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.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Classics
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!
“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!
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
The Horned Dilemma
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.
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.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
The Lexile Problem
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?
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?
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Our Courts
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.
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.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Wrapping up the third grade
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.
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.
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