Highly Able Children

[saisanne1]

Would like to hear from parents of highly children

120 children in a nursery? That's not true. Not in a pre school nursery, which I think you mean as there is a nursery teacher present.

All Scottish nurseries do not have teachers, that's utter shit. A pre school setting in Scotland, commonly referred to as nursery, will have a teacher present. They won't have 60 children in each session though, not in a million years. Many other nurseries in Scotland do not have a teacher present.

60 in the morning and 60 in the afternoon, yes it is true or why would I say it

Teachers often do have a good inkling when things aren't right.

They may not be psychologists but they are trained in child development and many study masters degrees with specialist areas of study such as ASD. So dismiss their knowledge at your peril.

I too was 'gifted' (reading at three, high IQ) but my parents sent me to the local primary, wherebi had a great old time, had fantastic teachers and got myself a scholarship at 11 to a local Indy school. Where I discovered I was actually not as clever as some.

However, being able is only one facet of intelligence. Communication and EQ are far more important in terms of "getting on" in life (unless perhaps one becomes an Academic, but even then it matters).

The advice above is very important: focus on those social skills and behaviour issues. Gifted or not, he can and should behave and don't use it as an excuse.

It's 2 classes which are as one so yes they do

saisanne that will sound strange bit I've actually actively withhold information from dc1 on school stuff (so reading, counting etc...) whilst stretching and giving as much as we could/he asked in any other subject.
My experience show me its better that way because then dc1 had someone to learn at school rather than always being ahead and bored.
I also know that teachers have slowed him down (aka not taught him stuff) so the gal wasn't as big as it could have been.

It clear hasn't stoppped dc1 from learning those things with ease later on. It just helped him fitting within the classroom a bit better.

I'm slightly perplexed about this nursery your child goes to. I would be concerned about their ability to hold confidential information, since you seem to know the ability levels of the other 119 children

It's impossible to hold him back
and they don't recommend that here, they want every child working to their highest potential

Well, pretty much all the children in the school will learn to read fluently in a few years time. Not all children who are really ahead aged 4 keep this up til they are 11 or 18 or end of university, and some other children, who were slower starters really come into their own later on. I had a friend who did very well at Cambridge who wasn't marked out as 'really bright' til around A levels, no-one noticed her up to then. She then went on to do exceptionally well career-wise at an early age.

There was an interesting piece of research following gifted children, and they found that few of them had gone on to have the very exceptional type of lives that their IQs might have predicted. Many had done just fine (some hadn't), going to good universities and getting professional jobs, but so had a lot of their non-gifted but bright and well socialized peers:

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/8028543/Gifted-children-no-more-likely-to-succeed.html

That accords with my own experience, I have lots of moderately bright but not remotely gifted friends who have done very well in life, the ones that were the exceptional ones at school have done fine, and a few have crashed and burned sadly and never remotely fulfilled their potential, I don't really know why. Being 'gifted' at school is not a recipe for success in life and shouldn't be read as such.

Well all they said was there's a couple of other kids reading some words, but no where near his level

Yeah no one knows what the future holds, but I'm concentrating on now

You def need to get him into a smaller, more personal nursery setting for a start - you might see his behaviour improve then too.

He's only got till end of June to go and I don't think it will benefit him to be moved from his best friends who he's been with since age 2, as I said everything has calmed now his key worker has changed

Pre school nurseries are arguably the best, mainly because of the presence of the teacher. I don't belive they are mixing 60 kids each session though. No way.

I think there are several 'facts' that have been added to this thread in order to suit the OP.

Well that's true and they have just split the rooms so the can concentrate and get it right for every child, but they all still go outside together. Don't know what your problem is, but go away, why would I lie

Erm, ok then.

Well I never said that holding children back is what is recommended in England either.
The recommendation is work with the children at their level and to differentiate.
What I have found though is what actually happens can be quite different from what is supposed to happen.
Teachers would have said they were differentiating too.
But they differentiated by giving stuff to do that was 1 year ahead when he was actually 2 or 3 years ahead (wo being pushed at all).

Holding back is easy. You don't answer questions or encourage learning in that subject. (That's what I saw happening with my DC from his teacher btw)

We have nurseries here with 60 dcs. One teacher and two or three TA.
That's not unusual at all unfortunately.

Where is here?

I don't think that would work for him, but thanks for your opinion

The ratio where teacher is present is 1:8

It's not TAs that work in pre schools in Scotland. But even if it were three or four adults to sixty children would not happen. Ever.

There's 4 or 5 early years practitioners for 30 children. And one teacher between the two rooms, jeezo what's your problem

First I've heard of "able children" being entitled to additional support in Scotland. The only kids who are entitled to it are visually or hearing impaired or have a physical disability or autism which requires additional support to ensure safety in their learning. Lots not adding up in the OP's post tbh.

I'm not the one with the problem.

I'm not the only one to see things that are not quite right with this thread.

I don't know what you hoped to achieve by it. If you wanted everyone to say 'yay how fab, your child is the cleverest in the world by far' then there you go, take that

Additional support for able children were added to it in 2009