we are. A kid who's dying to learn and a school system that appears to be failing him. This seems so wrong. Doesn't he have any rights? If a kid were learning disabled and his school couldn't accommodate his educational needs, he'd be sent elsewhere. Is that an option for AJ? Or is our only option homeschooling? I feel trapped here. I could ask for acceleration, but I think it would be an enormous fight and I'm not convinced it's the best thing for AJ, nor do I think it would really help all that much. I could homeschool, but that would be difficult for our family for a number of reasons and again, I'm not sure it's the best thing for AJ.

One more possibility that I've been afraid to think about is private school. I don't see how we can afford it on our own, but we might qualify for financial aid. Then again, we might not. But it's probably worth investigating. We have a number of schools to choose from, all in the 15-20K/year range. If we got rid of our health insurance, we could do it. But that doesn't quite seem like the way to go, does it?

Right now, all I've got are questions.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-20T08:57:00.001-08:00

Today marks the end of the first grading period at AJ's school and the beginning of Thanksgiving break. AJ is far more excited about getting his first real report card than he is about having a week off from school.

In AJ's school, third grade is the year they start traditional letter grades. I find this a little odd. I'm pretty sure we didn't have letter grades until junior high -- just a system of checks, pluses and minuses. AJ is sure he's doing great -- and I'm sure he is too. But I'm also prepared for surprises. Past experience suggests there will be some.

I'm much less interested in the report card than in our conference next week. We'll meet with both the classroom teacher and the gifted teacher. I'm trying to assemble a list of questions. The big one is about why the math in the classroom is so much easier than the gifted math and why can't there be more advancement. The other is why are the spelling words easier than first grade.

But the big thing I'm looking for, I won't ask about. I'm gearing up for what is likely to be the next big fight. The financial troubles our district is having are dire and art, music and the gifted program are probably going to be eliminated next year. I'm trying to prepare for what to do if and when that happens. It is likely we'll petition for acceleration. It would be easiest to do it next year or the year after, as next year there will be a big student shuffle as they redistrict schools and the following year, in fifth grade, all of AJ's grade will be merged at one central middle school.

Big things ahead.

Twinkle

2009-11-15T10:22:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow night marks the beginning of the peak of the annual star show known as the Leonids meteor shower. Astronomers are predicting this year's Leonids will be more spectacular than usual, with a rate of upwards of 500 meteors per hour.

AJ and I have enjoyed starwatching since he was very small. In the semi-rural area where we live, it gets mighty dark at night. Star viewing is pretty spectacular. But we've had trouble with our identification. We like looking at star charts, but we're not so talented at mapping them onto the sky.

But this week, I discovered an abolutely amazing computer program to help us look at and learn about the stars. And it's completely free.

Stellarium is an open source planetarium program. The graphics are great. You can set your latitude and longitude; it gets the date and time off the computer. You can set a variety of background photos. You can chose to overlay any number of things -- constellation labels (from any of 10-12 cultures), constellation pictures, planets, planetary orbits, etc. You can adjust the amount of star detail with a slider. You can make the atmosphere go away so you can see what the stars would look like in the daytime, if you could see them. You can add shooting stars. We're still exploring and finding new things.

We had a good time looking at the constellation legends from different cultures (we checked out Navajo and China). But my favorite thing is that the background screens show the horizon and the compass directions, so we won't have any of the problems we have reading the flat star charts. There's even a dim feature, which turns the screen darkroom red so it doesn't interfere with your outside viewing.

We'll do some reading to go along with our star viewing. A Child's Introduction to The Night Sky by Michael Driscoll is one of our astronomy favorites. It also with a glow-in-the dark star chart, one several we've been struggling with. We also really like Stars: A New Way to See them by H. A. Rey, better known as the creator of Curious George. We'll also be looking at some Greek Mythology. Andy loves the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, but we haven't yet read a lot of straight up mythology. I'm hoping I can get him interested in the originals with D'Aulaire's Greek Myths.

Guidelines on Acceleration

2009-11-10T15:58:00.000-08:00

The Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration, The National Association for Gifted Children and the Council of State Directors of Programs for the Gifted have released new Guidelines for Developing and Academic Acceleration Policy. This document is designed to help schools, but it looks as if it might be a tool for parents trying to work with schools as well. You can download the pdf here. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I'll report back when I do.

History begins at home

2009-11-09T13:03:00.000-08:00

This morning, I was reading at one of my new regular stops, Playing By the Book about her latest book-inspired project, a mural-sized family tree that she made with her daughters (check out the whole blog -- it's full of great ideas for pairing books and activities with kids). It got me to thinking about how I ended up as an historian. I was pretty disdainful of history as a class in school. I think I may have had an exceptionally dry bunch of history teachers. But I read a lot of history as a child, especially after we moved to England where histories for children were more cultural than political. I was particularly enamored with the works of R. J. Unstead, especially the book on English history he wrote for children, Looking at History: From Cavemen to the Present Day. I checked the book out of the library so many times, that my parents eventually bought it for me. It is a tome. After I'd committed that to memory, I moved on to Unstead's books for adults, which I liked nearly as much. But it wasn't just the books that drew me in. It was that while living in London, I was in the middle of history. It stared at me from every corner. The flat I lived in was nearly 200 years old. There were places to go where the roads were built in Ancient Roman times. There were castle ruins to be visited, a statue of Queen Boadicea to touch, stone circles to find in the countryside. History meant something to me there, because I could see the stories everywhere I looked.

There was another book I loved, one that I'd actually discovered before I moved to England and which I returned to when I went back to the States. This one was not about history but about how to be an historian. David Weitzman's My Backyard History Book is part of the Brown Paper School series that first came out in the 1970s, about which I've raved in these pages before. The entire series is about outside-the-box thinking and it should be in every teacher and parent's toolbox. My Backyard History, as the title suggests, takes the viewpoint that history starts at home. Look at your own history. Follow it back. What do you find? Make a family tree or a time capsule. Think about what makes your time different from other eras. Talk to your relatives and your neighbors. What are their stories? How do we preserve our history? How can you preserve yours? These are all questions that continue to interest me. I ask them daily in my own research.

AJ isn't inherently interested in history, or, at least, he suffers from being the child of two history freaks. But we've figured out ways to work family history into other projects. For instance, every year for Veteran's Day, AJ's school has each child decorate a star on which they write the name and branch of service of someone close to them. For the past couple of years, AJ has written his great grandfather's name. Since AJ never met his great grandfather, who died many years before he was born, I used the opportunity to tell him some stories about his grandfather and to look at pictures together. This year, AJ decided he wanted to do someone he had actually met. So we wrote to my great uncle B, who was a career army officer. He wrote back an amazing letter with many details I'd never knew. He enlisted in the army at 18 during World War II and trained in the infantry for a Japanese invasion, but was spared combat when Japan surrendered in the wake of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At 19, he went to officer training school and became a second lieutenant and learned to govern occupied territories. He was a paratrooper in Korea and flew a helicopter in Viet Nam. After he related many exciting stories, sometimes funny , sometimes sad, he wrote a paragraph that was heart-wrenching, addressed directly to AJ. He told AJ how hard being a soldier was sometimes, but how rewarding it was too. He told him how he still felt guilty about some of the decisions he made, but that he had done the best he could and he trusted God to forgive him. It was incredibly personal, just the kind of thing you almost never see in history books. Just the kind of thing that means more coming from someone you know.

Later today, AJ and I will read this letter together. We'll both learn something about our Uncle, about our family, and about our national history. If you're not lucky enough to be surrounded by history, make your own. Find a copy of My Backyard History and get out and start talking to people. You never know what kind of stories will emerge. I'm thinking that the letter from his great great uncle and the book his father wrote for kids about the Korean War might do the trick.

Math methods

2009-10-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

When I was in school, I was pretty consistently a math underachiever, always scoring in the top percentiles on standardized tests, but rarely succeeding in class. My mother blames this tendency on my second grade teacher, who liked to announce to the whole class when I made a mistake. Some of it may also be due to gender bias -- girls weren't supposed to be good at math. But whatever the reason, it was my own lack of confidence in math that kept me from achieving well. I second guessed myself all the time. Frequently I would look at a problem and know the answer, but without knowing exactly why I knew it. Then, in trying to prove it to myself, I'd make a mistake. It wasn't until I was in sixth grade, while at the American School in London, where my math issues were identified appropriately. I didn't need remedial math. I needed more challenge and confidence. So along with 3 or 4 other kids in my grade and the grade above, we were pulled out of our regular math class and put with Mrs. Heumann.

Mrs. Heumann was one of the very best teachers I ever had. She was tiny and wildly energetic, one of those people who seemed to inhabit her whole body and also several inches of the space beyond. I had thought I'd been thrown into remedial math, but Mrs. Heumann didn't seem to know that. She worked us hard. On the very first day, she took away our pencils and paper. "We're doing math in our heads. Because you need to know that you can." And I could. We all could. And we were good at it. I moved away before the end of that school year and I was very sad to say goodbye to Mrs. Heumann. But amazingly, some of her lessons stuck, especially the one about "you can do it." I still battered my head against the wall sometimes with math, but I kept at it. I was even on my junior high math team for a year. I couldn't believe it.

But after high school calculus, I never took math again. I went to a college without distribution requirements outside the major. The closest I ever came to math again was a microeconomics class that was so bad, I stopped going to class after the first month. The teacher was canned after a single semester and I got the only D on my college transcript. Pretty good, considering I only ever showed up on test day and rarely cracked a book.

But as I see AJ struggling in similar ways, I've been thinking about all this again. AJ has a brain that absorbs higher math concepts readily. He's had a good understanding of complicated issues since preschool. But those things that require memorization or tedious practice often give him enough time to talk himself out of the simple solution and into something more complex and erroneous.

One of the things that can, I think, help students like AJ and like me back then (and maybe me now) are some alternative ways of thinking about the problem. One of the great strengths of the Everyday Mathematics curriculum that AJ's school uses is its support of multiple solving methods. But as the curriculum is actually taught, there are not that many methods endorsed. I've been digging around for other possibilities to help. AJ is very visual and physical, so here are two that have interested us in particular.

1. Finger Math. At one point in my own math struggles, my mother came home from the library with this book, or one very much like it.

I was fascinated. Based on a system used in Korea, Finger Math takes counting on your fingers to a new level by assigning different values to your fingers. The fingers of the right hand are worth 1; the thumb is 5. The fingers of the left hand are worth 10; the thumb is worth 50. This allows you to count to 99 on your fingers. The book also explains how to use fingers for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, although I no longer remember the methods. I need to reacquaint myself with it. Here is a website that explains the same system.

2. Chinese method. Earlier this week, Dedicated Elementary Teacher Overseas posted a video of a Chinese method of addition that fascinated AJ and I. It involves drawing lines to represent the columns of numbers and adding the points of intersection. AJ and I were both fascinated and need to play around with this a little. Here's a video explanation:

Do you have any alternative math methods or tricks you like to use? Fill us in!

Transfer students

2009-10-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

I've been finding links to this story, about a home-schooled gifted boy who tries to go to public high school, in a lot of gifted forums over the last couple of days. I feel for this kid, I do. Schools can be really frustrating to work with, as the parents of this boy know -- they pulled him out of public schools when the school's couldn't adequately handle his needs. And no one should have to take the same classes over again if he's already passed them. But I also feel like this is not totally responsible journalism. This is a very one-sided article. The school cannot adequately respond, thanks to privacy laws. And no investigation into their point of view appears to have taken place.

I think the problem here is not so much the giftedness that the author focuses on as the transfer of home-schooled students into the public schools. Schools have strict guidelines they need to follow in order to ensure students have met state mandates. This may or may not be the right approach for any given kid's education, but it's the way public schools work. It does seem to me that community college classes should count for high school providing they meet the requirements of the equivalent class. But do they? The author doesn't tell us that.

Maybe this school really is the bad guy. But in my experience, many, if not most, schools can be convinced to do the right thing if you handle it in the right way. When I was about to start my junior year in high school, I moved to a large urban public high school in Indianapolis, IN, after spending my first two years of high school in Connecticut and France. My Connecticut schools were public too, but were smaller and much more like college prep. I arrived at my new school a year ahead in English and French, and I'd finished the Latin curriculum the new school offered but wanted to keep studying. I was behind in history because, after spending a number of years in Europe, I'd never studied American history. And as my previous school had reduced gym requirements, I had to take freshman gym and health in my senior year -- oh, the humiliation! The school could have told me to just take the courses they offered. It was a huge and very bureaucratic place. But they didn't. In junior English, when the class read Macbeth, which I'd studied the previous year, I worked on Hamlet as an independent study. At every juncture where I'd studied something previously, the teacher let me choose another relevant work instead. In French and Latin, I attended a regular class and got practice speaking, but the teachers assigned me my own work that I did on my own in the back of the room. For the rest of my courses, I was able to make adjustments on my own. By high school, I was my own best advocate. I didn't need my parents' help. And my teachers were just happy, I think, to have a student who wanted to work more instead of less.

As far as I can tell, the difference in my case is that I didn't ask for alternate classes, only alternate work. I wasn't trying to get out of high school early. I just wanted to be challenged. I didn't have to deal with the administration or school board. I worked with the teachers themselves. If there was any red tape to be handled, they handled it. I also wasn't trying to transfer in credit from community college or homeschool curriculums, which may be more difficult. But it seems to me that if the issue is keeping a child challenged, going through the bureaucracy of the school is not the only way to handle it, nor is it even necessarily the best way.

School District changes gifted ID matrix

2009-10-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

In the last year, I've learned a lot of educational jargon like "cluster" and "matrix." If only "matrix" were as exciting as it sounds. It's actually just a fancy word for the cocktail of test scores, recommendations, and school work portfolio that results in a score that determines whether or not a given student is admitted into the gifted program.

As we discovered last year when AJ had a bad testing day, the matrix in our school district has included 2nd grade OLSAT scores, teacher and parent recommendations and a portfolio of work. This sounds good in theory, but the OLSAT scores were so heavily weighted that the other things didn't really make any difference. The district knew there was a problem, but hadn't been able to put through changes. Last year only one person in our school tested into the program the normal way. AJ got in because we had him privately tested. Several other children who should be in there were not. The school said they'd retest in January when the next testing cycle began, but most of us think that is far too late. Kids should not have to wait for appropriate material.

I knew something was up when we went to the gifted program orientation meeting a couple of weeks ago and they mentioned offhand that the district would not be using the OLSAT anymore.

Today I got a call from the mother of one of the kids who, like AJ, had been informally identified but hadn't met the OLSAT requirement. I've been helping her navigate the advocacy process for her son. She heard from the gifted teacher that instead of waiting until January, they'd be using the MAP scores and, where necessary, administering the ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) and it would be happening in the next week or two. The ITBS was what I had asked for for AJ last spring. I knew they could do it -- they administered it to all the kids who'd been identified (all two of them at AJ's school). There's no reason other than money that they couldn't do it for others. I even offered to pay for it, but was told it wasn't an option. I'm glad they've come to their senses. I'm not sure what changed to make this possible, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. So it sounds like AJ's challenge class will be getting a little bigger. I'm not sure how he'll feel about that, but I think this is a very good thing.

I know this is not all due to my work. I also know the work I've done in the last year -- in advocating for AJ and others, in taking the time to get to know the curriculum policy makers, in teaching others how to advocate for their kids -- would not have gotten this far this fast if the school hadn't recognized the problem and been willing to change. But nevertheless, it feels like a personal victory. The schools may still think of me as a pain in the ass, but at least I'm a pain in the ass who got something done.

Another day, another test

2009-10-04T19:12:00.000-07:00

AJ came home this week with scores from the NWEA MAP testing that all kids third grade and up take in the fall and spring. The MAP is a self-leveling achievement test. The students take the test on a computer and the computer adjusts the questions based on the students answers. As more and more answers are correct, the questions get harder. The tests are used for K-12, so there are a lot of levels. This is the first time AJ has had a chance to take what I'm learning is called an "off level" test, meaning there is less of a problem with hitting the test ceiling, as he did with the WISC-IV. The MAP, however, is a very different kind of test

AJ felt like the reading part of the test was hard, mainly because a lot of the questions dealt with vocabulary, which he either knew or didn't. The math he thought wasn't hard at all. On both parts of the test, he scored in the normal range for an 8th or 9th grader, or at least that's what the charts tell me. This seems wildly high to me, but when I looked at the breakdown of what subjects are covered, they seem like things he probably knows how to do. Am I overestimating what kids know? I'm not sure. I'm also not sure this really means that AJ is performing 5 or 6 grades ahead of his level. But maybe he could be. I'm not really sure.

AJ also came home last week with a brochure from the gifted coordinator about Northwestern University's Midwest Talent Search -- an opportunity for a true off-level test. For AJ's grade level, the youngest eligible grade, that means the EXPLORE test developed by ACT (for older kids, it means the SAT or ACT), which is designed to be administered to eighth graders and used as a high school entrance exam. AJ is really interested in taking it so, as he put it, "I can see what I"m up against," but I'm not so sure what the point is. There's been a lot of testing around here in the last five months. He doesn't need the scores for anything. He qualifies for every program he might need to qualify for with the scores he already has. But if he really wants to do it, should I let him?

This brings me back to my ambivalence about testing in general. I hate that I had to cave to it last year, because I feel like his test scores shouldn't matter if he's demonstrating in class that he needs extra material. But the system is so score reliant. I've been good at getting around a lot of things in the public school system, but not the reverence for test scores.

But even feeling as I do about testing, I can see how it's useful. I'm a teacher myself, and although I don't use standardized tests with my college students, I know how important some kind of systematic evaluation can be. But at what point do you cross the line into lab rat status? And does it make a difference that AJ himself is initiating this? I don't want him obsessing about scores. Am I crazy to worry about this stuff so much?

Book Reviews

2009-09-25T06:50:00.000-07:00

My daughter Dusty spent quite a lot of time over the summer reading books. Part of the reason was her obvious love of books. The other was to boost her AR scores. She's hoping to get into the 100-point club this year, at the very least. So far, she's earned 50 points. I thought I'd review (and recommend) three of her favorites.

The Beastly Arms by Patrick Jennings

Of the three, this was the book I read to Dusty. It's the story of a middle-grade boy, Nick, and his mother, a photographer, who live in New York City. Nick's parents are divorced and they need to find another apartment as the landlord is threatening to raise the rent. Again.

Nick's a photographer, too, of clouds. He's able to use the darkroom where his mother works and there is quite a bit of detail about the film developing process, something Dusty hadn't known much about. Nick also has a knack for ascribing animal characteristics to the people he knows and meets. He's an animal...sympathizer. He owns Miriam, a kangaroo rat, who spends most of her time in his shirt pocket.

Quite by accident one afternoon, Nick stumbles upon a strange building - with a plaque on the wall that reads: The Beastly Arms - down a dark alley in an iffy neighborhood he's normally not allowed to be in. He is drawn to the building and knocks on the door. The owner is a strange man, Mr. Beastly, who, as it happens, turns out to have an apartment available. For $200.

Eventually, Nick and his mother move in. Nick is aware that Mr. Beastly is hiding a secret and he sets out to discover it. I'll divulge no more as I'd hate to reveal the secret of Mr. Beastly. We both enjoyed this story a lot and I'm glad to learn the author has written many more.

Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke

Dusty loves Inkheart and is plowing through Inkspell this fall. I found Igraine at the library and thought Dusty might like to read something a tad shorter by the same author. Dusty continues to talk about how much she loved this story about a girl who is a member of a family of magicians but wants to be a knight. When someone steals an important spell book from the castle, Igraine goes into full warrior mode to solve the crime and retrieve the book.

Hot Air (Edgar and Ellen) by Charles Ogden

This is one in a series of Edgar and Ellen books. I found it in the library one Saturday and Dusty loved it so I recently ordered another for her birthday. It's always a relief to discover a new series of books she likes or a prolific author because it means she'll be kept happily occupied for awhile.

Edgar and Ellen are devious twins who enjoy making mischief in their town of Nod's Limbs. They pull pranks and outwit evil doers and that's about all I can tell you about this series as I haven't actually read it. But, I have it on good authority from my resident eight-year-old, that its "really good." A series certainly worth exercising the library card for.

New Day

2009-09-22T14:59:00.000-07:00

It is exactly on month into the school year and there has been a sea change in the Spy household. AJ is a different kid this year than he was last year. He goes to school without a fus and comes home from school in a good mood. He almost never forgets his belongings. I haven't had a single note home about behavior. He does his homework willingly and generally with enthusiasm. He doesn't always take the easy way out. He thinks about things and writes about them too. He takes his responsibilities more seriously, not just with school work, but in other areas as well.

What happened?

I'm not entirely sure. Some of it's probably due to maturity. Some of it is definitely due to the challenge program. Even though it's only one afternoon a week, he looks forward to it and it gets him through the stuff that's less interesting. But a lot of it is, I think, the teacher's classroom style.

Yesterday I accompanied AJ's class on a field trip and I was struck by stark differences with similar trips I took with his class last year. I heard many children get praised, but I didn't hear one kid get yelled at for behavior. It's not that they were so much better behaved -- they were just as wound up at the beginning as last year -- but that the teacher was so much more even-tempered. If a child was doing something inappropriate or disruptive, she would walk up to him and bend down to his level, putting her arm around her shoulders and talk quietly to him so that no one else could hear. But she also tolerated a greater range of behavior from her class. She enforced the rules that needed enforcing, but let some things slide if they weren't disrupting others. By the second half of the trip, the class was behaving extremely well. They learned a lot and got to explore not just by listening to someone talk at them, but by touching and feeling and smelling the things they came across.

And the homework! AJ has so much less than last year. Less busywork means he takes greater responsibility for the things he does need to do. I'm still frustrated with his math assignments (there's still a lot of counting of objects going on; most of the assignments to date he could have done in preschool), but I know they won't be this easy for long and I know what to do if they don't get better. In the mean time, they're not bothering AJ yet. He's taking pride in his work and that's worth a lot. Last year he was constantly bringing home assignments with the kinds of mistakes that indicated he hadn't been paying any attention. This year, nothing gets by him. The difference is remarkable, and I can't say I'm unhappy about it.

Orientation

2009-09-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

Tonight, Mr. Spy and I attended an orientation for all parents of students in our school district's gifted program. The program was run by our district's Curriculum Director, who was one of the people I spoke with by phone last year when we were trying to deal with last spring's testing debacle, and the two gifted coordinators -- Mrs. C who teaches at AJ's school, another elementary school, and the middle school; and The Cheerleader, who teaches at the other two elementary schools and the junior high.

For the most part, we didn't hear much that we didn't know, mainly because we have been ~~such pains in the ass~~ so involved with the program at AJ's school since kindergarten and because I am nosy and ask a lot of questions. Neither of the gifted teachers was particularly good at public speaking -- the meeting was wildly disorganized, despite its powerpoint presentation. The Cheerleader reminded me very much of Reese Witherspoon's character in Legally Blonde -- hyper perky and very wide-eyed with a high squeaky voice. At one point, she actually said she had been a cheerleader and I had to literally bite my tongue to keep from laughing. But the curriculum director is smart and said some interesting things about district-wide policy and its devotion to challenging all children. This and the program itself, which is well-integrated with the general curriculum, reassured me that it will be less of a target for cuts when the budget gets slashed next month.

The most exciting thing we heard about was the math program. They begin the acceleration process in third grade so that by next year, they are doing 5th grade curriculum. By the time they get to sixth grade, they are doing algebra. By the time they start high school, they'll be a full two years ahead of the traditional curriculum.

The other thing that sounds great is that they have a stand-alone gifted class starting in grades 5-8 when the four elementary schools consolidate into first the middle school and then the junior high. But we knew about that already.

One more item of interest was thrown out there: the school has dropped the use of the OLSAT, the test that gave us so much trouble last spring. They didn't say why. It might be because of the problems we and others encountered. Or it might be a financial issue. In any case, I am glad to see it go.

Budget Cuts

2009-09-15T09:56:00.000-07:00

Last night, I attended the finance committee meeting of our school Board. Yes, I went to a three-hour meeting about numbers that I didn’t have to attend. Sometimes I even amaze myself.

The reason I went is that rumors have been flying about a school closing next year. Now I know that they are not rumors. The question isn’t whether a school will be closed next year. The question is, which one. And also, will that be enough? At the moment it doesn’t look like it.

Our school district is in the middle of a perfect storm of financial crises. It’s been managing it’s money poorly for a decade and only last year did we finally vote enough of the old board out and get a new superintendent so that real changes could be made. But it should have been done a long time ago. There is a massive enrollment shift going on. With the exception of AJ’s class, which is a weird bubble, enrollment is in serious decline as the bumper crop of new residents from ten years ago have stayed and their kids have grown up. The upper grades are much bigger than the lower grades. The overall economy hasn’t helped either. But the biggest problem that wasn’t of our district’s own making is the State of Illinois, whose total lack of fiscal responsibility and dedication to education has them rescinding state funds right and left. They’ve drastically cut the per student aid our district gets AND they’ve taken our nearly a million in stimulus money that was supposed to be extra and are using it to pay those cut fees. Drastic spending cuts have already been made, but they are not enough.

This is bad news, but it’s news I already pretty much knew. What was good news is that I was reassured last night that with one exception, the people working on the fix are smart and qualified and have similar feelings about education as I do. I also felt better about a school closing after learning about empty classrooms in other schools – AJ’s school is so overcrowded that we didn’t believe that was the case. Moreover, the district has lost nearly 500 students in the last 5 years – that’s about the same number who attend AJ’s school. So it sounds like it makes sense. Unfortunately, based on what I heard last night, the school I think it makes the most sense to close is AJ’s.

Of greater concern, however is the “non-mandatory programs” also on the chopping block. No decisions have been made and no specific programs were listed last night, but I know that one of them is the gifted program. Illinois has lagged in gifted education support and recently cut all state funding to gifted programs of any kind. I know the district thinks it’s important, but given the small numbers of students participating, I think there’s a good chance that it might disappear.

And here’s the kicker. AJ came home from school yesterday ON FIRE. He spends Monday afternoons in the challenge program, and yesterday was his second meeting. His brain was running so fast that his mouth could barely keep up. He said, “It was really hard, but it made the time go REALLY fast because I had to think. I didn’t know school didn’t have to be boring.” Then he started asking if he could practice some harder spelling words and do a project on geography for fun. I remember this boy. I haven’t seen him in a while. It’s really nice to have him back.

I was so happy about it, that I emailed a thank-you note to his Challenge teacher this morning. She told me that he spent have the time reading a novel and talking about it (Michael Dahl’s The Word Eater) and the other half working on geometry problems with tangrams. She said that the tangram problems were a real struggle for him and that at first he didn’t think he could do it, but she encouraged him to keep trying and he figured it out on his own. It’s the first time he’s had to struggle at all in math. He was pumped and dying to learn more.

I realize it is impossible for schools to be all things to all students, but if the gifted program goes away, I really don’t know what I’ll do. I will not let him go back to the lethargy and resistance of last year, the result of boredom and a well-meaning teacher who just didn’t get him. Maybe I’ll push for acceleration. I’m not sure. But in any case, yesterday afternoon made all the testing angst of last spring, all the expense and anxiety, totally, one hundred percent worth it.

Moreover, if this does not demonstrate that gifted kids have “special needs,” I don’t know what does. Hooray for good teachers. Hooray for schools that try. And a pox on all governmental agencies who don’t look at the small pieces of the big picture.

Free Webinars from the National Association for Gifted Children

2009-09-15T07:58:00.000-07:00

AJ's Challenge teacher alerted us to a series of webinars for parents and teachers of gifted children. Participation is free through the end of 2009, but registration is required. NAGC webinars take place on Wednesdays. You can find information here. The next one, tomorrow night at 7 p.m. eastern, is currently full, but take a look at the full schedule. The next webinar targeted at parents will take place on October 21; registration opens October 9. You can also access archives of past webinars from the link above.

Website roundup.

2009-09-14T08:02:00.001-07:00

I wanted to the list of recommended websites in the sidebar. I've tried to keep the list relatively small. These are all sites we refer to regularly for either resources on advocacy and education or for playtime. Even among the fairly short list, there are some particular favorites.

• Hoagie's Gifted doesn't look fancy, but it's the single best place to go for all things gifted. In addition to producing its own content, it does a great job of rounding up content from elsewhere, so if you only have time to go to one place, this is the place. The downside is that the cluttered site design is somethings hard to navigate. But the search tools work well.

•The elusive Green-Eyed Siren reminded me recently about the wonderful site Brainpop. The subscription price is not cheap, but the content is well worth it. And if the subscription is more than you can bear, there is plenty of free content to keep you busy for a while. This is one of AJ's all time favorites.

•AJ and I recently paid a visit to Free Rice, a vocabulary quiz site so named because it donates rice 10 grains of rice to the UN's World Food Program for every right answer, has ramped up its content. Since last we visited, it has added vocabulary in French, German, Italian and Spanish as well as quizzes in English Grammar, math facts, geography, chemistry and art. AJ likes the reinforcement of the advancing levels and the piles of rice. It's his new favorite way to practice his times tables.

•Laura Vanderkam at the blog, Gifted Exchange, posted a link today for a website full of interesting "virtual field trip" videos by and for kids. The videos are sorted by category and cover a wide variety of topics. Most interesting to AJ, there is a section of tutorials on how to make your own videos and podcasts so that you can participate in the project.. Check out Meet Me at the Corner. You can read more about the project and the people behind it here. I'll be adding this site to the list of recommendations in the sidebar shortly.

Do you have favorite sites you'd like to tell us about? Write us a review or just post the link in the comments.

Is there more content you'd like to see on this site? Would you like to write for us (there is no money involved, but we'd love to hear from others? Leave a note in the comments or contact Harriet at harri3tspyATgmailDOTcom.

No more machines

2009-09-09T10:48:00.000-07:00

Scene: Harriet, Mr. Spy and AJ are sitting on the beach by the river. AJ is digging in the sand. We are listening to Motown blasting from a house on the opposite shore and watching boats go by.

AJ: Mom, how come when people talk about the future they always talk about technology?

Harriet: In what way?

AJ: Well, they always say how technology is going to make things better and better. I don't think that's true. I think the opposite is true.

Harriet: You might be right. I think more and more, people are starting to agree with you.

AJ: I was reading in Boy's Life about how some people are trying to build a car that doesn't run on anything.

Harriet: How do they make the engine go?

AJ: I don't know. But they're not having a very good time. Maybe I should invent a car.

Harriet: Maybe you should.

AJ: And then, no more machines.

* * * * *

When I was a girl, we saw a lot of filmstrips and projected movies (on actual film! There were no video tapes, let alone DVDS back in the Stone Age) about the efficiency of factories and the mechanization of farms, about the amazing developments of modern medicine and the godsend of pesticides. But the message AJ's generation is getting is a lot different. He still wants to be driven to school when at all possible and will fight about it every single day, but it was nice to realize the message that I try to give him when we walk or bike places is sinking in.

We had ridden our bikes down to the river where we had that conversation. On the way home, we passed a couple on bikes with headlights on, as it was starting to get dusky. AJ was fascinated by the lights. He'd never seen lights on bikes before.

"That's a really good idea. Then you can ride in the dark."

"My favorite thing about lights like that is that they're powered by the bike. They don't need batteries or anything."

"They don't?" AJ asked skeptically. "How do they work?"

"There's a little machine that uses the power of your feet making the wheels go around to generate a small amount of electricity, enough to turn on a lightbulb."

"Oh, I noticed that when they stopped pedaling that the lights got a little dimmer," AJ recalled.

"That's right."

"That's a really cool idea."

It is a really cool idea. And then I told AJ about someone I used to know who had hooked up his television to a stationary bike instead of an electrical outlet. In order to watch television, he had to pedal.

"So you have to get exercise, even when you're watching TV."

"That's right."

"That's like what my gym teacher said we should do."

"What's that?"

"We should do jumping jacks or pushups or something during the commercial."

"Well, that won't generate electricity, but it's a great way to get some exercise."

"Do I have to do that?"

Well, we're not there yet.

First Day of Challenge Program

2009-09-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

The challenge program began yesterday and AJ seems to have had a good time, although it all seemed kind of vague to him. There is one other 3rd grader in the program -- his friend C, who also sits next to him in class and is in his Cub Scout den AND on his baseball team. It's lucky C and AJ are friends, because they're sure going to see a lot of each other the next few months. Like AJ, C qualified in both reading and math, so the two of them work with the gifted coordinator for both subjects every Monday afternoon from 1:30-3:15, when school gets out.

AJ was unclear on what he'd be doing. He said they played a bunch of reading and math games yesterday, but was vague about what exactly they did. My guess is that the coordinator was trying to get to know them and get a read on how they worked. She told them that they'd get a book to work on next week. AJ thinks there may be homework that will be assigned through his regular classroom.

I'm interested in how this is all going to pan out. This is very different from the kind of pull-out programs I was involved with in several different school systems in the 1970s and 80s. Back then the focus was on critical and creative thinking, not on curriculum. The stuff we did in G&T was completely separate and in addition to classroom work. I loved it. It was fun. And we rarely had much homework. But it always seemed kind of unfair to me, because a lot of the things we did (e.g. interview Anne Morrow Lindbergh on her writing habits, write stories using a wacky collection of required elements) seemed like they could have worked for most people I knew and they probably could have got something out of it. In reality, that may or may not have been true. But this sense of gifted programs as extra-curricular has been problematic, because it makes them easier for school districts to cut if they don't look necessary.

At AJ's school, there is a concerted effort to both integrate the gifted work with the regular classroom work and also, when possible, to have it substitute for regular classroom work, instead of being extra. This keeps the kids from feeling punished by having an extra class and also, at least theoretically, provides more continuity for the kids as they move through the grades.

In addition, AJ came home with his first set of homework of the year. The math homework was laughable, but AJ enjoyed it. There are many things I love about the Everyday Mathematics curriculum, but the assignments where children have to find numbers around the house are not my favorites. AJ likes getting up from his table, and that's fine, but he had nearly identical assignments when he was in preschool. By third grade, shouldn't they be doing something more with the numbers they find? Apparently not.

The at-home reading program is a little different this year. Instead of assigning an amount of time to read each day (last year it was 15 minutes) and reporting on the books, which aggravated AJ to no end, there is a total number of minutes for the month (400, or 20 minutes a day 5 days a week). The kids log their minutes and book titles and that's it. This will work much better for AJ. It allows for adjustments from day to day depending on activities. Reporting once a month instead of once a week will take the pressure off. And it's exactly the same system the public library reading programs use, so he's used to it.

In addition, there is a new reading assignment. Every Monday there is a page of reading sent home along with a worksheet. AJ is supposed to read it out loud to a parent and then answer questions about what he read. The reading that came home this week was not difficult, but AJ is not always great at gleaning information from what he reads in any kind of organized fashion, so I think these assignments may help him with that.

We've been spending a lot of time talking about organization which for AJ, as for many gifted kids, is a huge challenge. He has trouble getting his chores done on time because he gets distracted by his books and magazines as he's putting them away or wanders off into play before he finishes getting dressed. He gets lost in thought while eating meals and has trouble finishing them. And he regularly forgets his homework.

This year, I decided to make organization a priority for us. I let AJ pick out a school planner (he chose this one) and showed him how to set it up and write things in it. He is responsible for taking it to school each day and bringing it home each night. If he forgets, there is a set of consequences. For the first couple of weeks, I'm going to show him how to track his work. After that, he'll be on his own. My goal is to make him more independent with his homework. I expect there to be a bit of a learning curve, but I'm hoping letting him make choices of how to write things down and giving him stickers to decorate his calendar pages when he does things well will keep him on track. I'll let you know how it goes.

Back to School

2009-08-30T15:16:00.000-07:00

AJ finished his first week of school and is still enthusiastic about it, which is a definite step up from last year and a huge step up from his attitude over the summer. This is a great relief to all of us, especially AJ. There was no homework last week, so we haven't seen enough to know how the work is going to be, but we did hear that the first book the class will be reading together is Patricia MacLachlan's wonderful novel Sarah Plain and Tall, which they are using to supplement their social studies and science study of the prairie and prairie cultures. Sarah Plain and Tall is a HUGE step up from the regular classroom reading they did in second grade (AJ didn't do the regular reading, but I worked with kids in the classroom who did). It's a book I read and enjoyed as an adult. I also love the way the curriculum integrates the various disciplines in a multi-faceted approach to a topic. AJ really responds to such an approach.

We think, although we're not sure, that the Challenge Program (which is what the school calls its program for gifted students) starts this week too, possibly tomorrow. I'm very curious to see how exactly this is going to work. The challenge program is both an in-class modification program and a pull-out program. A letter that came home this week suggests (although it is not totally clear) that the math part of the program will be initiated in the pull out program but will also replace classroom work with work at the appropriate level, generally at least one grade level ahead. The reading program, however, is more like a book group. The pull-out reading group will read and discuss novels together in addition to the classroom reading. The gifted teacher has not overly impressed me, although I also really don't know her that well. And the things that have given me pause are all about social skills, not about interaction with children, so I think it is something that is likely to improve. She wrote a very good letter about why she does what she does and about how her own experience as a gifted child has affected her approach toward gifted learners.

So in general, I am feeling very optimistic for the new year. Even so, I'm already thinking about what words I should put on a spelling list for AJ if the first list, which should come home tomorrow, is too easy. AJ says spelling is his favorite subject, which I think is because it is the only subject in which he was consistently challenged last year. Here's hoping for a better balance in the weeks to come.

What's going on with your kids? How are you and they handling the first weeks of school?

August

2009-08-18T12:16:00.000-07:00

Summer is winding down around here. AJ starts school a week from today. Tomorrow the class lists and teachers will be posted, like Luther's theses, on the front door of the ~~church~~ school.

Last year at this time, we were preparing to meet with AJ's teacher. We'd arranged a meeting for the morning after the class posting by going through our school principal who set it up without telling us with whom we were meeting. The district gifted coordinator came too. And while I think AJ's class was not ideal for him, I think that meeting made what could have been a dreadful year into a passable one.

This year, we did not request a meeting. Why, when we felt that last year's meeting was so important, did we skip this step? There are several reasons. One is that we have a much bigger paper trail on AJ now than we did then, including detailed IQ scores that clearly place him upwards of the 99th percentile. Numbers speak louder than words in getting action in public institutions. The second reason, though, is that we're venturing into new territory: a formal gifted program.

I did check in with the gifted coordinator last week to make sure we didn't need to be meeting this time and she agreed that the best approach this time was to let AJ and his teacher (whoever it turns out to be) get to know each other first. She also told me that AJ will be pulled out of class, most likely on Monday afternoons, for 2-3 hours, half for reading, half for math.

I'm still trying to get a sense of how the gifted program works. It is curricular, meaning that it's replacing classroom work, not adding to it. My sense is that the reading part is not all that different from previous years, but that AJ's reading group will be overseen by the gifted teacher rather than the classroom teacher. Math is the area with which I've been most frustrated. I feel AJ lost ground last year because of a lack of systematization with his substitute work. I hope this new system will be better.

AJ's greatest interest is who will be in class with him. After last spring's testing fiasco, we know that only one kid tested into the program in the normal way and, because this kid happens to be one of AJ's best friends, we know who that is and that he will be in class with AJ. What we don't know is whether there are other kids who, like AJ, got in some other way. I think this friend of AJ's will be a good companion for him in class. He is less of an outside-the-box thinker than AJ, but he is more mature and disciplined and academically driven, something for which AJ could use a model. I suspect their strengths will play nicely off each other in class.

Also on the table for fall is the new possibility of taking classes through the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University. When we had AJ tested for their programs in first grade, we ended up deciding we couldn't handle the commute. But this year, they've added a new location for some of their programs, one that is only a half hour from here. Their classes are expensive and I'm not sure we'll qualify for financial aid, but they also sound awesome. You can read about their offerings here.

How are you getting ready for school?

Recession strikes back

2009-07-26T19:24:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, Illinois announced a long list of cuts in educational funding in an effort to balance their budget. Buried between devastating cuts in preschool programs ($123 million) and bilingual education (19%), was a total reduction of gifted education programs. The state is no longer funding them at all (you can read about it here).

On the one hand, this is not as dire as it looks at first glance. Illinois has been hacking away at the gifted programs for years. Our district, for example, went from having a gifted coordinator in each school to having two for the entire district of 6 schools. It is my understanding (although I'll certainly be checking on this) that the gifted program in our school district is no longer funded by the state anyway. However, for the state to remove all funding is for the state to say, "these programs are not important." The state is saying that teaching children at their appropriate level does not matter. And that is a very dangerous message to be sending.

Laura VanderKam at Gifted Exchange suggests that this may give parents of gifted students more ammunition for grade acceleration. Grade acceleration, she points out, does not cost anything the way special programs do. Moreover, grade acceleration actually reduces per student spending, because accelerated students spend less time in school. But for those who have struggled with their school districts over acceleration, funding cuts may, indeed, cause schools to reconsider their policies.

But I'm not yet convinced by the acceleration argument, nor am I convinced that acceleration is right for my child. If our school's gifted program is cut, then what? Probably we'll be back to what we've been doing -- working with individual teachers ourselves, only we'll have to provide more curriculum on our own, because presumably the gifted coordinator will no longer be there to help us find materials. The alternatives would be home schooling and acceleration. And home schooling may not even be a viable option, because I really need to scare up some income. I don't like having my choices reduced.

More alarming even than the Illinois gifted funding cuts is the financial crisis our district is already having. We are looking at a $2.3 million deficit this year, a deficit caused by a series of things -- poor management from the last board, bad hiring choices resulting in multiple superintendents on the payroll for several years in a row, difficult contract negotiations for teachers, violent shifts in student enrollment from year to year, failure to pass tax referenda several times in a row because our property taxes here are already sky high and because they've done a lousy job selling it. And then of course there is the recession. But the true force of that hasn't even hit yet. Our county estimates property taxes as an average of two years. This was a system put into place to prevent sharp leaps in tax amounts during the boom years. Next year will be when they reevaluate the levels. If a referendum isn't passed, there will be further income cuts. Our district is looking at closing a school. But that will only save 600,000 -- a fraction of what is needed. And where will all those students go? Our classrooms are already filled to bursting. If they don't balance the budget by 2010-11, the state will take over. And who knows what will happen then. But given the budgeting precedent, if gifted programs make it that far, I'm pretty sure they'll be gone when the state gets involved. The state, after all, has set a precedent.

Complicating the issue is the $800,000 of stimulus money the district has received. You'd think that would help the situation a lot, wouldn't you? But it doesn't. The stimulus money cannot be spent on deficit spending, nor can it be applied to capital "improvements' -- including the much needed new roofs for two of the schools. It can be spent on upgrading technology, which is also needed. But how will the school's pay for maintenance and training on new machines if they are running a severe deficit?

In the face of such dire financial circumstances, is lobbying for gifted education programs the right thing to do? Of course. Why? Because the programs are not about enrichment. They are about giving children the work appropriate for them, in just the same way that special education provides appropriate work for children on the other end of the learning spectrum. But in the era of No Child Left Behind, schools do not always see it that way. Gifted children can meet -- and exceed -- the standards that they are asked to meet. Why spend extra time and money catering to them? Because their parents pay taxes too and they can and should expect to have the needs of their children met by an institution they are forced to attend. Realistic? Perhaps not. But fair policy? Definitely.

Now is a crucial time to lobby for gifted education, in Illinois and elsewhere. Schools need to hear what the stakes are. They need to hear about what matters. In the end, all children suffer when schools make policies that exclude some of them.

I Hate Mathematics!

2009-07-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, AJ and I made a trip to the library. We have a routine at the library. We conduct any business at the desk (registering for programs, reporting on reading programs, etc.), examine the new books shelf in the children's section, find books to check out on the regular shelves, look for movies if we want one, and then AJ settles down to play on a computer for a few minutes while I head to the adult section to look for books of my own.

When we went a few days ago, AJ and I found a bunch of books for him quickly. He picked up a new book about the moon landing and a book on giant squids. I got him a copy of Marilyn Burns' The I Hate Mathematics! Book. Second grade seems to have caused some problems for AJ's math skills. He was a top notch multiplier when he went in, but the methods confused him and made him focus on the method instead of what he was doing. Consequently, he no longer understands the process of borrowing and makes a lot of mistakes. Consequently, he's getting frustrated and feeling as though he's not good at math anymore.

I had similar problems with math when I was in second grade and The I Hate Mathematics! Book helped me remember that math is fun and challenging and not just like beating your head against a brick wall.

AJ was really excited about the book and sat down at the table to look at it. We were talking about the book when AJ's friend J walked up. J has been in AJ's class for the last two years and they are in Cub Scouts together and they both play a lot of the same sports, although they've never been on the same team.

"Hi, AJ. What's that? 'The I...hate...Math..a..matics...book?' What's 'mathematics'?"

"Hi," AJ said gruffly. "It's just another word for math."

"Oh," said J.

"It a dumb book about math. I don't know what it's doing here." AJ buried it under the giant squid book.

"Cool! Squid!"

I know that AJ has been embarrassed about some of the things he likes, but this is the first time I'd witnessed it so clearly in action. One minute he's telling me about all the cool things he's found in the book. The next he's making fun of it to his friend so his friend doesn't make fun of him. I actually don't think his friend had any intention of making fun of him. I think what sounded to AJ like mockery was really just J struggling to read an unfamiliar word.

This is one of the reasons why I think separate gifted programs are important. It is easier to deal with your sense of difference if you can be different with somebody else. It's easier to appreciate your different interests if there's someone somewhere with whom you can share them.

In the last couple of weeks, AJ has made a friend at camp. He doesn't live very close to us, but AJ and K have been making plans to meet online at Club Penguin, where they can chat and play games remotely. As much as I try to limit AJ's video/computer game times around here, I can also see how things like Club Penguin help him in situations like this. I know the internet helps me find people with like interests to talk to. I'm glad there are places where AJ can go too. Everyone needs to know they aren't alone sometimes.

After we got home from the library that day, AJ pulled out the I Hate Mathematics Book! first and started leafing through it. He found a page of math riddles and started giggling. "Mom, you have to hear this one. Can I ask you some?"

"Hit me. But I bet I'll know the answer."

"You will?"

"This was my favorite book when I was your age."

"It was?" He smiled and started to read.

* * * * *

Marilyn Burns, The I Hate Mathematics! Book (Brown Paper School book)Covello, CA: Yolla Bolly Press, 1975; reprinted by Little, Brown & Co.. The whole Brown Paper series is exceptional, but this is my personal favorite (My Backyard History Book was a close second). Most, if not all, of them are out of print. Marilyn Burns has written other math books for kids, including some more recent picture books. All are worth looking at.

Hello Mother, Hello Father

2009-07-13T18:58:00.000-07:00

AJ started his 2-week session at a camp run by the Center for Gifted at National-Louis University (there's a link over there on the right). He did this camp last summer and loved it. We had been a little nervous about it last year, because our experience signing up and our phone communication with them before the camp started was a little confused and the first day was chaotic. But we soon learned that this program is fantastic where it really counts. The teachers are outstanding -- creative, exciting, interesting people, interested in the kids and what they do. And the communication between families and teachers is great. Each teacher sends home a parent letter on the first day of class introducing themselves and what they'll be doing in class. At the end of the session, they send home another letter, this time with a review of what was done and references for books, websites, etc. so you can help your child learn more about the things they've been doing in class after it's over. A couple of weeks after the last session, they send a report card -- no grades, but a paragraph or two written by each teacher about your child and how he or she did in the class. So not only did AJ have a great time in class, but I got some great ideas for more things to do with him at home.

This year, we knew the score and weren't surprised when we got two different sets of registration forms or when we got to the first day of camp and discovered all the classroom assignments had been changed. But whatever happened in AJ's classes today was definitely working right. He came out all excited and rattling off about things all the way home. I usually call this "switched on," because when AJ is somewhere where something challenges him mentally -- at his IQ test, for example, or at this camp, or any time he's around a kid with a brain that works like his-- he lights up, he talks a lot and is interested in everything. He's his best version of himself. He loved all his classes and he couldn't wait to come back the next day.

Each kid takes three classes per session. This is one of the things AJ likes: he gets to change classes like a big kid. He's taking art, science and math. The art class is taught by a woman who has spent time at an artists' colony that I've had friends attend. AJ thought she was very nice and that their projects would be cool, but that they didn't get to do much today. The science class was his favorite, although when he said that he also took pains to make sure that I knew he really liked them all. The science teacher won him over with dry ice experiments today. They tried dropping pieces of dry ice to find out what would happen to it (it crumbles). Then they put some in water (it dissolved). For homework, he had to come up with a hypothesis for what would happen to a hot metal object if it was put on dry ice. AJ is hoping it will melt, but I don't think he thinks it really will. His math teacher is his only repeat from last year. Last year's class was a math mystery class, where they broke into groups to solve a series of mathematical clues in order to figure out a larger mystery. This year's class sounds even better. It's focusing on geometry and they are studying geometric patterns in architecture, art and nature from a mathematical perspective. It sounds like there's going to be math, science and art involved. I wish I could sit in.

That was a common sentiment among the parents waiting outside the front doors of the school at the end of the morning session. I got into a conversation with two other women while we waited. It turned out we were all working on doctorates. Later it occurred to me that this was probably the only place in the area where random doctoral students were likely to run into each other. It was nice to talk to other who understand. I think we all need gifted camp.

Game Set Match

2009-07-02T15:21:00.001-07:00

"To the Parents of AJ Spy:

Your child, AJ, meets the requirements ot participate in the XXXXX School District Gifted Education/Academically Talented Program in the areas of:

x Language Arts x Mathematics

Identification for the Gifted/Talented program is based on school ability and achievement test information as well as teacher recommendation derived from a checklist of gifted characteristics.

Students identified for this program are placed in a heterogeneous classroom. The classroom teachers work with the Gifted Resource Teacher to support students through the use of enrichment activities, increasing the level of expectations, and requiring the use of higher level thinking skills.

Students identified in math will be placed into an accelerated class beginning in fifth grade. A new identification process will determine gifted placement in seventh and eight grades.

For students identified in Third and Fourth Grades:

The Gifted Resource Teacher will collaborate with your child's classroom teacher to provide alternative curriculum or enrichments according to student or curricular need. In the area of math, this may mean pre-testing, contracts, more complex problem-solving or enrichment packets. Students might read and study alternative, though related, novels or enrichment activities, if identified in language arts. The Gifted Resource Teacher may introduce new concepts to students as scheduling permits. Attempts will be made to schedule Junior Great Books or other intensive studies on a semi-regular basis."

So I guess being a persistent pain in the ass pays off (although I'm underwhelmed by "Attempts will be made...") There is a family orientation in September (a month after school starts). I am so relieved about this.

On parenting a gifted child

2009-06-29T11:37:00.000-07:00

When I was pregnant with AJ, I worked until the day before I went into labor – several days past my due date. I lived a block and a half from my office. I didn’t see the point in sitting around waiting for something to happen. My boss let me stay on, even though I was officially quitting my job when I left (a situation forced by working in a very small office and the coincidence of pregnancies of GreenEyedSiren and myself, who were the two most senior employees at the time). I loved the structure work provided in those days before AJ’s birth when I was at once excited and terrified by the knowledge that the world as I knew it was about to be blown to pieces to be reassembled in an entirely different way.

But with all the work time, what I really relished was any chance to talk about the baby, something that wasn’t part of my everyday life. An ultrasound appointment, lunch with GreenEyedSiren, even an appointment to pee in a cup. Knowing that you weren’t alone, that there were other people who understood what you were going through became really important.

I’m finding the same thing is true of parenting a gifted child. There are so many challenging things, so many occasions when you feel like you’re flying by the seat of your pants, and so few occasions when you can sit down and honestly talk about what you are going through. You don’t want to just start chatting about your problems with other parents in the PTA. They might not understand. They might think you were just bragging about your smart kid. Again. When really, sometimes you just need another opinion. Or an ear. I’m so grateful for GreenEyedSiren’s ear and also for the comments of readers of this site. Half the battle of parenting is acquiring some sense that you are doing the right thing.

We had a long phone meeting with the psychologist who gave AJ his IQ evaluation a few weeks ago, the official follow-up appointment. It was an interesting conversation, but more than anything, it was a relief to converse about it at all, to be able to talk about some of the things I worry about all the time, but can’t usually discuss with anyone.

The psychologist, who specializes in work with gifted children, started out explaining the components of the test (WISC-IV) and the reason for the Dumont-Willis Index (discrepancy between IQ-important verbal and performance/perceptive reasoning scores and less-related processing speed/working memory scores). Most of this I’d figured out on my own. I know that the WISC-IV weights the processing speed and working memory higher than previous versions of the test and that the weighting was problematic in determination of IQ because it is not correlated with giftedness in the same way the other categories are. We learned that AJ is very strong in both left brain and right brain activities, but especially so in left brain (language center, crystallized knowledge, computation). As she started to describe what this meant, I had my first, “Yes! This is AJ!” moment. It was the first of many.

I don’t have a lot of “This is just like AJ” moments when talking to other parents. As parents of an only child, we wonder a lot about what’s “normal” and what’s not. How do you know when to worry? We have no basis for comparison. My best guide has been my memories of my own childhood as a gifted kid. Mostly that seems to guide me well with AJ, although I worry about revisiting my past on him. He’s his own person. And while there are many similarities, there are many differences. He cares a lot more about what other people think of him than I did, for one. He’s got better social skills in general.

After going over the test results, we asked for some advice – in working with the school, in evaluating the decision to stay in public school vs. sending him to a school for gifted kids, for dealing with some of the behavior issues we’ve encountered in school and also at home.

The first thing she pointed out was that AJ’s IQ is more than two standard deviations above the norm. Curriculum is targeted for IQs of roughly 85-115 – norm (100) and one standard deviation above and below. An IQ of 85 is considered learning disabled. An IQ of 70, two standard deviations below the norm, is considered mentally retarded. There are state mandated special services for them both. Why not for a child functioning at an equivalent amount above the norm? They are “special needs” children too. They have different behaviors, their intellectual development doesn’t gel with the rest of the class and their emotional development is often delayed. The psychologist used the word “asynchrony” to describe the difference between intellectual and emotional development in gifted children. She said they’re not sure why this asynchrony is so often found in gifted children, but that it may be because they seldom have peers.

The behavior issues often stemming from asynchrony mean that gifted children are frequently misdiagnosed or too soon diagnosed with a variety of psychological disorders, especially ADHD. (For more information on this, see this article) When we asked about AJ’s difficulty focusing in class, she cautioned against medicating too soon (something we had no intention of doing, but still, it’s nice to hear that encouraged). Then she proceeded to describe a child that sounded very much like AJ – one who is easily distracted, who likes to move around when he works, who fails to complete tasks and often ignores instructions or balks at classroom rigidity.

We asked about what benefits we might be missing out on by not sending AJ to a gifted school. She said that if the schools were $4000-$5000 a year, she’d recommend them to everybody. They offer a chance to go to school with intellectual peers. They often have more behavior flexibility – for example, allowing students to stand or move around while they are working. And they usually teach a grade level ahead. But, she added, there are advantages to being in a neighborhood school too – friends nearby, more like the real world, integration into the community he lives in, less commuting, which can take a toll. Especially if there is a gifted program at the school, it can be better to keep him there and maybe put some money toward extracurricular programs for gifted kids. This was nice to hear, because it’s exactly what we’ve been doing. She was particularly partial to the program we’ve signed AJ up for this summer (the same one he did last year) because the teachers tend to not just be certified to work with gifted children but to actually be gifted themselves. She thinks gifted kids respond better to teachers like that. And based on my experience with my own teachers and with AJ’s, I know she’s right.

Finally, we asked about helping AJ to function better in a typical classroom, to learn focus and discipline – is there anything that works better with gifted kids? She didn’t quite answer this question the way we had intended it, but she recommended two parenting books as being particularly useful for parents of gifted children (both with some qualifications – neither is perfect). The first was The Self-Esteem Trap by Polly Young-Eisendrath. The second was Parenting with Love and Logic by Foster Cline and Jim Fay. A quick glance through reviews on @m@zon suggest both might be useful to us, but I’m particularly intrigued by the first one, which seems to be focused on our precise concerns about AJ right now. Also, the second one sounds more or less like the approach we take already, one, incidentally, that was espoused by Dr. Haim Genott may years ago in Between Parent and Child, a book my own parents consulted regularly.

We didn’t really learn anything new today, but somehow it is different hearing these things from a person than reading them in a psychological journal or a website devoted to gifted ed. I came out of the conversation that it is in AJ’s best interest that I, as a parent, do my best to find some other people I can talk to about this stuff as it comes up. It makes me a better, more assured, more relaxed parent. And I’m less likely to get quite so frustrated with some of AJ’s behaviors, which, as the psychologist reminded me today, are perfectly normal for a kid like him.

Book Review: Stories told by toys

2009-06-17T20:20:00.000-07:00

Book Review

Kate DiCamillo: The Miraculous Adventure of Edward Tulane (Candlewick, 2007)

Rachel Field: Hitty: Her First Hundred Years (Aladdin, 1998; orig. published 1929; Newbery Medal winner)

Margery Williams: The Velveteen Rabbit (there are too many editions to count; orig. published in 1922)

Mariana: Miss Flora McFlimsey’s Christmas Eve (Lothrop Lee & Shepard, 1949)

I am the last one in our house to read Kate DiCamillo’s The Miraculous Adventure of Edward Tulane. My mother gave it to AJ for Christmas and he’d read it immediately on his own and then moved on to other things. Recently, when Mr. Spy was looking for something to read out loud with AJ, I happened upon it on the bookshelf and suggested it. They both loved it, although Mr. Spy had been worried that it was too sad or dark for AJ. AJ liked that it was a little dangerous. They both thought the ending was perfect.

Last night, after I tucked AJ in, I slipped the book off his table and sat up to read it. It is a beautifully written story about an elegant China rabbit, Edward Tulane, who begins as the favored toy of a young girl who loves him. But Edward does not appreciate what he has. He is arrogant and he is irritated when he is not treated in just the right way. Each night the little girl tucks him into his own bed next to hers and tells her she loves him. But he does not love her. He doesn’t love anyone.

The girl takes Edward on a boat to England. On the trip, some boys grab him from her and throw him overboard. He sinks to the bottom of the ocean. It is then that his trials begin. Many terrible things happen to Edward and often also to the people he takes up with. This is not an easy book. There is death and abuse and violence. The illustrations, which are beautiful, only accentuate this – a picture of Edward nailed up as a scarecrow looks for all the world like a crucifixion. But in the end, there is also redemption through love. The ending is, perfect, too perfect for me to want to give it away. Suffice it to say that Edward’s adventures changed him for the better and he was ultimately rewarded.

A number of reviews I’ve read of this book question whether it is suitable for children. It is indeed very dark and as such may not be for all children. But many children, my son included and myself when I was his age, like darkness. I know I always thought it seemed more interesting and somehow more trustworthy. I obsessively read the fairy tales of Grimm and Andersen when I was young. And it doesn’t get much darker than that.

The book put me in mind of a number of other books told from a toy’s point of view. The first, and the one with the greatest similarity, is Rachel Field’s Hitty: Her First Hundred Years. I first picked up Hitty at my grandmother’s house when I was probably about AJ’s age, or maybe a little younger. And I loved it. It is the memoir of a doll who was carved by a peddler for a little girl. Like Edward, Hitty has many adventures, some of which are similar to Edward’s – both, for instance, have run-ins with birds. But Hitty’s adventures are not all sad, nor are they meant to teacher her anything, but rather to showcase her optimism and willingness to make the best of situations that she is powerless to control.

Margery William’s classic tale, “The Velveteen Rabbit,” which you can read in its entirety here, always struck me as unspeakably sad as a child. The Velveteen Rabbit, a Christmas present to a small boy, becomes his favorite. The Rabbit loves being the boy’s favorite, but he longs to be Real (with a capital “R”). The part that always disturbed me was when the boy contracts scarlet fever and the rabbit is tossed in a trash pile, along with all the boy’s sheets and clothes, to be burned, in order to kill the germs. It seemed so heartless. The Velveteen Rabbit is rescued in an unexpected way and has a happy ending. But the adults in the story came off as careless and unobservant.

It is this separation of adult and toy world view in all three of these stories that also makes them appeal to children. The toys have hard lives. By the ends of these tales they are battered and broken and they have transformed into something beyond mere object. The adults, however, are mostly thoughtless, selfish, mean and careless with something that has feelings and little or no control over its own circumstances. Frequently, the adults don’t even notice the toys, much as children feel ignored or overlooked or misunderstood by adults.

The fourth book on my list is much slighter than the others, but is similarly wistful. It’s a picture book I adored as a child, and the pictures are a very large part of this book’s appeal. Flora McFlimsey is a doll who, when she was new, was given as a Christmas present to a little girl, who loved her. But now she is stuck in the attic on Christmas Eve with all the other unwanted things and a mouse named Timothy. But Flora McFlimsey has a wish: she wants to see a Christmas tree again. And she has another wish too: to be loved by a little girl again. And because it is Christmas, sometimes wishes come true. Even this book, though, is not all sweetness and light. There is the sadness of Flora’s abandonment in the attic. And once she makes it down to the Christmas tree, as a replacement for a doll that is missing from Santa’s bag, she is taunted to two brand-new and fashionable dolls. But in the end, the three sisters who come down on Christmas morning all like Flora best. She is old fashioned and not in fashion, but she is lovable.

In all of these books, the toys’ lack of agency is placed front and center. In three of them, the toys gain some amount of visible agency. In Hitty’s case, it is through writing her memoirs. In the case of the Velveteen Rabbit and Flora McFlimsey, there is a magical intervention that allows the toys to gain movement and thus control. Edward’s case is different. He gains control not of his surroundings, but of himself.

The difficulties the toys go through are exactly why we should let children read these books, why we should read them with our children, why writers should keep tackling difficult topics for children’s books. As parents, we tend to want to protect our children from the darker side of life. But children’s lives are often darker than we know. Like the toys in these books, they have little control over their lives. They are told where to go and when to go there. Things are taken away from them, and they often don’t understand why. Other children are sometimes cruel. Adults, even those who love them, don’t always listen to them as well as they should. Children will find familiar ground here, whether parents wish to admit it or not. None of these stories are depressing or hopeless. Quite the opposite. For a child who feels trapped and frustrated by his status in the world, the message of resolution may be a welcome one.

Edward Tulane may be an even more important figure for children than the rest. His character flaw is selfishness, and it brings about his downfall. Learning to connect with others redeems him. He is punished, repents and is forgiven. There is no magic. It is his own internal journey, a lesson taught by hardship, that transforms him. These are all issues that young children wrestle with but often cannot articulate. And as a parent, I worry that punishment looms larger than the forgiveness. Edward Tulane ends with forgiveness and reward.

Have any of you read The Miraculous Adventure of Edward Tulane? What did you think? What do you think of it as a book for children? Do you have any other books about toys to add to the discussion? I thought also of the Lonely Doll books, but I don’t remember them very well. I’d love to hear of more.

Second Grade wrap-up

2009-06-11T11:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was AJ's last day of second grade. I think we were all ready for it. The last month or so has been tough on all of us.

AJ came home with a pile of old projects and a report card stuffed with test scores. The report card was...not great. Many of his marks slipped from the last report card, mostly in the category of "learning/social characteristics," which is the non-academic stuff. AJ has definitely struggled this year with his classroom behavior. He has had a particularly hard time keeping himself focused in the face of the many distractions of a small classroom crammed with 26 kids. But he also, apparently, has had motivation issues. We've seen it at home too. A lot of it is, I think, boredom. But he's also balking at more challenging work, not wanting to work too hard. In the past, such reticence has often been based on a sense of social isolation, wanting to do the same thing everyone else is doing. But this time, it seems to be more about fear of failure or sometimes just plain laziness. It's a behavior we'll need to watch carefully. At the moment, we're addressing it by reiterating our expectations that he try his best.

The distraction issue is something I'd like to work on over the summer, to find ways of keeping him more focused. One of the things I've notice about AJ, and about many kids his age, especially boys, is that he concentrates better when he is moving. When he works on his homework, he is often moving around or fidgeting with something and he does well. He can't do this in the classroom. We need to help him channel his energy.

The test scores were another matter. We finally got the official notice of the OLSAT. We also got the report on the ISEL, the individually administered state standard test. The results of both were a little puzzling. For the ISEL, which is an achievement test, AJ was in the 100th percentile in most areas. But his lowest area -- noticeably lower -- was verbal comprehension. This was the same area that had given AJ the most trouble on the OLSAT, an aptitude test, where it was also the only percentile below the 90s. AJ took the ISEL last year too and the score was more than 10 percentage points lower than the last time he took the test -- a significant difference. But that isn't the weird part. The weird part is that verbal comprehension was his highest score on the WISC, at the very top of the range at 99.9th percentile. What accounts for this drastic difference between tests? I know it's probably not fair to compare the tests in this way. But still, what is the reason for a nearly 20 percentage point difference between his scores in the same area? I wish I knew.

Has anyone else experienced such anomalies?

We still have one more round of test results, for the ITBS, due in sometime this month. Then we're off the hook for a while.

In addition to all his projects, he brought home a book of letters to him, one from each member of his class, his teacher and her aid. They've been working on these letters for months. Each child got the chance to be the "Star Student" for the day and got to make a poster and get up in front of the class and talk about their favorite things. Then the rest of the class wrote letters in response. The letters from the students were wonderful and sweet. But the one from his teacher made my day because she wrote it in a code for him to decipher. I was thinking about how hard they both struggled to understand each other at the beginning of the year. The code was perfect and AJ loved it. She's done a good job of trying to figure him out.

Over the next few weeks, AJ will be busy with sports and piano lessons and camps, including two weeks at the camp for gifted kids he attended last summer. I was, unfortunately, too late to sign him up to get the fabulous physics teacher he had last summer, who this year is teaching their most popular computer gaming course. But he'll be taking art, science and geometry, and he's very excited about it all.

Was this assignment really necessary?

2009-06-02T14:31:00.000-07:00

Testing roundup

2009-06-01T15:07:00.000-07:00

Today AJ finished what I believe is the last standardized testing for the year. Since this time last year, AJ has taken the KTEA-I (Kaufman Test of Eductaional Achievement, 2nd edition, brief form), KBIT-2 (Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test Second Edition), CTD Inventory (Center for Talent Development, Northwestern University), the Gates-McGintie Reading Test, the Darrell Morris Developmental Spelling Test, the ISEL (Illinois Snapshots of Early Literacy), the OLSAT (Otis-Lennon School AbilityTest), WISC-IV (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children – Fourth Edition), and ITBS (Iowa Tests of Basic Skills). Hard to believe at this point that I was, not all that long ago, testing averse.

Why am I no longer testing averse? It comes down to circumstances. I don’t see the point in intelligence testing for children unless you are trying to accomplish something – get into a program, get services needed at school, etc. And while I hate seeing schools teaching to the test, as a teacher, I also know the value of good student evaluation. It helps a lot to know what your students are getting and not getting. I love giving tests because it gives me a ton of information (I still hate writing and grading them, though. Well, not hate, exactly. More like resent the time they take.)

Of the tests above the first three (KTEA-I, KBIT-II & CTD) were administered in a single one-hour session. We elected and paid for that one to get AJ into a summer program that, ironically, we ended up not doing because of the test – we discovered just how awful the commute would be when driving there. The WISC-IV was the only other one that we elected, and that was to get AJ into the gifted program after a subpar showing on the OLSAT. All the rest of the tests were administered by AJ’s school. I’m thinking his file is going to need its own cabinet by the time he graduates.

But tests are designed to accomplish something. If you are just fishing for information, I don’t think you’ll get your money’s worth. You need to know what you need to know.

Then there’s the issue of the IQ number. We’ve deliberated about this. My feeling is that no one should know his own IQ. It can limit you or intimidate you when really, the number is a description (and not a very nuanced one at that) of a moment in time. It’s not a solution to anything.

AJ wants to know what his IQ is. I can understand the frustration of having someone know something about you that you don’t know. It’s why I wanted to know, when I was pregnant with AJ, whether he was a boy or a girl. I didn’t like the idea of my doctor having information that I didn’t. But in this case, I can’t see anything good that can come out of him knowing the number. He could brag about it. He could feel like he’s not living up to it. He could even be disappointed by it. Right now, it could be anything. And moreover, since he hit the test ceiling, we don’t even know for sure what that number is. We could sign him up for more testing, but what is the point? We know what we need to know.

But I didn’t like the idea of holding out on AJ. So I told him that I’d tell him what it is on the day he graduates from college. I plan to stick to my side of the bargain. But only if he remembers to ask me.

We are all looking forward to a break from testing for the summer. Now we just have to wait for the rest of the scores to come in.

What about you? What are your thoughts on testing? Where do you stand?

Gifted Exchange

2009-05-28T12:37:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across an intelligent blog focusing on gifted education issues today. Check out Gifted Exchange.

Scores are in

2009-05-27T13:29:00.000-07:00

We got the full results of AJ's WISC testing today. He hit the ceiling. Take that, stupid school gifted program policy that ignores the obvious! Ahem. Please excuse me if I'm feeling a little childish about this. It's been a long haul and I've mostly been very polite.

Also, AJ reports that during his ITBS testing with the gifted teacher yesterday that she remarked, "Wow, you have a very large vocabulary." Well, duh!

I promise I will stop sticking out my tongue at everyone by the next post.

Rules and regulations

2009-05-25T19:39:00.000-07:00

AJ's taking the first part of the ITBS tomorrow. Because of the problems he had on his last standardized test, the OLSAT, we printed out a practice test from the internet. My intent had been to just talk through it with him to make sure he understood the questions, but he loves tests and sprinted on through it. The only two questions he missed were both errors from excessive speed. So we came up with three rules to help him tomorrow.

1. Read the directions carefully
2. Take your time
3. Check the question number and make sure it matches the answer sheet number every time you color a circle.

He's looking forward to it. I'll be glad when all of this stuff is over.

Testing, testing and more testing

2009-05-20T10:21:00.001-07:00

AJ had his WISC testing yesterday, which I've written about more anecdotally here. AJ took the WISC-IV and got a score clearly in the gifted range. Even better, he had a great time. It was as if a switch was flipped and his brain went into high gear afterwards. He's been extra fun to be around ever since.

I dropped off the score sheets at AJ's school right when school let out at 3:15. Within 30 minutes, I received an email from the gifted teacher saying she wanted to schedule AJ for Iowa testing. This meant that AJ's WISC scores were substituted for the anomalous OLSAT scores. One more battle completed. One more round of testing to go.

I didn't realize from talking to anyone -- not the gifted teacher, nor the classroom teacher, nor the principal, nor the curriculum director -- that there was another round of testing for identification. Although, I'm not entirely surprised, as the gifted teacher had said something about Iowa testing next year if he qualified. If I'd know that there was another round, I would have pushed for him to do Iowa testing (also known as ITBS or Iowa Test of Basic Skills) at the school earlier.

The ITBS is an achievement test, rather than an aptitude test like the OLSAT. Most schools we've investigated seem to use a combination of aptitude and achievement testing for gifted identification. AJ's school district gives all students the OLSAT in second grade and then pulls those students whose OLSAT scores qualify them for the program and adminsters the ITBS only to them. When I was a kid, everyone took the ITBS. The achievement tests that AJ's school administers to everyone are much less comprehensive. I'm sure that the decision to do it this way is all about economics.

I am slightly nervous for AJ taking the ITBS because, like the OLSAT, it is a color-the-bubble test. It is an "off level" test (or, at least, that's the way AJ's school does it), which means some of the questions will probably deal with concepts AJ doesn't know. But AJ has traditionally done well on these types of tests. And since the rest of the identified kids have already taken the test, AJ will be in a room by himself with the gifted teacher, so there will be fewer distractions than usual -- probably best for him. There are a few sample pages available on the web, which I plan to show him, just to give him an idea of what to expect, and I will prep him for the procedures, including telling him that some of the questions will probably be about things he hasn't learned yet. But I don't plan to do much. My goal is to make him comfortable in the testing room, to to help him cram.

AJ's testing will take place over the next two weeks. Thanks to his alert classroom teacher, who let us know about the OLSAT problem as soon as she knew herself, we were able to work both within the school system and also to acquire independent outside testing in time to get the ITBS done before the end of the school year. I have already written to tell her how very grateful we are for her help. As hard as this process has been, is, I feel we have been very lucky with our teachers.

But our schools, like the rest of the country, are suffering financially. Yesterday, an article appeared in the local paper quoting our district superintendent saying that they are looking at closing another school next year as one way to balance the budget. Our classes are already 26 students and up, even in kindergarten. The rooms aren't even big enough to hold any more students. So while one battle appears to be winding down, another one is just beginning. There are more letters to write.

I'm still working on post of general advice for effective public school advocacy. Additionally, the psychologist who administered AJ's WISC test gave us a 25 page resource guide for parents of gifted children, including organizations, support groups, publications and websites. Some of these are local for us, but some are national. I plan on investigating as many as I can over the coming weeks and writing about them here, so stay tuned!

Book Review

2009-05-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

What to Read When by Pam Allyn
Avery Press (Penguin Group), 2009

Last night, it was my turn to put Red to bed. We read for half an hour – books she chooses – and then she gets to read to herself for fifteen minutes until lights out. Red doesn’t know how to read but she’s developed that book love that, to paraphrase a famous movie, is the start of something beautiful. It took awhile to hook her, unlike her older sister who taught herself to read at four; Red is a more physical, outward and gregarious kid than her sister was. But, the closer she gets to kindergarten, the more she’s gotten interested in being read to.

Her first choice of the evening was Harold and the Purple Crayon, one of many books her sister has graciously gifted her. Dusty’s moved on to bigger things, namely Inkheart and Harry Potter (I don't think I need a link for this one).

Harold is one of my most favorite children’s books. There are probably a hundred books in that category but Harold’s near the top. I am still envious of his power to create his world own with a simple purple crayon. He can draw a city, a tree, a dragon, nine pies (which flavors, I wonder?), an ocean. He can get himself in trouble and then rescue himself. All alone. No parents required. He has the utmost confidence in his abilities and when he’s lonely, he draws a friend.

I recently won a copy (through a contest held at the 3Rs) of Pam Allyn’s What to Read When. I was curious – I mean, we’re preaching to the choir here – to know what books she felt were important and when. Particularly, since Dusty is reading four grade levels above her own.

The search for challenging books with appropriate themes is becoming trickier. Dusty’s not ready for middle school books about puberty and sticky friendships involving boys. She doesn’t really want to know about sex and how babies are made. Trust me; we’ve ventured down that road before, inching along until the stop sign went up. So, I’m always looking for new books to introduce her to. At school, her teacher is encouraging her to read classics (rewritten for an elementary school audience, I assume) such as Treasure Island, Oliver Twist, and Robinson Crusoe.
So, when What to Read When arrived, I sat down with a pen to take notes and star new books to find for Dusty. The book is divided into three sections. The first (the preaching to the choir section) discusses the importance of reading to children, outlines how to help your child become a lifelong reader, and lists fourteen “Landmark Books” – books so important to the author, every child should read them.

The second section is a chronological listing of books to read to each age, birth to ten. The third section looks at books that fall into fifty themes. Oh, pardon: Fifty Essential Themes. Or rather, Forty-Nine, since Allyn wusses out and invites us to create our own essential fiftieth theme. I have a few beefs with that section but I’ll get to it in a minute.

First – Landmark Books. There are fourteen listed. I’ve read all of them. I’m sure you have, too. I agree with the author’s choices – only one of these books do I question as being “landmark” (Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman – is she our only token African-American heroine still? What year is this?) – but guess what isn’t there? Harold and the Purple Crayon. What is, you ask? Madeline, Charlotte’s Web, Pat the Bunny, Curious George, A Snowy Day, etc. The list ends with Harry Potter. The list is not so much wrong, as dated. And seriously limited. I don’t disagree with any of the choices but feel that way too many really important books were left out. And then, because this is a list that apparently covers the first ten years of a child’s life, I thought, gee, why bother? Fourteen books? Are you serious? Every single one of them, except Harry Potter, was written before I was born. And I’m well over forty. I suspect Ms. Allyn is, too.

I think she should have spent more time at the library, talking with librarians (and if she did, she must have gotten there via a time machine), because there are so many really wonderful books, books I consider modern “landmarks” (Not a Box by Antoinette Portis, for example; or The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle – which is not mentioned here at all), that have been written since 1966, that may get overlooked if one used this book as their main guide. Which, of course, it shouldn’t. It’s not a bad starting point for a parent who is not necessarily a hard-core reader. But it’s a decent place to begin.

So, I won’t belabor the point. More recent books show up elsewhere.
The second section is, to me, the most useful section. It divides books up by ages – and subdivides them by subject and/or theme. Books listed for birth to two include Goodnight Moon (on the landmark book list and published in 1947), some Eric Carles, some books about words and numbers and faces. The usual.

Since Dusty is my oldest child, and my most challenging in terms of her reading level, I was particularly interested in the lists for eight, nine and ten year olds. These lists include fiction, nonfiction, cooking, poetry, science, humor, plays, and art, among other categories (they differ for each age). Many familiar books are here: Bunnicula, Captain Underpants, David Macaulay’s Castle, Where The Sidewalk Ends, etc. But, these sections were also filled with plenty I was unfamiliar with: Cendrillon: A Caribbean Cinderella and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, to list a few. Almost every book listed under “Books for Building Complex Thinkers” (Age Nine), Dusty’s read already. But, just having three in that category that she hasn’t read gives me three more books to introduce to her.

The final section is entitled “The Fifty Themes: All the Best Books for the Moments That Matter Most.” A tall order. My biggest problem with this section was the way the headings – the themes – were alphabetized. “The Challenges and Joys of Siblings” is under C. I’d put it under S for sibling, since that’s the theme, not “challenges”. Ditto with “The Complexity of Sharing.” I’d also put that under S for Sharing rather than C for Complexity. What. Ever. You’ll have to refer to index to find what you’re looking for. A very strange choice.

I think that while this book attempted to do too much, it’s not bad. It’s a good place to start. While I’d agree that “Adoption” is a good theme (if it’s relevant to your situation), I’m not sure I’d equate it to “Bath Time.” Which underscores my biggest issue with this book: it’s trying to be all things for all ages. Readers, and parents, would have been better served with perhaps a series of books that really encapsulated the best books for narrower age groups.

Reading aloud to each age group is also different. When I read to Red, I’m frequently interrupted because she likes to point out letters. Or, I stop and ask her what c-a-t spells. With Dusty, I’m interrupted because she wants to know what a Receiver is and why it’s not necessarily a good thing to be one (The Giver). She likes to think ahead, guessing what might happen next. She might stop to look a new word up in the dictionary. I think that’s the kind of information parents need. Kind of the literature version of the What to Expect series on the care and feeding of babies and children. My children (almost five and eight-and-a-half) have different reading requirements, different expectations. Not that the introduction of What to Read When is lacking, I think the book's attempt to be all things is.

That said, there are plenty of books my children haven’t read that are listed here and that’s worth it for me. It’s not a bad reference at all but as a hard core reader raising hard core readers, it’s just not quite enough. Or too much. I can’t decide.

Book Review: City of Names by Kevin Brockmeier

2009-05-04T06:45:00.000-07:00

Kevin Brockmeier, City of Names
New York: Viking, 2002

When I was a kid, I lived at the public library. Sometimes I'd go to look something up or to check out a book I loved. But my favorite thing was to wander the shelves looking for something to call to me, something in the title or perhaps the shape of the spine, to pull it off the shelf and take a look. Many times the book went straight back where it came from, but if I was really lucky, I'd find a keeper. For some reason, maybe because it was my own discovery and no one told me about it, those books were often the ones that stuck with me the best. Natalie Savage Carlson's The Family Under the Bridge, Sydney Taylor's The All-of-a-Kind Family, and Meindert' de Jong's The Wheel on the School were several I found this way and all are still well-remembered and much beloved.

AJ has come to shelf-wandering later than I did. It is, I think, because public libraries are a lot different than they were when I was growing up. There are many more distractions -- computers with games and internet connections, playrooms, art projects to do. It wasn't really until first grade, when he got to go to his school library and pick out his own books that he started to figure out the pleasures of wandering the shelf and finding something good.

A couple of weeks ago, we all took a trip to the public library in the next town, which is much larger and nicer than our local branch. AJ was in a browsing mood and came out with a number of good books, one of which turned out to be a real find: City of Names by Kevin Brockmeier. AJ and I both enjoyed it. It turned out to be one of those books we read out loud at the same time AJ reads it to himself. He's read it 3 times since we checked it out and is hoping to squeeze in one more read before it's due back at the library next weekend.

City of Names is narrated by Howie Quackenbush, a fifth grader at Larry Boone Elementary School in the town of North Mellwood. Howie's been an only child, but his mom is pregnant and he's finding himself with a few too many Taco take-out dinners and a little more time on his hands. Howie looks forward to getting his school book club orders each month, but is surprised to discover that instead of the copy of 101 Pickle Jokes he requested, he gets The Secret Guide to North Mellwood, a map of his town with mysterious names. The map turns out to allow him to travel around his town, into homes and businesses even after hours. But Howie doesn't know where the map comes from or what exactly he is supposed to do with it. And when another unexpected book order delivery comes and leads him to mysterious underground rooms all over town, the mystery only deepens. Howie gets to the bottom of the mystery, with the help of his best friend Kevin Bugg and the girl who makes him blush, Casey Robinson, and his artist-Aunt Margie, just in time.

The story is engaging, but what really struck me was the quality of the writing, which is a definite cut above most books written for the 8-12 age group. His command of language and his way of spinning out a story was perfectly paced, and his characters were unusual, compelling and convincing. In lesser hands, this story would have taken much more than 137 pages to tell. Brockmeier's authorial skill should come as no surprise. Although this was Brockmeier's first novel for children (he has since written at least one other, Grooves, A Sort of Mystery ), he has written a number of acclaimed novels for adults, and has the sort of credentials that writers envy. He's a graduate of the Iowa Writers workshop and has racked up a host of honors including a Michener Fellowship, an O. Henry prize, and inclusion in Granta's Best of Young American Novelists (2007). As an author of adult fiction, Brockmeier is known for turning the sci fi genre on its ear. I was first introduced to him by an article in Slate a couple of years back called, "Who is Kevin Brockmeier", whose author Megan O'Rourke calls Brockmeier's A Brief History of the Dead, "a novel that gracefully captures modern-day anxieties about terrorism and futuristic decay—and a book that makes us feel, for a moment, how strange it is that humans live in glass and metal boxes suspended above the ground. This, after all, is what fantasy can do best: restore our sense of wonder."

There are elements of fantasy in City of Names as well, but it is the attention to realistic detail that had AJ from the beginning. He immediately identified with Howie as an only child, as a kid still trying to figure out where he fits, a kid who loves school and books but longs for adventure. And he loved the form that adventure took, especially that it involved kids exploring without much supervision.

Brockmeier so perfectly captures his narrator, that even though I'd forgotten which grade he was in as I sat down to write this post, I was certain he had to be eleven years old. Without browbeating the issue, Brockmeier delicately addresses Howie's ambivalence over his impending big-brotherhood and his uncertainty about his changing feelings for his longtime friend Casey. He is a boy on the brink of puberty, but he's not there yet and he's in no real rush to arrive.

AJ also loved the book's humor, the map (although he wished there'd been a copy of the map in the book to look at), the idea of "secret names" and the esoteric words used for those names -- we spent a lot of time with the dictionary because AJ wanted to know what words like "dolorifuge" ("something to drive away pain," OED) and "floccinaucinihilipilification" ("the action or habit of evaluating something as worthless," OED) meant. I loved the linking of the map with Howie's soon-to-arrive sibling in unexpected ways and the attention on the importance of what we call things. This book is highly recommended and was perfectly pitched for my second grader (who only squirmed a little at the very brief mention of kissing, but then, so did Howie), but could easily sustain the interest of older children as well. AJ is hoping to discover a sequel on the library shelf one day.

Holding Pattern

2009-05-01T07:29:00.001-07:00

We're at the end of the line with the school district, for the moment anyway. And yet, the news is, I think, cautiously positive. Mr. Spy and I each spoke this morning with the district Director of Curriculum, who is, among other things, in charge of admission policy for the gifted program. I'm finding that talking to everyone, from the teachers on up, tends to result in their talking very fast over you, as if to anticipate problems before they happen. They all use the, "I understand -- I'm just like you" kinds of lines. These are mostly defensive, but still well-meaning. For the most part, anyway. And I don't think it's necessarily a conscious manipulation. I do think, however, that as a parent-advocate, you need to know how to push through it. Otherwise, when you get out of the conversation, you are left scratching your head and saying, "What just happened?"

Good point number one -- every single person we've dealt with, from the classroom teacher to the district administrators -- has done when that said they would when they said they would do it. This is huge. It means good communication in the district. It means they're taking us seriously.

Good point number two -- the Curriculum Director is talkative, but she is also friendly and smart and we were largely in agreement on matters of educational philosophy. However, she still couldn't tell us what we wanted to hear. But she didn't say no either.

We heard more about the district's reevaluation of the criteria for gifted program admission that our school principal had mentioned last week. It is not just an idea, it's actually happening and it's supposed to be in place this fall. The new policy will add two more criteria and take the weight off the one test. They're still trying to figure out what criteria will be included and in what weighting. They will likely include test scores, portfolio, teacher recommendations and parent recommendations. The goal is to get more kids what they need. It also sounds like the district may be reevaluating the pull-out program. The C.D. is on the fence about it. She has been looking at districts that use a gifted label, but not a gifted program and focus on training and supporting classroom teachers. I think this is a great direction, if it works. What we want is not a label, but the extra challenge AJ needs. But when there is a label, when there is a pull-out program, we need that too. Because if we don't, he is unlikely to get what he needs. When there is a pull-out program, teachers rely on it.

The C.D. seemed to think that it was likely that AJ would be included by the new criteria, especially since he's only 1 point away by the old criteria. But she can't promise -- there are others who, like us, are advocating for their kids. She promised to get him what he needs in the classroom and to call her any time if I needed help. But she couldn't guarantee the pull-out. All she could do is say it looked likely. If we want guarantees, the only thing left is testing -- assuming the test scores are high enough. And so we will be spending the $500 to have him tested later this month and hope it helps.

One thing that worries me slightly, though, is that we're getting mixed messages about how much the test scores will help. The gifted teacher had told us that they will substitute the private testing for the OLSAT score. But that's not what the C.D. said. She said it would be included in the things they look at, although she also said that it was the only thing that really has made a difference in the past. This does not sound like a guarantee to me either, but at least it sounds promising.

While we didn't get what we'd hoped to get, we did get what we expected to hear, more or less. And now we know to focus our energies on learning about the IQ testing on May 19.

I hope all these stories about the process are not too tedious to read. My hope is that others can learn from our experience, that it will help others learn how to advocate for their kids. Since we have a lull in the process, I'm working on a more general post on advocacy and another one on how to approach IQ tests with your kids. I would love to hear some more voices on this subject. If you're interested in posting here on these or other subjects of giftedness, please email me at harri3tspyATgmailDOTcom.

Another check

2009-04-27T12:45:00.001-07:00

No word yet from the principal on his conversation with the curriculum director, although I didn't really expect to hear from him before this afternoon. We did hear back from the psychologist today and I talked to her at length about the situation and about the testing options and procedures. I liked her and I think AJ will too. We made an appointment for 5/19 to take the WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children), one of the most commonly used IQ tests. We could also have chosen the Stanford-Binet, but the psychologist recommended the WISC for AJ as its scoring tends to favor highly verbal children. It is an individually administered test that will take about 2 hours. AJ will be able to take breaks when he needs them and can bring a snack. Test administrators are allowed to prompt if the child doesn't answer right away and there are sample questions he can try for each section to make sure he understands the instructions. This will all be a big improvement over the OLSAT. Also, we will get the scores immediately and a more detailed written report a week or so later. There will also be a follow-up meeting, either in person or by phone, to go over the results and what they mean. This all sounds very good. The one drawback is the cost -- $425. So we're still hoping the school thing comes through, but it's nice to have a backup plan in place.

2009-04-24T13:44:00.001-07:00

Another meeting down. How many to go?

I met with the principal of AJ's school today. Mr. Spy stayed home, as this seemed like more of a formality. It turned out, however, to be quite productive, I think. One of the things that has helped immensely in all of this is that there is excellent communication between the various people we've been talking to. When AJ's teacher notified us about her concerns about the test scores, she also talked to the gifted teacher and the principal. When we talked to the gifted teacher, she filled in the classroom teacher and the principal. So everyone knows what is going on. This, I am learning, does not always happen.

The principal is also on our side. Although he is not the one who makes decisions on variance from district curriculum policy, he does have the ear of the person who does and he is going to do what he can to help. He had, in fact, already mentioned that there was a problem to the curriculum director who told him that this problem was not uncommon and that they made decisions on a case by case basis, which sounds promising. So in our meeting, he wanted details so he could most effectively make the case. He thought that we should probably talk to her directly too, but thought it would be best if he spoke to her first and then had her contact us before the end of next week. He asked a lot of questions and I gave him a lot of paperwork, which he said he would copy and drive over to the district office on his way home today. So things are moving at a reasonable pace. If only I could get the psychologists to call me back. It is, apparently, the busy season for shrinks.

Next step

2009-04-24T06:36:00.000-07:00

Another day, another meeting with the school. I wish I could compress all these meetings into a smaller timeframe. The more time passes between them, the more I start losing my nerve. This one should be perfunctory -- asking permission from the gatekeeper. So why am I nervous?

Waiting some more

2009-04-21T08:55:00.001-07:00

First of all, I would like to apologize for the ads that are appearing on this site. I'm not sure how they got there or how to move or eliminate them. Until I have time to figure it out, you'll have to put up with them. On the plus side, they earned 6 whole cents last night. Just doing my part for the economy.

A couple of more things have happened on the testing front. We have an appointment with the school principal, but not until Friday. I don't want to talk to anyone at the district level before I talk to him, so having to wait a few days will slow us down, but hopefully not too much. I think maintaining the goodwill of the school is too important to mess around with, so we're back in waiting mode. I've also contacted a psychologist about testing. Depending on the cost of the tests, we may just go ahead and do it. Or we may wait and see what we can accomplish with the school. Either way, though, I'm going to talk to the district about waiving the minimum scores. I feel that the weighting of the test as compared to other methods of evaluation is problematic and it doesn't do what the state statutes aim to set up, which is to give students with test-taking disadvantages (the state is particularly concerned with disadvantages caused by language barriers and socio-economic class, which often fall along racial lines) an alternate route in. It would appear that the weighting will probably maintain the status quo -- a gifted program full of wealthy white kids (While we're not wealthy, we're not impoverished either. Despite my own opinions about my personal finances, I count us in that category. We have the know-how and means to find private testing. Not everyone does).

We did talk to AJ about the situation last night. He brought it up. He knew we'd met with the gifted teacher. He also knew something we didn't -- his friend got an envelope from the gifted teacher in class yesterday and he didn't. AJ, probably rightly, assumed that it was about getting into the gifted program and he wanted to know why he didn't get one. So we told him the whole story. We emphasized that the test was not a good test for him, that it wasn't a problem with the way he took it, but with the test itself and the way the school made decisions about it and we assured him that we and his teachers were doing our best to make sure he got into the program. But he still felt bad, like he did something wrong. "Why was it so easy for him?" he asked about his friend at bedtime last night. "Why did he get in just like that and it's so hard for me?" It was a sensible question. AJ often works with his friend, but AJ is working at a level above him in both math and reading. We talked about how people's brains work differently. How comparing yourself to others doesn't really work that well. AJ's friend is quiet, a good listener, and a follower of instructions. AJ is loud, easily distracted, and a questioner of everything. They both belong in the program, but they are not going to get there by the same road.

But I am worried about the toll this may be taking on AJ. He has always been called "the smart kid." And no matter what we say, he's not feeling like the smart kid right now. He is a kid who needs a lot of outside validation. He is suspicious of reassurance. He thinks it means we're hiding something. Before we keep going, I want to make sure he's up for it. He says he is, but I'm not sure if he's thought about his options. And I need to figure out how to help him trust himself to give himself his own feedback. He's been going through a very difficult time lately -- getting argumentative at home and disobedient at school. I want him to be confident and challenged, to know his abilities even if others deny them. If I had the formula for that, I'd be a wealthy woman.

Mixed Results

2009-04-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

So. The meeting. It was about what I expected. Maybe even a little better, although not as good as I'd hoped. Here's the rundown.

The Bad:

We got a lot of information, but unfortunately, we were not able to get much of a breakdown of AJ's scores -- just a verbal and a math. No explanation. AJ really did not do well on the OLSAT. Or at least that's how it looked to me, although the gifted teacher said that for most kids, these would be really good scores. They're just not good enough for these purposes. And here's the weird part. The thing he really didn't do well on was the verbal section. In every other test he's taken, including the previous aptitude testing, his verbal scores were off the charts high -- 99.98-100th percentile on everything. That I was not expecting, and it speaks even more to the fact that this was a bad test-taking experience. I don't trust the scores at all.

Unfortunately, the school district thinks highly enough of the test that the scores on the OLSAT count twice as much as teacher recommendations and work portfolio (the other components of the "matrix" used to determine admission candidacy) combined. AJ missed the cutoff for the program by one point in both math and language and it's solely based on the OLSAT. Even if he has the maximum scores in all other areas (which have not yet been determined), which seems likely, he will not meet the qualifying numbers. So while the school district is following the letter of Illinois law, which states that gifted programs must use at least three different methods of evaluating each child for the program, the weighting of the test means they are not following the spirit of the law. There is no way to counteract a bad test.

The good:

The gifted teacher is on our side. She is not a fan of the OLSAT for this purpose, she thinks AJ belongs in the program, and she wants to help us.

Next year, he will take the COGAT, which is a much more in-depth and reliable test. Unfortunately, that will not happen until spring. A lot of kids in the past have not qualified via the OLSAT but have qualified on the COGAT (shouldn't that be telling the district something about the testing cocktail?), so AJ would definitely not be alone.

The school district can't retest (there is a narrow window for administration of the OLSAT), but they will accept Stanford-Binet or WISC scores from private testing in place of the OLSAT.

Time is not a big factor. All AJ's teachers and the gifted teacher think this is a glitch and that he belongs in the gifted cluster. The teachers have a lot of say in the classroom organization so we have all but a guarantee that he will be in the right class. Even if we are unable to get done what we need to until the next school year starts, they can add him to the program as soon as the paperwork comes through.

The plan:

However, if we don't deal with either the district policy or the testing, he won't get the pullout program, which is an hour a week each for reading and math and supplements the regular curriculum. The gifted teacher can't fight the test scores. The best she can do is make sure he maxes out every other category, but because of the way the test is weighted, it's not enough to reach the cutoff because of the weighting of the test scores. I can see why AJ's teacher said she'd never known a kid who didn't meet the minimum OLSAT requirements get into the program. It's not mathematically possible.

So we're going to pursue this on two fronts. I will talk first to the school principal (who is probably not going to be able to help, but who needs not to be leapt over) and then to the district director of curriculum about waiving the cutoff, hopefully tomorrow. Since AJ's only down by one point and we have a lot of other evidence, that might work. However, the gifted teacher, after looking up the aptitude test that AJ took last year, which she had not previously heard of (Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test or KBIT-II, done in conjunction with KTEA-II) didn't think it was comprehensive enough to replace the OLSAT scores, so if they're not willing to waive the rules, the only way we can get him into the program is if he has qualifying scores from another test. This means time and expense on our part, but it's worth it if we have to. So I will also be making an appointment for AJ with a psychologist Siren recommended for additional testing.

We still haven't talked to AJ about this. We're going to have to eventually, I think. But it doesn't seem the right time.

The Question:

So if AJ's kindergarten, first and second grad teachers all recommend him without reservation for the program, as does the gifted teacher -- the people who actually work with him regularly -- why can't the school district make an exception?

Because they're still bureaucrats at heart, I guess. More fun and games ahead.

Eve

2009-04-19T15:49:00.001-07:00

I spent some time today getting organized for our meeting tomorrow with the gifted teacher. As part of my preparation, I organized all of my files of AJ's work and test scores and the research I've done and put together a one page argument for inclusion. The document is one I will be able to use to appeal his case, if we need to. But in putting it together, I realized just how strong our case is. So hopefully we won't need to. AJ scored in the 99th or 100th percentile on most of the standardized tests the school gave him in the fall (on the most important of the tests, as well as several others, he didn't miss a single question). Even by the school's own means of measurement, the most recent test looks like an anomaly. And we've got recommendations, or promises thereof, from every teacher he's ever had. Fingers crossed.

School update

2009-04-17T14:42:00.001-07:00

I made an appointment with AJ's classroom teacher for this afternoon in hopes of getting a little more information about what happened during the test and what to expect on Monday. She was very helpful.

Apparently, AJ did fine on the parts of the test with written instructions. But in later parts of the test, the instructions were read aloud. The teacher was only allowed to read them once. These are the sections that gave him trouble. Also, in at least one of the sections in which he was below the cutoff, he missed it only by one point.

AJ's teacher has already talked to the gifted teacher and the school principal about her feelings about AJ needing to be in the gifted program. But she also said that she has never known of a case where they've taken a kid who didn't meet the minimum test scores. She thought we had a good chance, though, because we've got so much other documentation. But she said, "Bring everything you've got." And so we will.

When I spoke toLSM yesterday, she suggested three steps, which we plan to follow.

1. We will go into the meeting assuming that he will be admitted into the program with no further action required. We will bring all the documentation we have to support his case.

2. If that isn't enough, we will ask the school to retest him before the end of the school year. If they won't, we will offer to have him privately tested again.

3. If, after appealing his case to the teachers and principal that still isn't enough, we will take it to the administrative level. I think it very unlikely that we would need to do that, but you never know.

And now all there is to do is get his portfolio in order and wait for Monday. It's looking like Mr. Spy will not be able to attend the meeting with me, so I also should spend some time practicing to be a hardass. Wish me luck

2009-04-15T10:16:00.000-07:00

I am feeling a little more rational about everything today (or perhaps I have just temporarily channeled my irrationality towards the government for making the annual filing of taxes so arduous and incomprehensible). Those of you who have commented and emailed have all helped immensely. This post will address your comments and finish with a plan of action.

My Kids Mom asked about the possibility of the school retesting. I'm not yet sure what the answer to that is. The classroom teacher says that they will retest. She thought they'd retest before the next official spring testing period, but she wasn't sure. She was, however, reasonably sure that they would not retest before the start of the next school year, which, in my opinion, is too late. I'm also skeptical of retaking a test that didn't work the first time. But in that regard, we'll do what we have to.

Jill and Eleanor, I agree that some gifted programs are largely a waste of time. However, so is the regular curriculum a waste of time for AJ. Some gifted programs are better than others and I'm not at all sure that a pull out program is the best way to go. However, in my own personal experience, pull out programs -- even bad ones -- kept me from total school shutdown on more than one occasion. I wouldn't have survived the second grade without one. AJ has been getting a great deal of curriculum intervention in the classroom for the last three years. That may not continue at the same level once he hits third grade and there is a policy for gifted students that doesn't accommodate him. That would be deadly for AJ, who is already struggling with boredom-related behavior issues. Moreover, while the school should be looking for ways to include AJ, there are a couple of reasons why they might not be. The first is practical -- it is an underfunded, overcrowded school in a semi-rural, largely blue collar area with a huge ESL population. They are looking for ways to cut down on programs, not expand them. The second is that I think AJ doesn't fit their idea of a gifted kid. As Siren said, his brain is wired differently. He doesn't necessarily do better at classroom work than his peers. It depends on what it is and whether he thinks it's important. And like many very gifted kids, he is a pattern seeker and often sees options others don't. This means he doesn't perform as well on multiple choice tests as you might expect. He doesn't know how to sift through the many options that sound correct to him and figure out what the test is likely to be looking for.

If he's not a good fit with their idea of gifted, does it matter if he isn't in the program? Maybe it's for the best. But there are several reasons why I think it is still important that he be included in the school's gifted program.

1. As Jeanne mentioned, identification is important. It sticks with a kid through school. He can get into the program later, but it would be better and easier for him to get in sooner and stay there. Regardless of the nature of the program, identification keeps doors open for him.

2. Self-esteem. Readersguide put this well in her comments. He is used to thinking of himself as gifted, as "the smart kid." And while he is very ambivalent about the label, there is no question that being in the gifted cluster class without being in the gifted program would negatively affect his self-esteem.

3. Peer contact. The gifted pull-out sessions is the only time AJ would be able to be in a group with other gifted kids. It's something he looks for and doesn't get nearly often enough. When we were on vacation and met a friend's daughter, he asked later, "Is she gifted? Because she seems like she would be gifted." And I had to agree. As Siren put it on the phone yesterday, "smart people can smell other smart people. (Or, as her son, listening in, put it, "Scientists can smell other scientists -- because scientists are smart people.").

4. We can't afford private school and Mr. Spy has made me promise not to homeschool.

5. It's where he should be.

Lass, regarding yoru mom, I think I'll hold off on that until after Monday's meeting. I want more information. But if she has any general advice for this situation, I'd love to hear it. And thanks for offering.

Jeanne, I will definitely talk to his teacher further. I would also like to talk to his first grade teacher, although I want to tread carefully so that I don't upset a balance of power. I was pleased to see that in her reply to my request for a meeting, the gifted teacher had cced AJ's classroom teacher and the school principal. This really needs to be bigger than me one-on-one with the gifted teacher.

Freshhell -- I think (hope) you're right about AJ doing okay either way. The ADA part I know about at least. I filed the special services request form for AJ last year and I'll do it again for next year. If nothing else, it provides some continuity in paperwork.

Siren, I've been on the fence about being direct about AJ's giftedness with him. I think we mostly have been direct. But I'm so uncomfortable with the label, that I tend to balk at it. We have not talked to AJ about the test scores. I don't plan to talk about them with him before Monday. I want to find out what it's going to mean for him before we have that discussion and I don't want him to be feeling discouraged. He is exceptionally hard on himself in such situations and he has been going through a difficult time lately where he is constantly feeling like he's not good enough at, well, just about everything. I don't want him to think I care too much about the test scores too much, because I really don't. What I care about is that they might not reflect who he really is and what he can really do.

And so, the plan. I am assuming the test scores are a huge problem, because that is what this short conversation with AJ's classroom teacher has led me to believe. But I don't really have all the information. I will on Monday. So part one of the plan is to get as much information as possible. That means talking to everybody I can talk to and finding out what the options are. It means putting together a portfolio for AJ for our Monday meeting. And it means giving some thought about what we will do if the school tries to shut us out.

The next part of the plan is wait and see. Wait and see what comes out of the meeting. Then we'll be able to evaluate any necessary course of action.

Sheep and Goats

2009-04-14T15:37:00.000-07:00

I was about to start my weekly volunteer stint in AJ's classroom. This morning I was helping students edit letters they'd written to each other and to their teacher ("Dear Mrs. F, How old are you? May I guess 29?"). Mrs. F. came out of the classroom to talk for a minute while the students were rummaging through their desks in preparation for their next activity.

"We got the test scores yesterday," she said. I knew instantly that she was talking about the Otis-Lennon test that all the 2d graders took earlier this year. "It's not good." AJ didn't make the cut-off for the gifted program. "He was close, but he didn't make it."

This is not good news. Although also not entirely unexpected. This is AJ's first real experience with group standardized testing. The testing we did privately last year was one on one. Moreover, he had never done questions like this before and the school did nothing to prep the students. For a kid like AJ, who tends to freeze when he sees something he is not 100% sure he knows, this is not a good thing. From all I had read about the test, it was set up to play to his weaknesses. Many of the questions are somewhat ambiguous. Students are supposed to look for the best of several answers that may be right. AJ sees too many options in such situations. Instead of thinking it through, when there are multiple options, he shuts down.
Mrs. F. went on to say that AJ appeared agitated during one section of the test in particular. She thought he was guessing because he didn't understand what he was supposed to do. It was a section with pictures instead of math or words. My suspicion is that this test has tested his ability to take tests, not his "mental capability," as it says it is supposed to."

He is apparently not alone. A couple of studies have been done that have demonstrated very gifted kids often do poorly on the Otis-Lennon. Still, it is one of the most commonly administered tests for identifying gifted children, mainly because it is cheaper to administer than most tests. It takes only 45 minutes and requires no special training for the administrator. And considering that, many reviews suggest it is a pretty good test for the investment. But it doesn't seem to be very accurate. I've seen variability rates as great as 9%. But still, how do we process not making the cutoff on one test and 99.9th percentile on another? And am I wrong to give more credence to a test where a psychologist sat down with my kid for over an hour and talked to him over a fill in the bubble test that took 40 minutes that was taken in a classroom full of distractions?

We are trying to figure out what to do next. These kind of things make me second-guess myself all the time. Am I pushing too hard? Am I kidding myself? And then AJ starts doing something at home where it becomes clear to me that we are not in error. We have off-the-charts test scores form private testing and two classroom teachers who will vouch for him. That should be enough. But as I understand it, school policy bases admission to the program on Otis-Lennon scores alone. I can certainly understand why a school would have such a policy. You need to be able to draw a line in the sand. But does it really make sense to draw the line in this particular case?

Mrs. F. said she can make sure he gets into the cluster class with the other gifted kids next year, but she thought we'd better get involved if we want him in the pull-out program. We're meeting with the gifted teacher on Monday to figure out what the story is. But my first contact with her was not encouraging and we're preparing for a fight.

I'm putting together a dossier which includes AJ's previous test scores (even though the school already has them) as well as written reports from his teachers at a summer camp for gifted kids last year, a recommendation written for his application to the camp by his first grade teacher and, hopefully, some of the articles about the fallibility of the test. I may also contact the university where we had AJ tested last spring, which offers some resources for parents of gifted kids and may be able to help.

And for my own sanity, I called Siren to bend her ear about it. She suggested we consider offering to take him for a full IQ test if necessary.

Logically, I would think that the school would have enough grounds to make an exception -- we have test scores and teacher recommendations. That really should be enough. But we haven't had to confront a formal policy before. We're not sure what's going to happen.

But another issue is how much we want to fight for this. We don't really know much about the program and I have to say that my interactions with the teacher who runs it have not been overwhelming. Is this something we should even be worried about? Is clustering enough? He will be tested again next year. Should we just wait? Siren rightly suggested we hear what they have to say. I knew I could count on her to keep me from going off half cocked. So I am resigned to wait until Monday. This is good, because it leaves me enough time to have nine heart attacks over my nearly-but-not-quite finished taxes.

And I was hoping for an easy transition this year. I guess there's no such thing.

Book Review: MVP* *Magellan Voyage Project by Douglas Evans

2009-04-02T07:53:00.000-07:00

MVP* (*Magellan Voyage Project)
by Douglas Evans
Pictures by John Shelley
Asheville, NC: Front Street Press, 2004
ISBN 1-932425-13-6

I picked Douglas Evans' MVP off the bookshelf of AJ's school library on one of my volunteer days thinking a book about sports might be something he'd like. It turned out not to be a book about sports at all, but something much better. I think AJ read it 5 times at least before we took it back to the library.

MVP is an adventure story of the first order. It includes many of the elements that make AJ love a book:

• Boy protagonist

• Adventure that takes place in the "real" world (i.e., no magic/supernatural stuff)

• Word play or puzzles (in this case, lots of palindromes)

• Kids having adventures not only without parental supervision, but entirely without their parents knowledge.

• Kid conquers world! (in this case, literally as well as metaphorically)

• Silliness abounds

• So does excitement

Evans introduces his protagonist Adam Story, who narrates the story, with a classic palindrome: "Madam, I'm Adam." Palindromes permeate the book -- many of the characters have palindromic names (I'd venture to say that the palindromes seem to hint at the character's helpfulness or trustworthiness, but I haven't thoroughly checked to see if this is true throughout).

Adam is a loner, although not entirely by choice. He lives in relative poverty with his mom on the wrong side of the tracks, but attends public school in a fancier district because his mother works in the school's cafeteria. He feels isolated by his circumstances On the afternoon of his 12th birthday, while he is closing down the school's Homework Club, he is visited by a strange man in a cape who invites him on an adventure: to circumnavigate the globe in 40 days. The man reveals himself as Prince Olioli Oh XL of the kingdom of Babababad, and the producer of the Magellan Voyage Project, the organization behind the journey. Prince Oh offers to fully and generously finance the trip and to arrange it so Adam's mother doesn't even know he's gone. If he accomplishes the trip within the time frame, he will be rewarded with 4 million dollars.

Adam deliberates but eventually chooses to take the challenge. His journey introduces him to dozens of characters, some helpful, some harmful. He sees the world and gradually learns that the Magellan Voyage Project and Prince Oh himself are not quite what they seemed at first.

The story is fast-paced, exciting, clever and funny. Like any good adventure story there are lots of twists and turns, but the protagonist triumphs in the end. Its only weakness is that in prioritizing plot and pacing, character development gets short shrift. I would have liked a little more depth in the characters we spend the most time with, particularly Adam and one of his fellow travelers, Meredith. But overall, this is an excellent book for for elementary-middle school readers (and their parents). It's also very well suited to younger advanced readers like AJ. It's adventurous, but not too scary, and all subject matter is totally appropriate for younger readers. And the cartoonish line drawings throughout the book are engaging. AJ, Mr. Spy and I all loved it. And we are certainly not alone -- MVP was one of the nominees for the 2008 Rebecca Caudill award for Young Readers in our home state of Illinois.

As a parent and educator, I'd also add that there is a lot of potential for educational tie-ins. AJ read up on the countries the character passed through. We followed Adam's journey on a globe. AJ planned his own around the world routes, using maps and internet sites, just like Adam did. We will definitely be checking out Evans' other books and as for MVP, we're all hoping for a sequel.

Report card time again

2009-03-18T17:42:00.000-07:00

The second trimester report card was much better than the first. AJ improved in every area that had room for improvement. Moreover, since report cards went out, we've had more and more communication with his teacher. AJ is now in a math class of one. She's been pretesting him separately and giving him his own stuff to do. And while he's still been bringing home the same homework everyone else is doing which we adapt to his level, he's going to be getting separate homework too. I'm looking forward to seeing it when it arrives. In reading, it seems like his teacher is not only trying to find books at the right level, but also books he'll really like. She's been asking about what he likes and running titles by me. She's trying to pick things that fit in with the unit the class is working on and she's prereading the books before assigning them, to make sure they're appropriate for a second grader. This is above and beyond behavior, I think. I am grateful.

Meanwhile, at home, it seems as if AJ is having a bit of an existential crisis, one which is making me realize how much grownups -- even well-meaning loving grownups -- tend to categorize kids rather than really pay attention. AJ is good at many things and every time he gets good at and interested in one thing, it's assumed that that's his thing. I think this bothers AJ. For a long time he was into space. He always got space presents and books for presents. He liked them to a point, but at some point I think he decided he didn't want to be The Kid Who Liked Space. So recently, when we cleaned up his room, he asked to take down all the space posters. It made me a little sad. He's been drawing solar system pictures since he was two years old. I miss how excited he was about space. But he is on to other things. He doesn't have time for nostalgia. Similarly, when he became the Kid who Loves Science, he started focusing on sports. And when he became The Kid Who Loves Football, he decided not to sign up next year. I have total respect and understanding for his refusal to be boxed in by labels imposed on him by others. But I worry sometimes that he is sacrificing some things he really enjoys.

That is why I've been trying very hard to back off his new thing, the piano. He's been taking lessons for three weeks and is doing, by all accounts, amazingly well. I'm a musician myself, so of course I'm proud of him. But I'm trying to let him do his own thing. I remind him to practice and help when asked, but otherwise, I try to stay out of the way. He has his first recital tomorrow (after only three weeks? Yes, it's true, but it is just because of the timing of AJ's first lesson -- the recital was already scheduled) and he is even more excited about it than he was about losing a tooth yesterday. I'm impressed with how he's applying himself, how he runs down to practice before breakfast and again after school. How much he's learned in such a short time. But I'll be there clapping loudly tomorrow night. And I promise I won't let him be The Piano Boy. He'll just be AJ, playing the piano beautifully.

Testing 1-2-3

2009-03-02T16:34:00.000-08:00

This week, all the second graders at AJ's school are taking the Otis Lennon School Ability Tes, or OLSAT. The OLSAT is not an IQ test, but it is often used as an entrance exam to gifted programs. It is the only aptitude testing that AJ's school uses. Third and fourth graders take a state achievement test.

The school uses the OLSAT to determine tracking and special services. Starting in third grade, students are clustered with others at their level within their classroom. Those performing well below or well above the norm will get special services. AJ's scores on this exam will determine whether he gets into the gifted program next year.

I'm not concerned about that. I'm sure he'll do well enough to get in, and even if for some reason he didn't, we have enough paperwork to get him in the back door. But I did want to make sure he knew how to take the test.

This will be AJ's first experience with standardized testing. I would like it to be a good one, for his sake. He will expect to do well. His teacher hasn't said anything about the test, what to expect, how to take it. I wanted to make sure AJ knew how to handle the mechanics -- finding directions when they are at the top of each page instead of by each problem (a known issue for him), coloring in the circles accurately, what an analogy problem question. But I wasn't sure if I should. I don't want to pressure him. I honestly don't think this test is all that important in the general scheme of things (if he does well, it will help; if he doesn't, it probably won't hurt much). I also don't want to prep him if we're not supposed to. In the end, I decided to walk him through the basics. I really don't know much about the test, so I don't think I could possibly give away much.

What would you do?

Midyear Evaluations

2009-02-20T09:43:00.000-08:00

This week was midyear parent-teacher conference week at AJ's school. The midyears are by request only, not required. AJ's teacher did not request a conference, but I did. I always do. I can't imagine not taking advantage of a chance to get a better picture of what's going on or to let the teacher know you're paying attention.

My agenda this time was minimal. I wanted to see how some of the organization/behavior issues were going. I wanted to find out what exactly was happening with the school reading groups -- AJ tells us very little and I haven't worked with the reading groups on my volunteer days in a while. But mostly, I wanted to find out what on earth was going on with math.

The news was mostly good -- very good. The behavior issues seem mostly about maturity and the fact that AJ will always take an opportunity to act silly/crazy if someone else is acting that way. This is mostly limited to one other person and they've been separated, so that is going better. We will probably always have organization issues -- AJ's just not a natural. But he's trying. We've been making fewer after school returns to school to find lost homework. He's reportedly keeping his classroom supplies in better order. He has good days and bad days, but there's progress. At home, I see him taking more responsibility for his work. I don't have to remind him quite as much. The things he does daily, he does well. He still struggles with the once-a-week things, since they aren't as securely fixed in his routine.

The reading news was great. I got to see the book he's been working on, one of the "Dear America" series. AJ loves it and it's challenging enough, especially when combined with a series of questions he has to answer at the end which require him to pull out information from the novel and analyze it after he's done reading. This week they'll be starting a Louis Sachar novel that I'm not familiar with called something like "Sideways Tales from the Wayside School." We also got to see a portfolio of his writing, which was wonderful. They are doing a lot more writing than I thought they were -- little comes home, so we didn't realize what they were doing. There were scads of essays, short stories, poems and other types of creative writing.

It turned out, though, that it was good for me to be concerned about math. AJ's teacher showed us a sheet of midyear evaluation scores. Everything was 100% or higher (spelling has extra credit options) except for addition -- that was about 50%. Why was this score so low? Part of it was because AJ didn't read the instructions. When he sees things he thinks are too easy for him, he doesn't bother to make sure he knows what to do. I see this on his homework all the time. But much of it was the opposite problem -- he did read the instructions, but didn't remember that the teacher had told him to do something different. AJ is supposed to multiply most addition worksheets because he doesn't really need the addition practice and he's working on other things. She has reminded him several times, but he doesn't remember. So his score dropped. Now I understand the teacher's point of view here. I know exactly how frustrating AJ can be when you are trying to get him to do something different from the way he's done it before. It take numerous reminders over a fairly long period of time for the behavior to change. This drives me crazy, as I'm sure it drives his teacher crazy. But in this case, I have a little more sympathy with AJ. On the one hand, he's being told to pay more attention to written instructions. On the other, he's hearing that he's not supposed to follow written instructions. I suggested that the multiplication substitution be put in writing, either taped to his desk or, better yet, written on each worksheet.

Meanwhile, we are working with AJ on deciphering word problems. He's got his multiplication and division down, but he doesn't always know how to translate a word problem into a math problem accurately. Yesterday he came home with an assignment to write his own word problems with which he is to try to stump the school principal, who will do one student-created worksheet a week. AJ is very excited about this and I am too. What kid doesn't want to try to be smarter than his teachers and principal? And what a great way to get inside the way word problems work -- instead of yet another work sheet, a creative project. The teacher gets a big gold star for that one.

AJ spent much of the week working on his science fair project with his two friends, which meant I got to spend some time with two of my favorite parents. All three of the kids are definitely performing above average. One of them in ways very similar to AJ. He's in another class. Talking to his mother, I realize how well things really are going this year. Her son is getting minimal reading challenge and only gets challenge spelling when the bring a list in from home, like we did last year. He's getting no extra math at all. The mother of the other boy, who has been in AJ's class for the past two years, agreed that while their teacher this year is not as remarkable as their teacher last year, that she's doing a pretty good job.

The best news I heard at the conference was that when his teacher asks, "Who wants a challenge," he's always the first one with his hand up, shouting, "Me! Me!" This is a big change from last year, where he was often embarrassed about doing something different from everyone else. The difference is that this teacher has integrated challenge assigments seamlessly into her curriculum. In some cases, she offers the challenge assignments to everyone who wants to try them. In part because of class reorganization, AJ gets to work with a partner or in a small group on a number of tasks. The teacher is also using the Everyday Math curriculum in exactly the way I'd hoped she could. Everyday math cycles through a series of topics every year. When they get to a section where AJ is not challenged, she is pulling the assignments from the same topic in the 3rd or 4th grade book. He's still doing the same thing, but at his own level. Consequently, I think AJ is feeling much more a part of the class. This is particularly crucial this year, because he's much more aware of same/different issues than he was last year.

So, there has been definite progress on most fronts since Fall. Good news indeed.

Madder Men

2009-02-10T10:19:00.001-08:00

In light of my last post and your comments on it, an article in today's New York Times Arts section seemed particularly timely.

The article,"Scholastic accused of Misusing Book Clubs" by Motoko Rich, discusses a watchdog group's opposition to the presence of advertising links and non-book items in the Scholastic Book Club flyers that go out to thousands of school children every month. I know several of us here at AJ's Clubhouse have expressed our concern about this before. The watchdog group is called Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. You can see more of what they do at their website, linked above.

The argument that Scholastic offers is that some of these items help bring reluctant readers to books by luring them with posters, toys and games. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood objects globally to anything that is not a book being marketed in schools and that the add-ons only teach children acquisitiveness, without actually teaching them to value books (I have heavily paraphrased here and take all credit for any oversimplification). I think my own opinion on the matter lies somewhere in the middle, although closer to the CCFC's side. I have already discussed in this space my discomfort with brand name advertising in schools. I don't, however, put the selling of a book with a poster in the same category as the selling of a video game. Scholastic has both types of things. I don't think video games belong in school flyers. But I have no problem with posters -- as long as the poster has something to do with the book. AJ loves it when his books come with posters. He has a number of them up in his room. But I would be surprised if he would choose a book simply because it had a poster. The poster would only encourage an interest that was already there. I don't even have a problem with some of the non-book items Scholastic sells -- science experiment kits, for example. If they get a kid to engage in some scientific inquiry at home, that's great. The Mad-Libs they've started selling are good too. Although not designed as educational tools but for silly fun, they encourage reading and writing and they taught my kid the parts of speech. My objection to most of the non-book items is the quality control -- the few science kit type products we've ordered from Scholastic have been cheaply made and hard to use. If they are going to sell such things, they should make sure they are good quality and worthwhile educational products. Not video games. Not advertising. Not junk.

Of course, what Scholastic wants to market outside of schools is its own business. Inside the school, where they have a captive audience that has to be there -- they have not chosen it -- marketing non-educational, branded, or plain inappropriate products is reprehensible. And Scholastic has been doing plenty of all three.

Mad Men

2009-02-04T18:37:00.000-08:00

AJ is a huge fan of the website Funbrain. He loves the math games especially. He plays them in school when they have their computer lab day. I like the games too, but I'm a little squeamish about all the advertising. On the one hand, I'm sure the advertising is the only reason sites like this exist. And anything that gets a kid playing math for the sheer fun of it is doing something right. On the other hand, AJ is being bombarded with ads for Y0g0s and McDon@ld's. AJ and I talk a lot about advertising and what it does and how it works and why you should interrogate it, so I'm not really worried that he's being brainwashed. His friends are much more persuasive advocates for those particular products anyhow.

So my questions for you are, is advertising ever appropriate in educational materials? I am thinking not just of websites, but also things like the preschool math books based on Cheeri0s and M/Ms, school fundraisers with local fast food franchises (ours does D0min0s, Wendis and McDs every month with prizes for the class with the biggest haul) If so, how much is too much? What should we be doing about it?

Gray matter

2009-01-25T13:52:00.000-08:00

We seem to be running into another problem of the well-meaning-teacher-doesn't-get-gifted-kid's-brain variety. AJ came home with a notebook marked "Reading Response Journal" on Friday, with a note inside stating that it would be due back each Monday. On the first page, a writing prompt had been pasted in: "If I were in this book I would..." and AJ had written a single sentence in response to a book called "Imogene's Antlers," which the class had read back in December. That was it. No other instructions. AJ said that in class she had asked for 2-3 sentences on each of 3 books each week, but he didn't know what he was supposed to write about. Was he supposed to do the same question for each book?

Now AJ is a daydreamer par excellence, so it is entirely possible that he missed the assignment given out in class, and that would be his fault. But since the teacher went through the trouble of printing out a piece of paper that had the deadlines on it, couldn't she have printed the assignment on it too? I have emailed her for further instructions which I'm sure she will provide and we'll have that part figured out.

But that's not the only problem here. There is also the issue of what books we're talking about. Imogene's Antlers is a good book, but not a good book for AJ. It is a good book for AJ four years ago. AJ could read three books like Imogene's Antlers in about five or ten minutes. The fact that he was reading it in school again this year ticks me off, but that is a problem for another day. The problem, for the moment, is the assignment: if this assignment is supposed to be based on for fun reading (which, since it seems to be taking the place of independent reading logs he's been doing since September, seems likely), then AJ's books will take a lot longer to read and three books a week would make this a huge assignment.

Common sense would dictate that he should write responses to what he's reading three times, whether it be three different books or not. But that is not what the admittedly vague assignment said, at least according to AJ. This worries him.

AJ has always been fixated on rules and following them to the letter of the law. It is, I think, a result of not fully understanding the world around him. If you are following the rules, you are doing the right thing. Gray areas are very confusing and unsettling to him. If anything, this trait has been increased this year by the way he and his teacher seem to misunderstand each other a lot of the time. He is worried about doing what he thinks is the right thing and then getting in trouble for it, which sometimes happens. To have an assignment this vague, particularly since it is made even more vague due to the difference of his reading from the rest of the class, causes him great anxiety.

AJ no longer accepts our suggestions for how to do vague assignments, so we are waiting to hear back from his teacher, which probably won't happen until tomorrow. In the mean time, we had him read a shorter book, one that offers him no challenge, but enables him to follow the letter of the law, as he understands it. And he followed the same prompt for Imogene's Antlers, because it was the only thing he had to go on and he was afraid of making a mistake.

I really do not like how AJ has become afraid of schoolwork, how much he balks at homework now. He used to love doing writing assignments. Now he dreads them. As for me, I'm dreading the upcoming parent-teacher conferences. Because there is a lot to talk about.

Book Review: Hate That Cat by Sharon Creech

2009-01-19T17:21:00.000-08:00

It has been difficult to keep up with the posting over here at AJ's Clubhouse. There has been entirely too much snow and cold and not nearly enough school, which both reduces my choices of subject matter and also leave me with not enough time to write. But one thing snow and cold are good for are trips to the library. A lot of books we have picked up have been about magnets in preparation for AJ's science fair project. But he's also been trolling the new book shelves. This week, one of the books he came home with was Hate That Cat by Sharon Creech. I've never heard of the book or Creech before, but the cover informs me that she won a Newbery Medal for Walk Two Moons, so perhaps I should be more familiar.

AJ was attracted to the bright red cover with its surly line drawing of a cat by William Steig. But I'm the one who picked it up first. I read the whole thing in the car on the way home from the library (don't worry: I wasn't driving.)

Hate that Cat takes the form of a poetry journal written by a boy of indeterminate age (although I read fast and may have missed it) named Jack for Miss Stretchberry's class. There are a number of things I enjoyed about the book. The first is the way the story reveals itself, elliptically and with lots of holes that force the reader to read between the lines. This is fairly rare in the world of children's books, and I always like to see it.

Second, it is about poetry, both the reading and the writing of it. Miss Stretchberry's assignments are not belabored, only demonstrated. Mostly she seems to have had the class read famous poems and then try to write something in a similar veing. Readers of my other blog will be pleased to know that one of the poems used is William Carlos Williams' "This is Just to Say." Jack's engagement with the poetry he reads is lively and thoughtful and very realistically drawn. Hate That Cat could almost be used as a textbook for a poetry class, or, better yet, a class on the teaching of poetry. But it never feels excessively didactic or at all textbook-like, although it does include a collection of 12 poems mentioned in the book including four poems by Williams as well as works by Edgar Allan Poe, T. S. Eliot, Walter Dean Myers, Christopher Myers, Valerie Worth, Alfred Lord Tennyson as well as two by the fictional Jack. I was somewhat puzzled, however, by the fact that Eliot's poem "The Naming of Cats," from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, prints the cat's name "Jellylorum" as "Jellyrum" in two different places. Jellyrum does not scan properly, nor does either of my two editions of Eliot make any mention of it as an alternate (it is also "Jellylorum" in the poem's adaptation as lyrics in the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical Cats, so I can only assume it is a mistake, which is a shame in a book that is likely to introduce many of these poems to children for the first time. In addition to the poems, there is a several page bibliography of poetry books labeled "Books on the Class Poetry Shelf," which will hopefully encourage further poetic explorations on the part of the reader.

Jack's journal includes not only his poetic efforts, but his philosophical wrestling with the assignments, something I identified with greatly (and I'm sure AJ will too), as well as his conflicted feelings about his writing, his parents, his feelings about the death of his dog, and, of course, cats. I won't give away the story, but its culmination in Jack's description of Parents' Night and the poem he wrote about going there with his mother brought tears to my eyes and is an excellent example of how children can make poetry their own. I give two big thumbs up for this book, which is probably suitable for a fairly wide range of ages, although its publisher recommends it for grades 3-7.

Sharon Creech, Hate That Cat (New York: HarperCollins, 2008)

Time for a new bookshelf

2008-12-29T20:14:00.000-08:00

Here at the Spy house, we've been wrapped up in Christmas for a couple of weeks now. AJ's relatives spoiled him rotten, as usual. In addition to the assorted non-educational toys and games, he got two science kits and a big haul of books. This year, AJ was gifted with:

Daniel Pinkwater: The Hoboken Chicken Emergency. AJ and I have been fans of Pinkwater's for years, ever since we discovered his picture books about a thoughtful polar bear named Larry and his badly behaved friends. I haven't gotten to read this one yet, but AJ laughs hard when he picks it up.

Kate DiCamillo: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. This is one I've picked up at the bookstore and put down again, uncertain if AJ will respond to it. But my mother finally got it for him and I'm looking forward to reading it, maybe as our out loud book.

Rick Riordan: Book 1 of the 39 Steps series -- The Maze of Bones. We've been fans of Riordan's Percy Jackson series, AJ for the adventure, I for the clever uses of Greeky mythology. I'm skeptical of this series, due to the contest and cards and internet sites attached. I'm always cynical when it seems like the books are created by marketing instead of the other way around. But I decided to give the first book a try. This is scheduled to be a 10-book series. While Riordan outlined the series and wrote this book, other authors will be taking on the rest.

Eleanor Cameron: The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. This was another book provided by my mother, and one I'd never heard of before. It dates from the mid-1950s, the beginning of the space race, and revolves around two boys who travel to another planet covered in mushrooms and meet some unhappy green people. It sounds totally up AJ's alley.

Jason Lethcoe: The Misadventures of Benjamin Bartholomew Piff #1: You Wish. This was a gift from AJ's aunt and uncle. I'd never heard of this one before either. It looks old-fashioned (in a good way) and the description, which tells of a boy growing up in an orphanage, sounds a little old-fashioned too, although it was written in 2007. AJ has inherited my childhood penchant for books set in orphanages and boarding schools, so I'm sure he'll enjoy this. I'm looking forward to checking it out too. If it's good, there are more where it came from -- the series has at least 4 books so far.
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Bette Bao Lord: In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. Also from AJ's aunt and uncle, i've been hearing about this book for years -- it was published more than twenty years ago -- and I'm glad to finally see it in person. This also sounds right up AJ's alley -- baseball and history.

Jeff Kinney: Diary of a Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself-Book. This one was on AJ's Christmas list. While I have some reservations about the Wimpy Kid series, I can't deny that it seems to turn on AJ's imagination. This one is really a diary in disguise. The first third or so of the book offers ideas for writing -- half-finished comic strips to draw, self-interview questions, etc. The second part is just a blank book. On Christmas Day, AJ was already writing in it. And anything that gets AJ writing voluntarily is a good present.

Children's Books about Animals

2008-12-17T09:07:00.000-08:00

The Miss Rumphius Effect posted a list of favorite children's books about animals this morning. It's a good list, but there are many more good ones too. I commented on several of my favorites that were omitted: Dodie Smith's 101 Dalmatians, Felix Salter's Bambi, Marjorie Rawlings' The Yearling, and many of Gerald Durrell's books. What are your favorites? And don't forget to check out the link in the sidebar to After Seuss, our list of recommended books for precocious readers.

More on Math

2008-12-09T10:29:00.000-08:00

AJ and his teacher are continuing to struggle with math. They really just don't understand one another. But now when his teacher doesn't get why he is making mistakes, she has started sending things home to me to go over with him, which allows me to figure out what the problem is and explain it to her, so hopefully communication will continue to improve.

This week, Mrs. F. sent AJ home with a worksheet on a estimating addition, something they've been working on in class. AJ has been struggling with estimation, because he doesn't see the point of the technique, where they round to the nearest 10 and then sort out the ones to get the total. He doesn't like the imprecision of estimation and it takes him longer to do it than it does to add the "normal" way, so he's been assuming he's doing it wrong and keeps coming up with these crazy algorithms that aren't really functional but which explain whichever problem he's working on. Once I explained to AJ that his class was learning a bunch of different ways to add and this was one way, then he was fine. He is a kid who needs to know why he's doing something before he can understand it. I know, because I was a kid like that too.

This morning I was tutoring his reading group. They were looking at an interview between a modern Wampanoag and a pilgrim interpreter from Plymouth talking about the way their respective people did things in the 1620s and creating a Venn diagram based on what they learned (the second grade is very bigg on Venn diagrams). One of the questions asked how many were in their respective settlements and the pilgrim replied "9 score." So we talked about what a score was and I asked if anyone could figure out how much 9 score was. "9x20!" AJ barked out without hesitation. But he was crushed when another kid got the answer before he did. If he can't be first, he doesn't want to participate. While I'm sympathetic to that point of view, I also know how paralyzing such self-expectations can be (talk to me about my decade-old dissertation some time). Still, when such pressure is internal, what's the best way to help ease it?

Emergency drills

2008-12-04T11:41:00.000-08:00

Mrs. PQV writes:

Yesterday gunshots were heard in the vicinity of my daughters' school. Immediately the entire facility went into lock down for the first time since 9/ 11. Much as schools have fire drills and tornado drills, their school had also held lock down drills, so everyone knew what to do, even if they were rather frightened.

Happy ending: the grounds and school were safe, no one was hurt and we parents were and are thrilled by how quickly the school appraised us about the entire situation. D#1 was a bit frightened last night, so we talked about all of the locked doors that stood between her and the outside world during a lock down. I don't think D#2 fully understood what had happened.

In the cold light of day, several aspects of this situation are sinking into my maternal consciousness. My children were safe, their teachers did all of the right things, thank God they attend such a school with such wonderful people.

My God, my children have lock down drills?! Not that I didn't know that they had the drills, they're always included in the newsletter, but until this moment I hadn't thought properly about this drill ever being needed. C'mon, all of those fire drills, did your school ever actually catch on fire? Yet there they were on lock down.

Yes, far better lock down than Virginia Tech all over again. Yet oh my glory -

Parent-teacher conferences

2008-12-01T10:00:00.001-08:00

At our first parent-teacher conference of the year last week, AJ’s teacher Mrs. F handed us a packet of grade 3 and 4 math worksheets that AJ has been assigned to work on when everyone else is doing the regular curriculum. “I’m not sure why he’s having trouble with this,” Mrs. F. said. “It shouldn’t be hard for him. But I find him just sitting there staring at it and not doing it. I even asked him to put a star on the pages he thought were hard and a smiley face on the pages that were easy. But he starred some of the easiest pages.” I told her we’d go over it with him over break and I’d try to get to the bottom of it.

AJ is starting to struggle with the format of school. His teacher this year is much more structured than any he’s had before. I get the impression that he feels like he’s always doing the wrong thing, but I haven’t yet figured out why. His teacher, who is trying to do everything she can to help him, is truly frustrated and perplexed. His test scores are off the charts, but he is having trouble with a number of class activities.

We had trouble working on math over break, a subject that AJ has always dearly loved. But every time we’d sit down to try to look at it, AJ would burst into tears. I have been trying so hard not to let it come to this point. My own love of math was squashed by a clueless (and downright mean) teacher in the second grade. This is what I’ve been afraid of. But eventually, we were able to get past the tears and into the problems. And AJ started to have fun again.

This morning, I sat down and wrote a long email to Mrs. F.:

AJ and I went over the math packet over break and I tried to get a sense of what had made him star some pages. He also worked on a few pages on his own and we talked them through afterwards. After looking more carefully at the packets, AJ decided that it was all pretty easy for him but mostly not so incredibly easy as to be boring (except for the time pages, at which he rolled his eyes).

I think his stars say more about his difficulty understanding instructions, both those you gave him on starring things, and also the ones on the starred worksheets. He said they are easy now that he knows what they are, but that he didn't know what things like "expanded notation" meant at first. [AJ’s class curriculum is the somewhat controversial Everyday Math program; the packet is drawn from the much more standard Spectrum series; the presentation and some terminology is markedly different.]

He also isn't clear on what the "show your work boxes" are for [each problem has a space on the right margin marked “show your work” -- are they required or are they just there when he needs them? Because he does a lot of the work in his head, if he needs to show his work, someone might need to show him what that means. I did talk to him about how he will at least at some point, need to demonstrate how he figured things out (we talk about this a lot at home, so that shouldn't be a total surprise to him, but he's not used to writing it, and he may balk at it because it slows him down). You'll see how he tried to fill in the "show your work" columns on some of the pages and I think it will give you a good window into how his math brain works. For example, On Lesson 2.3 of the Spectrum Math grade 3 (page 22), the first question gives digits for the various places and he has to figure out what number it spells. The number is 600,903, which he got correctly. In the "show your work" section, he wrote out the number, and then wrote the numbers for each place squished in underneath each digit(100,000, 10,000, etc.). Below that, he wrote "3x3=9" with arrows connecting the 3 and 9 with their twins in 600,903. Then he wrote "3x2=6" and drew arrows between the 3s and 6s. He told me that he thought it was cool that you could make all the digits out of 3, so he decided to show that. Further down the page, where he had to write biggest and smallest numbers made with the digits, he ended up writing the (correct) answers in the "show your work" column and leaving the answer blanks blank. He was so worried about showing his work, that he forgot to write the answers where they were supposed to go.

But AJ also wasn't sure what "hard" meant -- from his perspective, it was too vague. He doesn't always deal well with grey areas. I explained it to him as "hard is something you don't know how to do by yourself and you need someone to show you how to do it." By that definition, the only stars that remained were on the "expanded notation" pages. And once he figured out what that meant, then those stars disappeared as well.

Based on this, I'd like to see him gaining more independence on worksheets like this, being able to carefully read and figure out the instructions for himself. But I also think he may need some spoken words about what to do before each one. It's not so much that he gets it wrong all the time, but that he doesn't trust himself to be getting it right. He seems to expect that he's going to do it incorrectly and wants reassurance.

The other thing it seems like he needs work on, is interpreting word problems. There weren't actually too many examples of that in the packet, but he doesn't trust himself to turn the word problems into equations a lot of the time. He wants constant reassurance. And when the word problems involve subtraction or division, he doesn't always get the order right.

And, perhaps most important, overall, defining things with almost comic precision helps him out a lot. If there is an exception of any kind, he will find it and be confused by it. He hasn't yet learned the psychology of figuring out what the question is asking by what makes sense, not just what is literally stated.

I think, although I’m not certain, that his teacher is turning him loose with extra work and is not willing or able to spend much time explaining things to him. And I know that AJ is not always willing or able to get up in the middle of class and go ask his teacher what he needs to know. His class is very large and, as generally happens, those who are struggling to work at grade level get more attention than those who are working too far above grade level. But all second graders need help and personal attention, no matter what level they’re at. None of them is independent yet. I didn’t want to come right out and say, “pay more attention to my kid,” because I know she’s doing what she can. But at the same time, she needs and wants to know how to help him. I hope I was diplomatic enough while also being clear.

One foot in front of the other

2008-11-17T10:25:00.000-08:00

Last Friday was the day I volunteer in the library at AJ's school. It was an unusually quiet day. The librarian was working with her classes in the computer lab down the hall. No one was coming in to check out books. I had plenty of time to check in all the returned books, reshelve them, and scan the shelves for Christmas, Hanukah and Kwanzaa books to pull for the post-Thanksgiving displays. AJ's teacher came in while I was covering some new paperback books.

"Don't worry! I did give him the book! I just was worried about him being able to keep track of his work," she said. This was excellent news. And we proceeded to have a long talk about what's up with AJ.

The fact is, some of what is going on is still a mystery to both of us. I don't think we're talking about a learning disability here, although I'm not ruling it out. Nor am I ignoring research on learning disabilities related to "executive functioning" (thanks for the new term, Fern!), because regardless of the cause, the symptoms need addressing and some of the suggestions freshhell mentioned are excellent and already working well for us. Last year we bought AJ a small chalkboard that we use specifically for his schedule. It used to live in the kitchen where Mr. Spy or I would write out first his morning and then his afternoon schedule along with some silly pictures and jokes so that it was something he wanted to look at as well as something he needed to know. Recently, we've moved the chalkboard to his room and had him write out his schedule and then cross off the activities as he does them. This is both teaching him how to help himself and allowing us to see what he's doing. It's the number one best tool we have for keeping AJ on track at home.

But the reason I suspect it isn't actually a learning disability (and I really think it may be too early to tell) is that a lot of the problems are situational -- they take place in school and to a lesser extent in certain situations at home (usually on tasks he doesn't want to do when there's some other activity he wants to move on to as fast as possible). They are not universal behaviors. I think there are some triggers for the behavior, though, and boredom is definitely one of them. A lack of respect for the activity is another -- writing the assignment is important, putting it away neatly is not. I am sensitive to these issues, because I was the same way when I was in elementary school. Once it was done in my head, it was done. The rest of it didn't matter to me -- writing neatly, putting things in my backpack so they didn't wrinkle, even doing the assignment on paper. It didn't matter. I would willfully fail to show my work in math because I thought it was a waste of time, no matter what anybody else told me. I would fail to answer questions in English class because I got carried away with my answer to the first question and wanted to see where it would take me. It wasn't that I couldn't get organized, it was that I didn't really care. I wanted to do the right thing and I tried when people asked me to, but at a gut level, I didn't get why it was important. It appears to me that AJ is showing signs of a similar attitude problem. And while such an attitude problem is one he needs to know how to solve to get through a lot of real life situations, I think the attitude itself may eventually serve him well when channeled for good instead of evil.

At school, AJ is easily distracted by other children. He's often overstimulated by a lot of activity, even as he's attracted to it, and he always wants to know what else is going on. When he's working, he likes things quiet and still. He doesn't get that at school. And he likes it that way -- he's a very social kid and he wants to interact with others. But at 7, he still doesn't have the self-control needed to be consistent about his in-class work habits. I am not concerned that he doesn't yet know how to do this. I am concerned that he doesn't seem to be understanding that learning how to do this is extremely important. But working on him both from home and from school, I am hoping it will try to sink in.

From the beginning, we've been focused on helping AJ learn how to organize himself. Fern mentioned trying to talk out loud to AJ about how I'm organizing things as I do it. This sounds like an excellent idea. And while I think I've always done some of it, I bet I could do more. He has the ability to organize when he wants to -- woe betide he who messes with the elaborate ordering of his baseball cards! He just doesn't like to take the time to think about it, because, I think, he gets overwhelmed with possibilities. I need to try to help him take that part of his brain that deals with his baseball cards and apply it to other things.

Jill mentioned that her son's teacher had handed out an agenda/planner to each kid to help them keep track of their homework assignments, which had to be initialed in the planner each day. This gave me an idea. I stressed with AJ's teacher how lists seemed to work for AJ at home but that when we tried to have him write lists for school, that he ran into the same problems he did with other assignments -- he often forgot it or didn't do it. I suggested that I could write up a checklist -- one page for a week -- that we could tape to the front of his take-home folder, so he could run through it each day, a list of all the things he needed to remember during class. I told the teacher I'd be happy to make it, but that I needed her help for what to put on it, since I didn't know all the routines of the classroom. She agreed that it sounded like a good thing to try and she's going to think about things to put on it and get them to me. So I feel like we're on the same page about this and that she will try to back some of this stuff up in school.

The other issue that his teacher is worried about is the damage AJ occasionally inflicts through his carelessness -- ripping books by shoving things into his desk without looking to see where they are going, absent-mindedly spearing his pencil at the desk, leaving marks and holes, bending back the covers of a book he's engrossed in. I'm not sure what to do about this beyond drawing his attention to it and asking him to be careful, which we've already done many times over. I did, though, suggest to AJ that he should pull out the stack of things in his desk, put the thing he wants to put away on top, and then put the hole thing back in. Part of his trouble is that there's way too much stuff in his desk. But he can't really do much about that. It's just the way things are when there are 27 kids in a class and there's nowhere to put anything. And I suggested to the teacher that there should be consequences for the damage at school, just as there would be at home -- a missed 10 minutes of recess, for example, which is a standard punishment for misbehavior in the classroom. As Jeanne mentioned, if the behaviors start causing more trouble for him, I think AJ will get it.

So it was a productive conversation all around. Our parent-teacher conference is a week from today, so we will have a chance to follow up quickly. And from there, we'll see how things go. Thank you so much for all of your comments and suggestions. I'll report back next week.

Naughty or Nice?

2008-11-13T19:38:00.000-08:00

A few days after we got the results of AJ's latest standardized tests (he missed 3 questions out of 362), his teacher pulled me aside in the school hallway, where I was waiting for my volunteer job to start. "I was hoping to talk to you"

AJ, it turns out, is having some trouble at school. You'd never know it from what comes home. But his teacher is concerned about his lack of organization.

We're concerned about it too, although we didn't know until this moment that it was affecting his work at school. AJ, like many gifted kids, is easily distracted and frequently has trouble completing tasks, instead getting sidetracked into other things. He can't plan his time well. He is sloppy about putting his things away and loses his belongings regularly. Scarcely a week goes by when we're not going back up to school to pick up something he's forgotten. I find it infuriating because the trait seems so intractable. AJ does well with lists. If we write lists, he does things. I gave him a notebook to take to school so he could write down the things he needs to do. It worked beautifully for one day. Then he forgot it at school and I threw up my hands.

His teacher is concerned at this particular moment because she wants the better readers in the class to start a reading group. But since the class has 26 students in it, the members of the reading group will have to do a lot of independent work. She's not sure he's up to it. I know he is up to it when he wants to be. The question is, will he be able to pull it off?

I came home and talked to AJ and looked up the book that most of the class is reading. It is a good book, but painfully easy for AJ, a level he was reading independently four years ago when he was three. My fear is that if she sticks him with that book, he will shut down out of boredom. Not to mention the fact that it would be a colossal waste of his time. The advanced book will still be easy for him, but it looks like a good book with a much more complicated storyline.

So I sat down this evening to write his teacher a letter. This is always an exercise in diplomacy. I don't have the faith in this teacher that I had in AJ's teacher last year, but I do have respect for her. She is good at what she does and she is challenging AJ at school. He loves being in her classroom. But I really think she's wrong about this. At the same time, I really don't have any solutions. I've tried everything I can think of. So my letter kind of lays it all on the line.

Disorganization is extremely common for gifted kids, more common than in the general population. But teaching them how to focus is extremely challenging. And it's doubly challenging in school, where we can't help on a daily basis and where the teacher who wants to help is trying to do so while teaching 25 other kids to do the things they need to do. I mentioned in the letter that written instructions were working for us at home and I hope the teacher will try that. But I am not sure that she'll be as successful. AJ is a master at looking for loopholes and her writing is not always airtight. Last week, for example, AJ missed a question on a social studies test on the unit on maps they've been working on. The test question read, "Name the four directions. AJ wrote "North South East West," which was a perfect answer to the question asked. But that wasn't what she wanted. She wanted him to draw a compass rose and label the points. Now I have no way of knowing whether she asked for the compass rose in class. She very well may have and AJ may not have been listening or may have been too literal minded about the written question. But I'll probably never know for sure. I want to ask but I don't want to come across as a grade-grubbing freak. After all, this is a second grade test and AJ got a 97. Why quibble? Still, I was seething at the injustice. AJ, however, took it all in stride.

Teacher conferences are coming up in two weeks and we'll talk in person then. But I didn't think this could wait. Assigning AJ the easier book would be like asking his teacher to spend a month studying a book for fourth graders. Maybe diverting at first, but ultimately unsatisfying and tedious. Ultimately, the solution is the teacher's decision. I hope she makes the right choice.

Curieing Favor

2008-10-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

Our local park district has started a science club for girls. I endorse this in principle, as our experience with extra-curricular science programs is that the boys outnumber the girls by at least two to one. But I have several concerns with the club in its current practice. The first problem is that there is no equivalent science program for boys. They appear to have abandoned the coed programs as well. So for the moment, at least, this club is the only science program being offered. The second problem is the gender profiling used in advertising the program:

"Learn how science art and cooking go hand in hand." Now, AJ took a class called kitchen science this summer that showed kids how science is used in the home. And there's interesting stuff to be learned. But this class seems to be about Easy Bake ovens and other things designed to appeal to pretty princesses. If the class were for boys and girls, I wouldn't have a problem with the subject matter. But because it's for girls only -- "NO BOYS allowed," it says, right in the class description -- it makes me squirm. And the worst part is the name of the club: "Madame Curries." I still haven't figured out if that's a play on words because it's kitchen science or if it's just a typo that nobody caught. I'm also not sure which is worse.

Maybe I'm being curmudgeonly this morning, but isn't there a better ways to get girls into science?

Sunset Towers

2008-10-16T18:16:00.001-07:00

Now that AJ's in second grade, his at-home independent reading assignments have gotten a little more formal. Where last year he could just read, this year he is supposed to answer a general question about what he read. The question changes every month. It started simply in September with, "What was your favorite part?" October is asking for him to describe the main idea of what he read. This can be tricky. AJ remembers just about every detail he reads. But as a second grader, he's still trying to figure out which details are important and which are not. At the beginning of the month, he was reading The Westing Gameby Ellen Raskin, a mystery. This made the assignment even more difficult, because the book reveals its story slowly and throws out tons of details -- many red herrings -- along the way. Trying to help AJ figure out what to write was challenging. And I'm not sure he entirely understood the story because it wasn't organized the way he knows stories to be. He got enough of it to enjoy the book, though.

After he finished The Westing Game, we returned to Roald Dahl (He read Matildabefore The Westing Game). I gave him a copy of Danny, The Champion of the World, which had been my brother's favorite Dahl book, and AJ dove in with relish (it's also the book where the BFG makes his first appearance, as a story within the story). The difference between the two books struck me. Leafing through both without reading carefully, I would have expected AJ to have an easier time with The Westing Game. The vocabulary was entirely under his command. The chapters were short. Dahl's vocabulary is much more complicated and occasionally arcane (AJ had to look up "pheasant" and "poaching" and informed me afterwards that pheasants are related to peacocks). But Dahl's structure is much more straightforward and this makes all the difference. After having to coach AJ carefully through each main idea last week, this week he's almost completely independent. And he's feeling good about it.

Our experience with these two books has me thinking about a few things. 1) What makes a book difficult or easy for a given person? 2) How much it too much to stretch? 3) Is there a developmental aspect to the perception of literary structure or is it merely experiential? This last question interests me most, because as a teacher (and self-learner), I think a lot about the importance of frameworks, some kind of structure on which to hang the facts you need to remember. For example, as a doctoral student, I had to pass comprehensive exams, several days of hell, including separate 2 hour exams on each major period of western art music (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, etc.). We took courses for four years to prepare. We read lots of scholarly articles. But when it came right down to it, the book that helped me most of all was the general music history text I'd used as an undergraduate, because it had a framework that I could remember and which, in term, helped me to remember the rest of what I needed, no matter how complex. As a teacher, I work frameworks into my course plan that guide my lectures, study guides and review sessions. Usually I have a central idea -- a theme -- that I overlay onto chronology, which I break up into subthemes. These themes serve as scaffolds to which the details of composers and pieces and historical events are attached, giving them both a point of view and an organization. It seems to work.

Many, if not most, gifted children are exceptionally good at identifying patterns of all kinds. They are quick to establish their own mental scaffolds. This makes them quick at figuring things out for which they have a half-knowledge. Sometimes, in AJ's case, at least, this can make them resistant to things that don't fit the patterns they know. When I try to help AJ accept the idea of something new, I usually do it by encouraging him to freefall -- so what if you don't know what it is? Just get in and experience it and see what happens. And pretty soon, he figures it out. (Aha! This is the pattern of the mystery with the slow reveal!) And once he does, there's no stopping him and his world gets just a little bit bigger.

Chess for gifted kids

2008-09-29T07:36:00.001-07:00

I had asked about how to find some chess competition for my gifted 12-year-old over at Spynotes this summer, and got a lot of good advice. Here are some of the results, for those of you who are interested.

1. Many gifted kids crave personal contact. Because their intellectual peers are often considerably older, they're used to doing a lot of their advanced thinking online. So computer chess only goes so far in sustaining their interest in the game. They're still kids. They want to see who they're beating, or who is good enough to beat them.

2. Because they're still kids, they often have holes in their tactical thinking. There are a lot of good chess books out there. A good one to start with is Weapons of Chess, by Bruce Pandolfini. There is also a good computer game for kids who are learning chess, Majestic Chess. (Unfortunately, this seems to be only available for Windows.)

3. Asking around is the best way to find an adult who might be willing to play chess with a gifted kid. We found one at the local college. He's an assistant track coach, and tells me that he enjoys playing with Walker. So far they've played four times, and he's beaten Walker every time. (Walker is delighted by this; it's not often he finds someone better than he is at something, and he's learning a lot.) As you probably already know if you have a gifted kid who plays chess, it's usually not a success to find anyone near your kid's own age who wants to play more than a couple of games with him, because either he will always win or he will have to fake a draw just to be polite.

4. The local public library is a good place to advertise your interest in finding a partner for chess. Retired folks are sometimes available, and are often delighted to find a young person who is interested in the game.

Have any other suggestions? Want more specific benefits of my experience? Leave a comment!

It's Starting to Add Up

2008-09-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

The other day I figured out exactly how many mpg my car gets: 31.6. Which is not bad. I'd originally estimated it at 32 based on the average miles I drove on a tank of gas and the fact that I have a 14 gallon tank. But on Wednesday, when I coasted into town on fumes, I completely filled the tank. The machine stopped at exactly 14 gallons. I looked at the odometer afterwards, before resetting it and noticed I'd gone 440 miles on one tank of gas. So, I did the math - long division, on paper, all by myself. I double-checked it on a calculator later and got 31.4 but, hey, I'm not a math whiz and there's the proof.

I've always loved numbers but because of a piss poor education, I've always done horribly in math. And its one of the reasons I want Dusty to do well in it. She doesn't have a super math whiz gene (few in our family do) but I want her set on the right track now. I don't want to her derail like I did.

Which is why I'm happy she's where she is. The school system instituted full-time gifted and talented teachers in EVERY school over the summer. We met Dusty's new G&T teacher this week and I am very pleased.

The teacher, Mrs. G, has been teaching at the school for a number of years so the environment, and many of the students, are familiar to her. She outlined how the G&T thing will work this year. Last year, Dusty worked with two part-time G&T teachers - both of them brilliant and capable but doing an impossible task. The two of them taught at four or five different schools on different days. I don't know how they pulled it off, but they did.

This year should be even better. Mrs. G explained that they have clustered the G&T students into certain classrooms. Which explains why Dusty is still with her BFF and her partner of the last two years, Nathan. All G&T kids. This cuts down on Mrs. G's workload because she doesn't have to be in every single classroom every week. But she does do that on occasion, especially when a teacher in a non-G&T cluster room discovers a possible G&T candidate.

Mrs. G and the classroom teacher co-plan their lessons and co-teach them. There are no pull-outs at this level. They co-teach and then break the classroom into groups for small group work. Mrs. G gets the G&T group, Mrs. J gets the other students.

Best of all, Mrs. G teaches an accelerated math class for 5th graders. It's a pull-out class and she's a math person so I feel really good that Dusty's in good hands. In all aspects.

Not only that, but Dusty will soon get Spanish lessons. Students at the closest high school have started a Spanish Club that will meet at Dusty's school on Monday afternoons. While the county continues to "consider" foreign language classes in the elementary schools, Dusty will get a change to learn a second language. She'll get a tiny step up.

At this point, I have zero complaints. Dusty's in very good hands.

I also learned - through Mrs. G - about the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. I'm considering signing Dusty up for the next testing date (which is in Feb or March). If she passes the test, which is given locally, she would qualify for a number of educational opportunities, classes, etc. that she wouldn't have access to otherwise. She won't run quite so far if she's not wearing the right shoes. I want to give her those shoes.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go back and check my long division work. While 31.6 is close, it's not 31.4. Maybe Dusty'll be able to point out my mistakes soon. At least, that's what I'm hoping. I only had kids so they could help me with my homework.

Walking the rail

2008-09-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

This morning, after school drop off, an unofficial meeting of parents of gifted second graders was called to order. The mothers of two of AJ's friends, O. and N., and I stood around chatting after the lines had disappeared into the school. These are two of my favorite parents. Both are smart and have done interesting work but are taking time off to be home with their young children. O's mom is an engineer. N's mom is a former middle school science teacher. This year, as last year, O and AJ are in the same class and N is in a different class. We were talking this morning about how O and AJ have challenging spelling lists. N's class isn't getting a challenge list and N is bored. I was urging N's mom to ask for it and told her what we did with AJ last year. O's mom told her how the challenge lists work this year (any kid who gets 100% on the pretest on Monday gets the week's challenge words instead of the regular words. The first week it was just AJ. But this week, as the kids are settling in, there were 6).

We also talked about the ways classroom boredom can lead to errors or slacking off and can often give a teacher the impression that the kid is either lazy or not very bright. We talked about the way our kids have a tendency to take the easy way out if given the opportunity and how having other kids to be competitive with can either spur them on or shut them down, about how their tendencies toward perfectionism can yield them to be unbelievably hard on themselves, and about how this latter tendency is something we all live with too.

It was a nice conversation of commonalities. It's nice to feel that you're kid is not alone, that you're kid is not alone. And yet, whenever I have a talk like this, afterwards I walk away worried that I've said something I shouldn't. Do I sound like I'm bragging about my kid? I don't mean to. I want to help other people get what they need and I feel like I know a little more about working the system at this point. But do they think I'm an insufferable bore who needs her kid to be better than everybody else? Or am I actually an insufferable bore who needs her kid to be better than everybody else? I don't think so. But if I were totally innocent, I doubt I'd be so anxiety-ridden after these encounters. I wish it weren't so hard. I'd love to have a more united front. Next year, when there's a formal gifted program, it will, I think, be easier.

It should be easier for AJ too, I think, as long as the classroom teacher doesn't think that the gifted program absolves her of responsibility for giving him appropriate work. I'll be interested to see who shows up there. All the kids I know who would seem to meet the criteria are boys. This flies in the face of my own experience of gifted programs, which were heavily female, even as the high level academic awards were mostly given to boys. Interesting.

Fission

2008-09-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

I posted this yesterday at Spynotes, but it seemed like it belonged in this space as well. -- Harriet"Mommy," AJ said at breakfast this morning, "when can I see the atom smasher?"

AJ has taken a sudden interest in particle physics. I attribute this to the opening of the CERN large hadron collider coinciding with his spotting of a book on physics by Dan Green and Simon Basher. Last night I told him that there was a particle collider in Chicago and I thought his jaw would hit the floor. Apparently, he was thinking about it all night.

I went online this morning to see if Fermilab offers tours. The good news is that they do. The bad news is that children under 10 don't seem to be permitted and most of them are for high school age and up. There are probably good reasons for this. But still, I'm pretty sure my little science geek would get something out of it. And it's hard for me not to to feel like this is part of a larger trend of science being reserved for older children and adults.

We are very excited to have a new hands-on science curriculum at AJ's school, one with lots of experiments and projects, that begins in kindergarten. It appears to be the centerpiece of the language curriculum as well -- many of the books they are reading are about science and many of AJ's spelling words have been drawn from their science readings. But the more I talk to other parents, the more I realize that this is unusual.

I don't remember doing any significant amount of science until seventh grade, at least not in school. My mom signed me up for an experiment of the month club when I was in kindergarten, which helped my mom focus my explorations. My memory of these monthly experiment kits have in turn influenced some of the things I've done with AJ since he was in preschool. Beyond them, though, there were not a lot of resources for a kid with an interest in science. I turned to writing and let the science drop.

I feel like an unlikely advocate for the expansion of science education for children. The last science class I had was a biology class I took my freshman year in college more than twenty years ago. I never had a formal physics class, although I've done some reading on my own. The physics teacher in the high school I was in when it came time for physics was notoriously awful and I decided that I'd be better off on my own than letting an idiot kill the joy of physics for me. I had planned to take it in college, but was talked out of it by my advisor who thought someone so clearly rooted in the liberal arts would never survive. And so I have many degrees in literature and music but science is a great big hole in my own education.

But why do we think science is so much harder than literature and music? Really, I think music is about the hardest thing I've ever studied in many respects. Anything really interesting and big is going to be difficult. But somehow, we see music as something that should be accessible to everyone. But science is only for the educated, the smart, the special.

A seven-year-old certainly won't get the same thing out of a tour of a particle accelerator as a college physics major. But is that any reason to exclude him from something he wants to know about it? What if the tour inspired him to learn more so he could understand it better? What if that kid decides to major in physics down the road? What if he becomes the discoverer of the elusive Higgs Boson? Or what if he just passes on his love of learning to his own kids someday?

With AJ, I take the approach of "if he's interested, let him try." If he asks questions about how particle accelerators work or how to calculate with irrational numbers, I don't know the answer. But together we find out to the best of our ability. AJ is not afraid of big, complicated answers. He's okay with not understanding them all the way for the moment. But he likes to try. And maybe someday he'll get it all the way there. In the mean time, let him see what he wants to see.

Yesterday, I went to the bookstore to buy the other two science books in the Dan Green/Simon Basher series, one on The Periodic Table, the other on Biology. AJ sat down with them at breakfast and started to read The Periodic Table, laughing at the cartoon characters and noticing, for the first time the way the elements are grouped in the table. He spread out the poster that came in the back so he could map each one-page element profile with its position on the chart. He liked how the one row all looked like clouds. "Oh! That's because they're [the noble] gases!" He followed the numbers with his fingers, memorizing the positions. The books are the perfect mix of silly cartoons and serious science. They suit him perfectly.

I put the books on the checkout counter to buy them. The cashier, about a decade older than I, picked them up and leafed through them. "Wow. Science books for kids. These look great. I wish they'd had these when my kids were small." He turned a few more pages. "I wish they'd had them when I was small. Maybe I'd be a scientist now instead."

Educational Television

2008-09-20T12:54:00.001-07:00

Mrs. Permanent Qui Vive, who doesn't yet have her own account here at AJ's Clubhouse, sends us this post. Thanks, Mrs. QV!

What with ballet, soccer, the first tests of the school year and the power outage, everyone in the family pretty much collapsed after school. Television time is a struggle for me as a parent. On the one hand, I want D#1 and D#2 to watch reasonably intelligent and tasteful television and, reluctantly, I have come to lump "Little Einsteins" in that category. On the other hand, I also want them to be familiar enough with pop culture to chat with friends and peers, thus occasionally I allow them to watch the Disney pre-teen sit-coms.

Yesterday an hour of bonus television meant "Hannah Montana," which I will never like, and "Zach and Cody's The Suite Life" which, despite my attempts to be pretentious and artful, I think very funny.

What struck me, amidst being very confused about some of the outfits, is that both shows had storylines in which a lead character's poor grades and/ or lack of I.Q. points played a crucial role. Hannah Montana laughed about failing two Biology quizzes and boasted of getting a D+ on a third. The only reason she became motivated to study for the big Biology test had nothing to do with her G.P.A and everything to do with her parents insisting that she couldn't go on tour with her band unless the grade went up.

Either Zach or Cody (not sure which) had failed English and had to take summer school. Everyone in the class wanted to pass, but prided themselves upon Ds; even the teacher assumed the worst of the class. When Cody/ Zach correctly guessed the meaning of a Shakespeare quote, he promptly became the subject of ridicule, bullying, etc.

Hannah Montana ended up acing her Biology test by setting the names of all the bones in the body to music, though she could only remember them if she sang and danced the song. Even with her A, though, the jokes about her stupidity continued. Now, I know that the stupidity is part of her secret identity, but... Zach/ Cody went through an internal struggle and was eventually inspired by Robert Frost (bet you can't guess which poem) to continue doing his best, despite the bullying.

The shows were vaguely amusing - well, the Hannah thread was dull, but I laughed at the bits where her brother took care of a parrot - but I wish we could glorify brains rather than think it's more appropriate to be mediocre.

Head of the Class

2008-09-03T11:20:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the lack of, er, postage. Things have been a little busy since last week.

The day after the class lists were posted, Mr. Spy and I met with AJ's classroom teacher, Mrs. F, and Mrs. C, the gifted teacher. The principal, who had set up the meeting for us, was unable, at the last minute to be there. But much was accomplished.

Mr. Spy and I were very impressed with the preparation Mrs. F. had already done. She had contacted AJ's teacher from last year to find out what had been done and what had worked. And she came into the meeting with a list of questions for us -- good questions. In turn, she seemed to really appreciate the information we had brought for her. I am always nervous about how such things will be received -- will a teacher see it as helpful, which is how it is intended? Or will she see it as meddling? Which, let's be honest, it is a little bit. Mrs. C. was able to talk a bit about how she'd pulled together materials for last year, and we were able to ask for her help in ordering readers for AJ which, since the school only goes up to 4th grade, it did not previously own.

One of the things we were pleased to hear is that Mrs. F. already has some systems in place for dealing with kids working above and below the average. This week homework began and we are starting to see how they work. AJ took the week's spelling pretest with the rest of the class and, as expected, aced it. This meant he got the challenge words for the week, which were drawn from their current science unit on geology (more on the new science curriculum another day -- all good). The words were more challenging than I had expected and AJ is excited about them:

investigating
tuff
basalt
scoria
boulders
cobblestones
erosion
geologists
granite
obsidian
pebbles
sandstone
diamond
concrete
glacier
mica

In addition to learning the spelling words, he has several activities to do with them for homework. On Mondays, the new list for the week comes home and for homework he has to write five sentences using as many of the words as possible. Tuesday and Wednesday nights he has to do an activity that he chooses from a list. This week he chose to make a game (he figured out a game with flashcards for two players) and a crossword puzzle, for which he is allowed to use computer software. If anyone has any software/websites for crossword creation to recommend (Mac compatible), I'd love to hear them!

The reading program has three components with three different sets of books. There is the guided reading, which happens in school in small groups with a graded reading series (Gates-McGintie). Thanks to Mrs. F. and Mrs. C., AJ's school now has more of the series -- he had finished what they had early last school year. There is independent reading at home, for which he chooses his own books that he reads daily and then writes a short sentence or two in his reading log. Each month's log has a different question to answer. This month's is "What was your favorite part?" The third component is another in-school reading session called "Reading Workshop." It is not yet clear to me what this entails, but the students get to pick their own books, either by bringing them from home (which has been recommended for AJ) or choosing one from the classroom library.

They are still taking math assessment testing, so we will hear more about that soon. We received an email from AJ's teacher on Monday saying that she will get back to us when she's done with the assessments to talk about goals for AJ for the year -- exactly what we wanted.

In general, it sounds like I'll be less involved in the devising of materials than I was last year, which is great. The teacher seems fully capable and interested in doing it herself.

Someone asked me this morning if AJ wouldn't do better in a Montessori school or some other educational situation with more flexibility than a public school. I said that maybe, yes, if he were at a different public school. But this school is working hard to help us and is learning from the situation -- I thought their willingness to order new series of books was an excellent sign, because it shows they're trying to prepare for other students too, which is the best case scenario. It's why I want to keep working with the public schools. And AJ is currently getting an education tailor-made for his abilities. I'm not sure we could do better than that anywhere else. The only additional thing I would wish for is foreign language instruction. But that we'll try on our own. The year is definitely off to a promising start.

Class lists

2008-08-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

I am sticking close to my computer, stalking AJ's school website. The class lists are supposed to be posted in a half an hour.

AJ was remember when he was about to start kindergarten and we went up to the school in person for the posting of the lists. There was a big crowd of people, most of them his friends -- the kindergarten families without older children didn't yet have access to the website. They were the only ones who came in person. It was exciting and fun -- the official beginning of the end of summer. School starts one week from today.

I just checked again. The lists still aren't up.

I'm working on the folder I will bring to the meeting we are having tomorrow with AJ's (still phantom) teacher, the gifted teacher and the school principal. The school has asked for test scores and Mystery Teacher has asked for samples of his work. I distilled my long document into a much shorter one that lists our contact information, his reading level and interests and math skills, his test scores and an outline of the modifications that have been made in his curriculum in the past as well as a few things I'd like to see happen this year. I think I've decided to give the teacher copies of his dinosaur report and comic book and his water cycle lab journal -- an independent project he did over Christmas break. I'm also going to bring one example each of his reading contract, his advanced math packet and a spelling test so she can see and not just read about the modifications we made last year. I won't copy those, though, as I don't think she'll need to look at them that closely to see what they're about. At least I think it's a she.

It's past four. Still no lists posted. It's going to be a long afternoon.

More back to school

2008-08-15T13:37:00.000-07:00

Success! The principal has scheduled the meeting with AJ's teacher. They will post the class assignments on Wednesday at 4 p.m. and the following morning, we will be meeting with the new teacher and the principal and, hopefully, the gifted coordinator. If the gifted teacher can't make the time we've set, we will have a separate meeting with her and the teacher without the principal. The mystery classroom teacher has asked us for as much information as we can give her, so it looks like my document will help. She's also asked for examples of his work from last year that will give her an idea of what he can do. So this weekend I'll be going through the things we've saved from last year to see what we can find.

Back to School Lists

2008-08-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

AJ starts second grade on August 27, a mere two and a half weeks away. The summer that seemed endless back in early June is now racing to a halt.

Like most families of young children at this time of year, our lives are consumed with lists at present. There are the lists of things we want to do before summer is over, the things that will make it feel like we had a summer. There are the lists of things we need to do before summer is over. AJ's Cub Scout homework comes under this category. AJ's school doesn't, at least for his age group, have summer homework; but many families we know are also racing through those last summer books and essays and journal entries. We've given AJ some unofficial homework -- to finish a long story he's been writing, to write in his journal. He's behind on those too, because we are all behind on our summer work. Same as every summer.

There are a couple of things we're doing well on, though. We've got all the school supplies except a pencil box, for which we were given very specific instructions as to dimensions. Such a box does not appear to exist, but we persevere in looking for it. We also haven't bought the requested flash cards for home use because they require a long drive in a car to the teacher supply store and because if they are as described, I'm pretty sure they will be totally unnecessary for AJ, as they contain math facts he's known by heart for years. But we'll probably get them anyway, because he likes flash cards in general, and sometimes a few bucks spent on having the same things as everyone else is worth it.

The other thing big thing checked off my list this week was contacting our school's principal to see about setting up a meeting with AJ's teacher and the gifted ed coordinator for the district. Our school doesn't announce class lists until a week before the first day of school. Old timers in the district tell us it wasn't always this way. I don't know whether the policy exists because they want maximum flexibility to deal with last minute changes in enrollment or because a few argumentative parents trying to change their kids' classes caused trouble for the rest of us. But I was pretty sure that the class lists were made up far earlier than a week before school began. So I emailed the principal asking if he could help us set up a meeting. I was careful to phrase my request in a way that would allow it to be met without me knowing the teacher's name: I asked the principal for help, not the contact information for the teacher. He responded almost immediately and positively about the meeting and agreed to arrange it with the mystery teacher for as soon as possible after the class lists went up.

In preparation for this meeting, I've been tweaking a document that began as an exercise for myself and will probably end up being handed out at our meeting in some form or other. After my meeting with the gifted coordinator last spring, when she told me IEP's could not happen at this time, even though she thought they were a good idea, I started thinking about writing up a sort of dossier on AJ which would include information about where he is academically -- both anecdotal and quantitative data -- and what kinds of interventions have been implemented in the classroom in the past ("intervention" sounds like something you do to a troubled case in the classroom, but it is the language the schools use; when possible, I always try to speak their language), and what kinds of goals we're thinking about for the coming school year. After a couple of months of sketching out ideas and poking around the internet for things other parents have done, I've ended up with a document that looks something like this:

I. Personal data: Name, date of birth, address, phone, brief sentence about his parents, schools attended and past teachers at his current school,etc.

II. Extra-curricular interests: What AJ likes to do outside of school. Originally this was lower down, but since the first part of this document is designed to give some basic info about AJ, it seemed more appropriate here. It may still move down the list, though. I stress his interests in academics and athletics. My point is that he's not just a brain behind a desk but a well-rounded kid.

III. Academic skills and interests: This is sort of a short (1 paragraph) anecdotal summary of how we realized AJ was performing a little differently than his peers -- we mention his learning to read at 2 and telling time on analog clocks by 3 because those are markers we know that past teachers have paid attention to. But I also give specific examples of his favorite books, which demonstrates a pretty wide range of difficulty and also the way he delves into topics that interest him in depth, using examples from both independent work and also school projects from last year. Because I'm concerned about him being pigeonholed as a good reader, his most salient gift, but not the only one (he's probably more interested in math at the moment), I wanted to make sure that he looked well-rounded here too.

IV. Test Scores. This is a summary of his independent (outside school) testing from last spring that the school does not yet have a record of. We will attach copies of the formal reports, but since they are long, I thought 1 paragraph summary might help as well.

All of the above sections will, once I edit them down a little, take up one page. The following sections are longer and more descriptive.

IV. History of Curriculum Modifications at [his] school. This is my summary of what has been done for him already. I break it down by subject (Reading, Spelling, Math) and I name names -- who did what (Gifted teacher, classroom teacher, us) and with whom (kids who were paired with him for projects). I stress here that both social and intellectual development needs to be taken into consideration and that this has already been done successfully. I stress that this description is from a parents point of view and it is possible that the teachers will have other information or a different take on my descriptions. But because of the way the changes were often made on the fly as opportunities presented themselves, I'm not sure to what extent the school keeps records of these things or passes them along to AJ's future teachers, and I thought it might be helpful to a future teacher to see the big picture and also to get an idea of what we've come to expect.

V. Goals for Second Grade. I begin by stressing that I feel strongly that goals need to be a collaboration between the classroom teacher, the gifted educator and us and that I'm not trying to dictate what the classroom teacher does, but that these are the things that are of concern to us as parents who are educators ourselves. My goal with this opening is that we are showing support of the teacher and the school, that we are offering to help, but that we are not trying to threaten classroom/school autonomy. But at the same time, I want them to know we are paying a lot of attention to what goes on. The rest of this section is set up to more or less parallel the structure of the previous section. The goals are broken down into subheadings of General, Reading, Spelling, and Math. Built into the goals is an assessment of AJ's strengths and weaknesses. Some goals are curricular -- studying multiplication and division, for example. I've kept these relatively vague for the moment, because I want to see what the teacher and gifted teacher, who are much more familiar with the overall curriculum than I am, think is possible. Some are social -- working in reading groups with other children. And some are about classroom skills -- learning to focus when there are many things going on in the classroom; learning to keep track of his things and organize and prioritize tasks for a bigger project. Many of these will be goals for other children in the classroom as well. Many are also goals that will be pursued at home. My point in this section was to give a fair assessment of AJ and what I think he needs, but also to demonstrate that we are not just parents trying to push for special treatment for our special, special child. We know he's got strengths and weaknesses just like everybody else. I also wanted to get across that AJ's classroom behavior problems, when they occur (rarely), usually stem from his not having work appropriate for his level. When he's bored, he acts up. But I also mention that I want him to learn that less interesting tasks sometimes need to be done to accomplish more interesting things. I wanted the teachers to know that I wasn't expecting them to entertain him, but to make sure he had appropriate work and to help him learn good work habits.

I conclude by reiterating how happy we've been with his education at this school to date, by acknowledging that it can be a lot of work for a classroom teacher to make accommodations for a student who is not working with the rest of the class, and by offering to help in any way that we can.

I think it's a good document, but I'm still not sure if it's something I should hand out to everyone. I don't want to appear confrontational, at least not until it might be necessary. And even though I've bent over backwards in this document to say that I want to follow the teacher's lead and that this is information I thought she might find useful, I'm concerned that just by putting it in writing I'm looking like I'm itching for a fight. But even if I show it to no one, I'm going into the meeting prepared.

Fun with Math and Science

2008-07-28T19:31:00.001-07:00

AJ had a great time at Camp Gifted. We were really impressed by the end-of-session documents that were sent home. AJ's projects and lab notebook were fantastic, of course. So was the DVD that the physics teacher made of the kids' egg drop and Rube Goldberg projects. But we also really appreciated that each teacher sent home a summary of the course and list of websites and books and things to do if we wanted to do more of the kinds of things they did in class. I thought some of these references would be appreciated by readers here. The two science classes were targeted toward gifted children entering 2-3 grades. The math class had a broader age range of 2-6th grades.

PHYSICS

Websites
• http://www.invention-engine.com
• Search youtube for "Rube Goldberg" (this one is AJ's and my favorite)
• http://www.funology.com/laboratory/lab_physics.htm

Books
• Arlene Erlbach, The Kids' Invention Book
• Laura S. Jeffrey, American Inventors of the 20th Century

Places to Visit
• Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago
• American Science and Surplus, 5316 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL 60630 (773-763-0313)

MATH

Math just sent home one recommendation, which is for kids' sudoku puzzles:

http://www.printactivities.com/Kid_Sudoku_Puzzles/Free_Printable_Sudoku.htm

I would add to that the essential, websudoku.com.

CHEMISTRY

Experiment books
• Tamara Perchyonok, Chemistry and Fun for Kids of All Ages
• Robert W. Wood, 39 Easy Chemistry Experiments (Science for KIds)
• Judi Hechtman and Karen P. Hall, Explore and Discover Kid Chemistry
• Janice VanCleave, Janice VanCleave's Chemistry for Every Kid: 101 Easy Experiments that Really Work

Websites

• PBS Kids Kitchen Chemistry
• Bill Nye Home Demos
• Build your own Volcano at Discovery Kids
• Experiencing Chemistry at OMSI: How to Make Flubber
• Chem4Kids Website
• ChemShorts for Kids: Links to a variety of experiments