to ask the teacher for more advanced teaching for my child

[NC43211234]

In a nutshell, is it appropriate to ask for a more advanced teaching level for my child and how can I go about this in the best way? I'm trying to not sound like an entitled arse. I'm aware that teachers have a curriculum to follow and that schools have to support the needs of kids of all abilities.

The specifics of my situation are that I have a bright DS who is 9. I get to see all the maths work he does in class and at home and its very, very repetitive and I know that he is not challenged by it. Homework takes about 1 minute. He asks me about more advanced concepts and I answer, but this is very ad hoc. I still want him to be taught properly, but at a faster pace.

Our schools do a form of testing that works on the basis that computerised questions get progressively harder until the child is getting 50% of questions right. So rather than testing if they just know what has been taught in class it tests where the child's knowledge level is. I really like this idea as it should work for kids working above and below grade level. It also gives a projected score for the child to aim for by the end of the school year.

My kid did well but was not exceptional, he was scored in the 88th centile for maths which in itself is fine. But if everyone is being given the same level work as my DS, does this mean the school are not providing work appropriate for approximately 15% of the kids? How is he expected to reach his projected score if the work he is being given is below his existing abilities?

Eventually the school will differentiate with different teaching groups but not yet. We live in an area where people value education and its not unusual to hire tutors. I think this may be affecting his placement in the centiles but I know it sounds presumptuous to suggest this. Do I need to buy into outside tutoring to make sure my DS makes the cut off for a higher level group in the future?

Obviously I will be speaking to his teacher about all of this, but I am asking here for tips on how to have this conversation go well. Has anyone had any success in asking their school for a more advanced teaching level for their child before the school wants to give it? Or any teachers that can offer insight into how this can happen? What are the pros and cons of asking for this? Thanks for any input.

Realistically you may just need to more enrichment work with him at home.

The teacher probably has 25 other kids in the same class. It isn't realistic to expect her to design a totally different set of lessons for your child.

I'm not really in favour of Gifted programs simply because they tend to completely overload children.

I would suggest that more learning at home for enrichment is the way to go. That, or consider the possibility of home education.

I would ask to talk to the teacher about the work that's covered in class. It might be that something more challenging / more finely differentiated is covered in class and the homework is practice to embed particular processes, or it might be that the work is all too repetitive and simple for him.

You'r probably right to seek advice about exactly what they mean by 88th centile- who is he being compared to? If it's for his own age group, then accelerating his learning doesn't sound like the right way forward anyway.

In the UK , schools are discouraged from simply moving a child on to studying the curriculum from the years above- this can extend them in certain directions, especially with the more procedural elements, but they may not then develop deeper reasoning skills. We'd look at developing things like reasoning and problem solving skills, so that children need to really think about how to adapt and apply their existing knowledge in different contexts. You could have a look at the NRICH and NCETM websites for useful resources if your child's school doesn't have anything particular to offer on that front.

I think extension work can be problematic. My Ds learned to to work slowly so he didn't get double the work! This was despite complaining constantly about it being 'baby maths'.

I think once levels are clear, different work is better than extra work.

Hi, I'm in the same boat as you.

When my DD was 9 her teacher didn't want to move her ahead (more in depth problems were more of the same but in words or with an extra step- she found them easy.) I signed up to a website to provide her with more appropriate Math and it was the last thing she wanted to do with her spare time! Just because she's good at Math doesn't mean she wants to do more of it. So I would actually recommend talking to the teacher (it always helps- they want your child to learn) and finding a way for him to learn more at school.

This year my DD is 10 and she gets pulled out to sit with the class one year older. If her teacher didn't allow this, I would have paid for a tutor to come to the school during Math time. Acceleration is vital. My favourite thing I read was that learning should be like an escalator, a continual process. If a child already understands everything deeply, they should be able to move on.

This year my DD is 10 and she gets pulled out to sit with the class one year older. If her teacher didn't allow this, I would have paid for a tutor to come to the school during Math time.

This would have made such a difference to my DD. I very much regret not realising that she was so bored in math, and how much it was making her depressed and what a missed opportunity it was.

Luckily she ended up at a magnet high school that made up for it, and she basically skipped several years of math and is now doing stuff that actually challenges her. I really recommend looking carefully when you get to high school stage - there are some amazing schools out there.

If a child already understands everything deeply, they should be able to move on

No this is completely contrary to the way Maths works. You don't understand something deeply by just repeating lots of similar problems, the way you understand it deeply is by using it in different contexts, by seeing an unfamiliar problem and recognising the maths you need to use, by generalising a familiar problem to different sizes/shapes/contexts. There is always a way to enrich without acceleration and acceleration has risks in a classroom of studetns who are not being accelerated.

A question for other US parents. Our school system does not split students by math ability until 8th grade, and that's only a recent thing. Until a couple of years ago everyone was taught the same curriculum until 9th grade.

Is that typical?

Agree with @garethsouthgatesmrs. Pushing on to do e.g. long division with bigger numbers won't be challenging to children who find maths easy- the challenge comes in applying, investigating, generalising, finding patterns. Deeper learning comes in when a child already has a good understanding of the basics, is given a starting point to investigate a particular problem or area of maths, and then has the self-starting skills to consider where to go next with the problem, or to figure out a way to investigate the problem rigorously and systematically, or to spot patterns and figure out how they fit into a more general picture.

Extra work can be something of a disincentive, as others have said, but different work can be a strong motivator. And just moving up a year can be a bit of a cop-out- it doesn't necessarily help the child develop as an independent mathematician.