Talented child, but too slow in her work... what can you do about that?

[emkana]

I'm asking on behalf of a friend. Her dd is in Year 1 and quite able, but she has just been moved down a group because she is so very slow, esp. when it comes to writing, never even remotely finishing her work.
My friend feels that this is wrong and not the answer and that she will get bored. But what is the answer? Anybody got any ideas/experiences?

bump

It's wrong! V bright children often have issues with the speed of working. It's very often a problem, sometimes they are just not finishing things because it is boring and they don't see the point so dropping down a group just makes it worse. Sometimes the physical act of writing does not match the child's ability to think, so the child gets frustrated and writes very slowly to get things perfect.

DS1 in Year 3, is perhaps the world's slowest writer, finds it very hard to actually get the words down. We've fought against him being moved out of groups because of it. We've just had assessed by the Ed. Psych. to see if he has dysgraphia. Apart from that if he actually does do any writing, apart from its appearance, it's way beyond the standard of anyone else. He quite often writes the date and one other word, but it's always a fantastic word!!

It seems that bright children often have some degree of difficulty organising their ideas to their satisfaction.

In Maths DS1 can just about keep up with the writing needed, but this is his favourite subject and as long as it is challenging he is stimulated to try out his ideas, but as soon as he is asked to practise anything, snail pace returns. It can be v. frustrating for a teacher, even one who has knowledge of the situation. DS1 is in my Maths group at school and it drives me mad, and i'm his mother!! But I know that if he is moved down because of the speed of his work he will write even less, trying to persuade other teachers of this in the past has been hard, Saying he's not writing anything because your lessons are boring doesn't go down very well with colleagues!!

Is it actually the hadnwriting whcih is slow(ie the physical part of getting her ideas down), the thought process of formulalting and refining her ideas or a need for perfection that is taking the time ?

In what way does the teacher believe "moving her down" is likely to help ? They probably all do essentially the same work. Could it be to enable her to simplify her ideas, be expected to write less and make the timescale more achieveable so she gets the satisfaction of finishing ? Having said that I'm not aware of any such time pressure applied in dd's Yr1 class as such and think it is rather young to insist on it.

We have exactly the same with DS2 (5.5 and in Y1). He has been kept in at playtime twice in the last week to finish work and IMHO it's only going to make things worse. He's a bright boy who is very young in his class in a group with children who are mostly 8-12 months older than him.

His fine motor skills aren't great and writing is a physical struggle. A lot of it is also (I suspect) a bit dull for him. A child who is confidently spelling words like "exhausted" and "leisure" and so on and who is using apostrophes correctly (often) probably doesn't find thinking of words beginning with 'br' interesting.

A child who when asked to think of a pair of numbers that make 6 suggests -1 and 7 might not find putting the missing numbers in a number square interesting.

But it's very difficult to talk about it at his school in any way that suggests I am not a deluded fool. After all, he's not finishing the easy work he has, so why should he get anything harder? When I mentioned he was confident with the 10 and 2 times table all I got was "We don't do multiplication in Y1".

So I have experiences, but no advice. Would love to hear from the 'been there, done that' faction.

Depends on how they will manage her in the the lower group, I think. If it's lowering the bar all round, then yes it sounds like a nonsensical move.

But they may be moving her in a focussed way - eg to join a group for a bit of the day which is doing lots and lots of unstressy practice-writing, even just mark-making - and that may be just what she needs if her problem is eg late-developing motor skills or confidence. My ds's reluctance to write (that is, to pick up a pencil at all) despite being apparently clever was helped by doing Kumon English which is basically no more than steady 10 mins daily practice in forming letters. He's now a perfectly fluent writer in the letter-forming sense - though thought-organising remains a big hurdle (our next thing to tackle) - and that's another reason why it may be no bad thing for your friend's dd to have some not-very-demanding writing practice: because it'll mean she gets to tackle the two demands of (a) script-production and (b) thought-organisation separately - which bright children can find frustrating, and doubly frustrating when trying to deal with both at same time.

So - conclusion is - depends on how clued-up the teacher is.

singersgirl (seem to be following you about tonight) - does your ds2 do anything musical? Learning piano has been really good for my ds's dexterity - we see the benefits everywhere.

Hi Bink! (Sorry for slight hijack here). Piano has been suggested, I thought perhaps for when he was 6. He is my more musical son (DS1's trumpet is an interesting aural experience) and a mean dancer. Glad it has benefited your DS.

Oooh, can't offer any help at all but had to drop in as you're describing my ds1, (esp. you Doddle )
Also Y3, very slow worker, does ok at maths but struggles with handwriting and is rapidly losing confidence. Teacher has said his written work is not in line with his general knowledge and vocabulary.
We have been puzzled, so good to see we are by no means in an unusual situation.
Dysgraphia???? Haven't heard of, is it common?