How do I get Evangeline to slow down?

[conuly]

We've been having the nieces do "extra math" because NYC schools put a big emphasis on reading and I think math really suffers a little. Especially when the kids are already reading at or above grade level.

We didn't finish their workbooks during the school year, we're doing that now, and starting up with math games and all again because if nothing else, this summer Ana has got to, got to, GOT TO start memorizing some of her addition and subtraction facts. She has to count on her fingers, and then she gets frustrated that it slows her down and she drops her pencil.

If Ana works at the pace she's going, one exercise a day (which is more than she would be doing during the school year, there are more days than assignments), she'll pretty much be done by the time school starts in September. One workbook is half a year, we started late in the second half of the year, that's about right.

If Evangeline works at the pace she's going, 3+ pages a day, she'll be done with first grade math by the time she enters first grade.

She is ahead of where her sister was at that age, at that point in school (remember, Ana entered kindy half a year older than her sister entered did!), heck - she's ahead of where Ana was in the middle of her first grade year already!

I have tried talking to her, imploring her to slow down. "No thanks!" I've tried taking away her math and giving her on-level books to read to me. I've tried hiding her math, which is just deeply surreal.

I love this child. I don't understand her. HELP ME.

(Also, I love Ana, but she has got to stop with the fingers. I know the school didn't emphasize memorizing, and I know they have a really valid reason for that, but I also know that Ana is getting really really convinced that because she can't do math fast she's not good at it, and that's not the case. But you can't convince that child of anything. Best thing for her is lots of very cleverly disguised drill. Next year is not going to be very fun.)

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

Why does she need to slow down? If it's something she wants to learn right now, why not let her learn it, now, while she wants to.

If she's picking up math this fast, she'll bored in regular math classes whether or not she's seen it before.

[crystalpyramid]

I guess another thought is: get her enrichment math books that won't be redundant with the school curriculum.

[conuly]

Any specific suggestions?

[crystalpyramid]

I remember loving the Brown Paper School books, especially I Hate Mathematics, as a kid. They're not workbooks, and I'm not 100% sure of the reading level, but they might be worth checking out from a library if you can find them.

I'm more familiar with resources for grades 7-12, but I've got a friend who just finished grad school at Bank Street who I can ask for more suggestions, if you'd like.

[conuly]

She's already bored and, unfortunately, calls attention to herself with it.

I mean, there's not really a solution for that, but should we all exacerbate the situation?

[siderea]

I mean, there's not really a solution for that

Sure there is. Several. Placement in a higher level class, whether a grade higher or in a GT/honors track. Being assigned more challenging work in class than the other students. Homeschooling, full or partial.

The problem isn't that the child has a talent and taste for math. The problem is keeping her in a classroom beneath her developmental level, and expecting her, at her age, to have a level of behavioral management that many adults wouldn't in analogous circumstances.

[dragonwolf]

Keep in mind, though, that not all school districts (even city ones, though I'm admittedly not familiar with theirs in particular) have honors tracks. For that matter, in a lot of places "honors" just means "more work," and not so much "more challenging work."

In my experience, too, advancing a grade level makes fellow classmates in the new grade level resentful, which makes school life hell on earth. =/

But yeah, being forced to slow down to beneath one's own ability isn't fun, either.

[siderea]

Not to discount your experience, but it's not the only experience. There are better and worse ways to do it, and there are kids who are more likely to be able to handle it than others, and there are teachers who are more and less likely to be able to handle it.

Life generally doesn't come with guarantees. It comes with opportunities, which it's up to us to make the most of.

[dragonwolf]

Not to discount your experience, but it's not the only experience.

I'm not sure why you think I felt it is. Nor does it make it any less valid, or not something to consider. In my experience, kids don't like it when someone younger than them does better in school. How it's handled certainly does come into play, but knowing how bullying is handled across the board in general, I don't hold much stock in how the teachers handle it, particularly in public schools. That leaves a lot more to be handled by the child than many people think. In this case, whether Connie's nieces can handle it is up to Connie and the girls' parents, and it's my opinion that it should be decided with the above in mind.

[crystalpyramid]

It's probably easiest for the teacher, and arguably best for the school, if all the kids are on the same level, and none of the kids are noticeably bored or annoyingly ahead. What's easiest for the teacher isn't necessarily what's best for an individual student, though. Hopefully her new school will be able to handle differentiating instruction to kids on different levels, so knowing "too much" math won't be a problem.

Especially my Asian-American students tend to have lots of math help outside of school, so they're ahead of their peers, and I've never noticed it hurting them at all. It's nice to have something you're good at, and being better at it is often a motivation to keep working on it.

I worry that forcing someone to slow down when they've got the aptitude might turn them off to the subject, or to academics in general. And there's the problem where gifted children often never learn to really work, or to handle challenging situations, because they just never encounter things that are actually hard. That was a real problem for a bunch of my college friends, and some of my students struggle with it.

[kyrielle]

This. So much this. Being held back to match my peers taught me that life was easy. College taught me that it wasn't.

Luckily, I only had that experience in some subjects and not others (math was a partial exception, for example), so my problem was thinking I'd never have to work "at X" and not "at anything" - and even that was plenty hard to overcome.

Holding someone back to match their peers teaches laziness, in my experience. I've had to work to unlearn it.

[kyrielle]

What crystalpyramid said.

Also, for Ana, would an abacus be a helpful intermediate step, or would it just defeat your attempts to get memorization through?

Because I hated memorization, and I sucked at it, and learning to do the math better and faster without it worked better for me. Memorization drills were...well, the only time I can recall that I hated math.

[conuly]

An abacus might help.

I'm thinking more work with math where we do a lot (and a lot) of games that involve, well, adding or subtracting numbers through ten. Memorization isn't the be-all and end-all of it, but right now she thinks she's too slow in it, and I know if she got some of them by heart that concern would go away.

[dragonwolf]

Do you guys have those stupid timed math tests? I always hated those and failed miserably at them. I could do the work, just not "fast enough," and no amount of writing them ad nauseum ever changed that.

On a similar note, you could teach her how to count using the binary method, so she can at least go up to 31 on one hand. ;)

[conuly]

I don't think they do in school, but we've been doing them outside of school and Ana actually thinks it's fun. I emphasize with her that the point is to beat your last score, NOT to get them all done, and that if she COULD finish it in the time then it'd be too easy for her.

(However, little does she know I actually help her cheat a little. If it looks like she's struggling, I quietly keep the stopwatch running rather than let her know that time's up.)

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

Why on earth would you want to slow her down?

*deeply baffled*

[conuly]

I spent the first eight (count 'em, eight) years of school reading under my desk because I was so damn bored. In some classes, it wasn't under my desk, and the teacher didn't care, because I already knew the work. (Exception - I was only "at level" in math for a few years. But even that passed quickly enough, and I was never behind.)

She's already bored in class.

[leora.livejournal.com]

If your teacher isn't willing to give you material at an appropriate level for you, then I think spending the time in class reading is quite sensible, and it makes more sense than wasting the time.

[conuly]

Wasn't able, I think, more than not willing. I remember first grade, being shunted off into my own little reading group all by myself.

I mean, that now starts to get into the whole big problem with education, why are class sizes so large? And why a 1 year gap in students? A smaller group or a larger group would make more sense, one year turns out really awkwardly.

[leora.livejournal.com]

*nods* That's fair. Teachers who are overworked with too many kids can't accommodate differences as well. I was very lucky to be in a small class for first through third grade (same class, same teacher, special program). And she was very accommodating. Twice I was my own reading group, once for being the slowest in the class and needing extra help, and once when I passed the other kids in my grade. But we also did a lot of independent work, which made it easier on the teacher. And third graders had two work options that also made it easier for the teacher - they could use extra time to design work sheets and if the teacher approved them, they would be given to the class as assignments and you'd be exempt from doing your own worksheet. This was awesome and cool and I abused the heck out of that system. The other thing was third grade was the year of research project. Each third grader picked a topic of their choosing (I chose dinosaurs, one of my classmates chose holidays, I forget other examples) and any day you wanted to you could opt-out of the normal class assignment to work on your research project as long as you showed your work at the end of the day. At the end of the year you had a big book made with the results of your research (half pages of writing and half illustrations). This was really a wonderful experience, but it also meant third graders were doing less work that the teacher had to generate, and students were sometimes designing worksheets for the class for the teacher.

But we were expected to do a lot of working independently. We'd be given our assignments for the day, and then we'd work on them, and small groups would be called up throughout the day to work with the teacher on various subjects. Except for circle time for things like the teacher reading a story out loud to the class, the class listening to a classical music piece (every other month we studied a new composer), looking at reproductions of famous paintings and discussing them (every other month was a famous artist) or possibly similar things I've forgotten.

It was a fantastic class.

[conuly]

That does sound fantastic. That sounds like a dream for many students.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I was extremely lucky. It was a gifted program that vetted kids for both academic ability and good behavior, so all of the kids were also decent classmates. It was a dream class. My teacher was nice, respectful, and really good at what she did. And when I finished third grade, she retired. I also would not have qualified for the class in first grade under their normal rules, because I was not able to read, but they decided to experiment with accepting a bright child who hadn't yet learned to read to see if that requirement was necessary.

The downside was that all of the assignments were written on the board for each grade at the start of each day, and I had no idea what I should be doing at first. I found out afterwards that my teacher gave a lot of thought about how to treat me, and decided she'd try full immersion and not singling me out. I don't know what approach would have been best, and I spent a lot of my early first grade days asking other students, "What does that say?" to find out what I should be doing. And I worked really hard in first grade. But she worked very hard on catching me up to speed on reading, so it worked out well. I'm really grateful to have had such a good teacher.

Then I had fourth grade, which was untracked and so disappointing other than taking a lot of field trips. Plus, I didn't know the other kids in my school. The only other student in my class I knew was a boy who didn't even like me. And I'd been in a mixed-grade class, so they all knew each other and knew I'd been in the same school as them but not socializing with them. So, fourth grade was really awful. But first through third was great. Plus, it taught me how to work really hard. For many, many years I found that I did not have to work nearly as hard as I had worked in first grade, but that experience was a useful one to have had.

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

So did I. I was reading 12th grade or even college-level by the time I hit eighth grade, and I was in calculus by 10th grade. I still don't think it's a good idea to deliberately hold her back.

If she gets too far ahead, maybe see if you can talk with her teachers and get her advanced school work, or maybe put in a higher math class. If not-- from everything I've read, you certainly seem very invested in their education; maybe give her other (math related, of course) things she can bring with her to do in class.

I really, really (really!) think it's more important to encourage her at this stage than it is to try and keep her from being bored in class. Even if it does mean she acts out a little. How often do you run across a kid who *wants* to learn math, after all??

[conuly]

Without going into details, the way she acted out was extremely problematic. I'm stopping that discussion there, but it's more than just a little troublemaking.

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. Well-- nonetheless, I think there have to be other ways of stopping that behavior that don't involve also holding her back. :\

ETA: Actually, I like leora's idea of teaching her other varieties of math-- it would satisfy the same instincts without interfering with what she's learning in school.

[conuly]

Of course, as I said in my next post, if we were normal they wouldn't be doing math over the summer at all. (And this is the origin of the "summer slide". Look it up!) So it's not so much holding her back as... I don't know, something else. Pushing her ahead slightly less quickly.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I had huge problems with "math" in Elementary School, even though I was great at math concepts. The only thing that worked was years of regularly doing math. By about partway through fourth grade I'd done enough that it clicked enough in my brain that I was alright. I think you shouldn't discourage her using her fingers, just keep her regularly doing math. If she does it enough, bits of it will start to stick in her brain, and she'll use slower tools less as she needs them less. And hey, I still use fingers now and then, and I think that's okay. I didn't run into serious problems with math until calculus 2, so what I did worked well enough.

As to Evangeline, why have her slow down? Sure, she'll be bored in school with her math work, but you wouldn't deliberately slow down someone's reading development for that reason. Slowing someone down can really kill their enthusiasm and hurt their momentum. I say let her keep advancing. If she has a natural gift for arithmetic, then let her enjoy that, progress in it, and be good at it. And if it saves her time later, she can put it into any subject she finds more challenging. She's unlikely to be equally good at everything. And if she ends up having all her homework being really easy, then you can work with her on other things outside of school that suit her abilities.

[conuly]

She's already bored in school, though... and sorta acting out a little because of it. If she enters the school year a year ahead in math, that's not going to help.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Well, the correct solution to that is to get her into more challenging classes, but I take it that is not necessarily an available option.

[conuly]

Well, she did get into the gifted classes. So did I. It didn't help me. (Or at least, I don't recall that it did, but who knows?)

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

Add me to the chorus of people saying don't make Evangeline slow down. I don't see why you should make her slow down.

She'll be bored in school, sure. But maybe she'll turn out to be a super math genius or something.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Yes. I was terribly bored in school as a child. But that's a temporary problem. Being slowed down, told that 'being too smart' is not good -- causes lifelong damage.

What about homeschooling, or un-schooling? It's worth some trouble to get a child out of that mind-crippling public school situation. There are more important things than getting along, or doing what other people expect.

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

Would having Eva teach Ana math work? Or would that result in sibling battles royale?

[conuly]

Eva isn't ahead of where Ana is now, thankfully. I can see no scenario where Ana would be happy if her baby sister was better than she is in some academic subject.

Another reason I actually don't want Evangeline to be doing second grade math next year. If this keeps up, they'll be doing fourth grade math together, and that's just not good. (Well, I'm assuming she'll progress at that rate over the next few years. Probably not.)

[leora.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a youngest sibling, that's a really annoying reason to slow down a younger sibling. Would you slow down an older sibling because it might causes the younger one issues when she gets older having that as a benchmark or as something that makes her feel bad that she can't live up to?

I was the slow child in my family. Fifth child and also reached most milestones at a later age. But I would not have wanted my siblings slowed down on account of my progress being that way. Sure, it was hard for me knowing that they were always ahead of me and always would be ahead of me (four years older to the youngest sibling is a ~tough~ gap when you're a kid), but I accepted that. If I had been slowed down at anything I was good at as well, that would have sucked beyond words. I did actually do better than my siblings in some things, since I was the most academically oriented, I tended to get the best grades (I wasn't the smartest, but I was the most focused on actually doing my schoolwork). But it just seems very one-sided, because I doubt you'd slow down Ana for Eva's sake.

[conuly]

And that's not my reasoning at all, though.

It's an additional blessing that makes Ana a little happier.

No, I'm really concerned about Evangeline in class, where last year was a lot of her being bored and us hearing about it later.

[leora.livejournal.com]

*nods* Well, that goes to whether or not you can get her into classes that will teach to her level. That's tough, admittedly. In a perfect world, that is what I'd want done, but we do kind of live in the real one. :/

Hmmm, one possible solution might be to teach her math that is orthogonal to the math she's supposed to be learning. That might satisfy her desire for math without boring her in school. For example, you could start her in on graphing equations. That sounds complex, but it can actually start out really, really simply. How graphing works is pretty simple, and X=7 or Y=X or Y=x+4 are pretty easy concepts for even a very young child to start fooling around with, and then you can work from there. Or other branches of math that will eventually be important and helpful, but won't really be interfering with what she's learning now. Graphing is just nice, because it's easy to fool around with on your own. You can write very simple equations and then take time drawing in different data points and connecting the dots, which is a decent vaguely art-math thing to do at a low level.

[conuly]

That's not a bad idea at all.

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

Going along with what leora has said, is Eva interested in sudoku?

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

For slowing Ana down, how is she at cooking? Can you use recipes as math problems?

[conuly]

She does love cooking. However, it's in the 90s here, and the kitchen is kinda in the attic. I wouldn't cook if I didn't have to, and I'm not about to make either kid sit in the hot kitchen, slaving over a really hot stove with me.

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

I apologize for not being more clear. I had meant cooking as in "assembling food" such as salad dressing, homemade ice cream, and the like.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I agree; don't slow her down, or ever give her the idea that there's something wrong with being so excited about learning something that you don't want to stop. Don't take her books away; don't limit her reading-time; don't make disparaging remarks about her scholarly pursuits - obviously she does have to brush her teeth, do her chores, participate in family activities and go to sleep at night, but her free time is her time, and if she chooses to spend it studying, how cool is that?

I agree with leora: introduce the child to other forms and applications of math than the ones she'll be studying in class next year. Of course, there's also the option of letting her go ahead and learn all next year's math now, so that she'll be able to crank out easy A's in class, while continuing to get on with her own studies.

The inevitable price of being smarter than average is having to constantly wait for those who aren't. Naturally, this is extremely frustrating, and it doesn't help to increase the frustration by imposing even more limits on a child's intellectual pursuits. There does have to be a clear agreement though, that boredom is not an acceptable excuse for 'acting out', nor are those who study ahead allowed to lord it over those who don't.

[conuly]

if she chooses to spend it studying, how cool is that?

It's hard keeping up with her, is all!

Though I'd certainly never tell her that her interests aren't worth having, no matter *what* they were. (Well, not seriously. Occasionally I suggest to them that "all that reading" is bad for their brains and they should watch more TV, but they don't believe that anymore than they do when I tell them that they're not allowed any more birthdays and growing is verboten.)

Of course, there's also the option of letting her go ahead and learn all next year's math now, so that she'll be able to crank out easy A's in class, while continuing to get on with her own studies.

4s. Or, in the old system we used to use, E's. (For Excellent, followed by Good (in some places Very Good came before Good), Satisfactory, Needs Improvement, and Unsatisfactory. And, of course, Z - never showed up to class.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"It's hard keeping up with her, is all!"

LOL, I'll bet it is. That's one of the major benefits of teaching: having to keep up with a fresh and agile young mind keeps our own minds limber, the same way chasing around after zippy young bodies keeps our muscles strong.

4s, Es, As, whatever - we've had over half a century of dicking around with the grading system, trying to make believe it isn't really a grading system, but rather a 'progress evaluation tool', and it is in fact still a grading system, same as it always has been.

[conuly]

And they tell the same old stories about it, too.

When I was a kid, every year they said they couldn't pass you if you didn't do the homework, or that they wouldn't accept late homeworks, and every year I disregarded this because it wasn't true.

This year we got a note home saying Ana might not pass science because of missing homeworks. She sent in one or two more after that - and she still got all 3s in the subject (3 being "on target"). Pissed me off, actually. I don't think grades at that age should be based on effort instead of understanding, but they shouldn't lie and claim they are when they're not!