How much does differentiation/learning at school really matter?

[mrsshears]

I'm posting this as more of a discussion really as it's something i have been thinking about alot recently.
My daughter is 5 and on the 99.9th percentile for IQ, she is not differentiated for or challenged at school and never likely to be at her level (if she stays at her current school).
My question is if the child is generally happy how much does this really matter? do they loose it if they don't use it? can school just be used as a social exercise and learning/stimulation be done at home?
I would be really interested to hear your thoughts on this subject.

honestly, at 5 i wouldn't sweat it. i don't sweat it with dd2 at 8. she loves to write and so writing is what she does. she's still sponge like and taking everything in... it is starting to concern me at 10 with ds1 (and we are still in discussion with school to see what can be done). oddly it is ds1's teacher who is the dweck-o-phile. she's trying so hard to instil work habits and will probably give herself a breakdown in the process.

dd1 at 12 amazes me every day. how three kids from the same parents and upbringing can be so different is fascinating. she will just take something and run with it, and differentiate herself. at the moment she's trying to solve the problem of bears getting killed on railway tracks in the national park, working towards her canada cord with pathfinders and seeking out her own volunteering opportunities, and learning about anaesthesia as an aside to her school mentor thingy. tbh this is just as well, because she routinely finishes her homework in the class and so doesn't have any to do at home...

if she's happy, i think you can have an awful lot of fun just doing new things in a low key and living life for the moment kind of way. it's likely that she's she's going to latch onto some of them and extend herself anyway, she'll keep learning. as long as she isn't bored at school, or getting fed up, i wouldn't worry.

as you knwo, we are still toying with taking ds out. dd2 is horrified by this, and made me promise she could still go . despite there being (afaik) bugger all differentiation for her at the mo, she loves it. just being in the class and pootling about re-covering stuff she already knows is fine in her opinion...

i do often feel as though i should be doing more. you know that. i hope it's just the usual parental guilt and inadequacy stuff, and not that i am limiting their potential.

It must be a very poor school if all your children can get out of it is a dull acceptance of boredom. A school like that would make a hash of differentiation. A school like that would sit children in rows and get them to chant back everything the teacher says. A school like that wouldn't have my children in it. I just don't see, when I look at all the things my dss do at their school and the amount of encouragement they are given to research things for themselves, how a child worth educating could see it all as boring. And yes, of course they differentiate, but that isn't the same thing as ensuring my children are stretched to their full potential. I do, however, see plenty of opportunities for a spark to be ignited. If your child needs a rocket lit up his backside to get him excited by anything, then that's a problem your child is going to have all his life, because in that case, his self-motivation must be more or less non-existent. He might also always have a problem with the fact that a large part of any human being's day is taken up with really boring and tiremsome things. Yes, some aspects of school may be very boring, and aspects very unchallenging, but the whole of school??? Surely only if you are only interested in a very narrow range of subjects and ideas in the first place and those are the subjects least well catered for, or if your child's school is really very poor. And maybe it's just me, but I still don't find it boring to add things up in my head, or work out fractions, even though I find it easy.

Maybe it's a lack of energy levels? That for some children, the best part of their day has been taken up doing things they really didn't want to do and now they have no energy left to do what they actually want? I can see that would be a problem. If I were busy wanting to be somewhere else, I wouldn't even try to find my work interesting, I'd just sit there feeling miserable and thinking about what I would rather be doing.

BeerTricksPott3r Tue 28-Feb-12 19:53:44
"They're not achieving their personal best, rabbitstew. They are also not learning how to persevere when things get a bit tougher."

I'd say that depends on the child. I always assumed that the lessons at school were meant as a starting point to show me where I could delve more deeply. They showed me how to use a French dictionary: I read the Three Musketeers. They told me about the Middle Ages: I pretty well emptied the history shelf at the local library to find out more. They showed me how to write essays: I tried to write a novel. They showed my brother basic use of a computer and he went on to invent his own programmes. They showed my other brother how to write musical notation and he started composing his own music.

Of course there were boring lessons and of course it would have been better if there had been fewer of them. But even in the dullest class I could sustain myself with the thought of the work this would all lead onto.

And I went to school in a country where there was no differentiation, no sets, no ambition to teach different children different things. I wouldn't say that was an ideal situation, but even then it didn't put my brothers and me off learning.

I can't imagine how a school can not differentiate without it being as rabbitstew says - children all in rows chanting.
Are they all on same book band etc?
Surely the teacher challenges the children according to what she gets back from them.

There is some differentiation in general at dd's school sandalwood in the form of ability groupings,its just not nearly enough.

Hi madwoman >>waves back

two days now i was very excited.

nothing has changed. school are supposed to be working out what to do re maths, but not heard anything. they've had the reports since they went back in jan, so nearly two months. the cynic in me thinks that because his meds are helping him to focus (ie he isn't zoning out so much in that when the teacher tells him to get on, he does) that they think this has solved everything. it's made him more compliant. i mean, he didn't have any behavioural stuff, just zoned out because he was bored rigid. but it does feel a bit like we've drugged him so that he can fill in pointless worksheets, and if he dares to think outside the box, they can redirect him back to the boxes on the sheet pretty quickly. i can't decide if i'm glad that they think he's improving or sad that 'improving' means he's accepted he just gets worksheets to fill in. we have psych appt on thurs, so will e-mail school after that and find out where they are.

on a brighter note, dd1 is half way through her mentorship and is really enjoying it.

Does he have a definitive diagnosis for something that is treatable with the medication? I must admit I am not sure if I had a choice I would go for the drug approach. It should not be about making it easier for the school.

I would certainly talk about it with the ed psych.

MrsS, I'm with you in that differentiation might not be enough.

DD has just been put up to do guided reading with Yr1. Which is great, except they're doing Shark in the Park while at home she's trying (and struggling I'll admit, but still trying ) to read a Horrible Science book. What this achieves I am not sure.

I also agree with you rabbit that the tiredness at the end of the day is a big problem. I'd happily do loads of extra stuff with DD, but I think we'd have to flexischool to make that work.

Madwoman, good luck with the appointment. I'm not sure how I'd feel about compliant either.

Grrr, typed a hugio response and mn ate it.

In essence, the meds are for ADHD, but the dx was based on the inattentiveness and distractibility. Loads of things have been suggested, from asd right through to not being stimulated in school. He was dx in December so we're doing a meds trial at the mo. I asked him yesterday how he felt about it and he said 'I'm easier to control'. I asked whether he meant it was easier for other people to control him, or for him to control himself, and he said 'both'. to be fair, the ed psych did have a raft of things that needed to be implemented in school to deal with his 'gifted' side, which although I had heard they were doing some testing

I don't think I'm making sense re ds1. I just feel that school doesn't allow him to be himself iykwim. And that all we're doing with the testing and the meds is to try and change him to make him fit, when I'm not at all sure that 'fitting' in this way is in his best interest... Does that make sense at all?

I should add that both girls are completely happy with school, love it, thrive (and both measurably have a higher iq than ds, so it isn't necessarily about that) so I don't think I'm being precious. He accepts school. Or rather he accepts he has to go, and for 6 years and three schools, every teacher has told me how clever he is, but that they can't motivate him. This year it came to a head with the weeping teaching who basically said she thinks he will just drop out as a teen if we can't find a way to keep his interest. This is in contrast to some of the projects he starts at home, where I often end up having to dampen down his enthusiasm in order to get him in bed (because he has school in the morning) or try to redirect his energy onto a photocopied worksheet with a list of questions that have been recycled for probably the last ten years, because that's what grade five does...

Sorry, mrss, mahoosive hijack. But sort of on topic I think. Am I expecting too much for them to differentiate to this extent? Is it even possible for a school to let 30 kids get excited about slightly different things and cater for them all? Ugh.

No apology necessary madwoman, i often think aspects of your ds sound like dd.
It's so so difficult isnt it? i have been thinking recently about school's effect on gifted children and how they are categorised/grouped and made to fit it, i understand why they do it but it doesn't sit well with me and feels very restrictive.
I really don't think the traditional education suits some children, mine included, but it's really hard to know what to do for the best.

Are you still looking around for other schools?

Yes, We had a taster day at a lovely prep last week.Dd surprised us all by really enjoying her day and even answering questions in class!
However we would need a hefty bursary/scholarship to be able to send dd there,i'm actually going to take the bursary form back tomorrow,the head was very positive about dd though,which was great to hear as we have had lots of negativity from dd's current school as you know,she also said if we get a decision we don't feel we can accept then we need to book an appointment with her to discuss it further,
In an ideal world i would home educate dd tbh but it just isnt an option, this option seems like the next best thing,not that i think for a minute we will be offered a big enough reduction but fingers crossed.

Sounds to me more like the problem is the method of teaching your children, not the failure to differentiate sufficiently. A boring worksheet is a boring worksheet, whether aimed at a 5-year old or an 18-year old.

That sounds promising, mrss!

Rabbit, yy. It just seems to be the way things are done here for 'learning'. They do other stuff really well - next year he has to take band, so they are discussing what instruments etc, and further on there are leadership and outdoors options. The core stuff seems to be as dry as dust. I was kind of thinking in terms of differentiating for different learning styles as well, I think, rather than straightforward extension.

ps (re onesandwichshort's point) as a prolific reader myself, I think I learnt on the job, so to speak - I see no point in making a fuss about whether my children are reading Shark in the Park in a group at primary school or The Hobbit. Reading is reading is reading - you can get pleasure from either Shark in the Park or The Hobbit, or you can have both tortured to death at school. Best thing to do is to just keep reading for enjoyment yourself - you really don't need to be taught how to do that. Nor do you need to start practising your literary criticism of the classics at primary school. What's wrong with just reading them???? For enjoyment? Why take the joy out of your own discovery by having someone tell you what other people think about it before you have to pass exams on the subject? And what's wrong with reading Shark in the Park at the same time as Horrible Science? My children quite happily read both.

(the girls love a good worksheet...)

Mind you, give him a math worksheet and he's away. Anything else and he needs to be a bit more hands-on. If he's experiencing learning he can't get enough of it.

Mine read anything and everything. It's the fact that there are six children sitting around a table taking twenty minutes to get through three pages that's not so much fun. The better readers could pick up the book and sit in the corner and immerse themselves into completely, total escape. But have to sit and fidget and listen to others struggling whilst sitting on their hands to stop themselves butting in. And the weaker readers have to display their lack of fluidity in front of kids that have just rattled off a page without breathing, and they can't read the second line...

I gave up listening to mine read in yr r with all of them. there's nowt wrong with reading for enjoyment at all. But that's not what guided reading is. It is group torture for pretty much everyone concerned.

Adoptmama, where are you? I want you to come and defend guided reading! Someone has to!

I think I agree with all of you about the guided reading, although I have to say that DD loved it. But that's more to do with the fuss entailed rather than the actual reading.

All I was really trying to do was illustrate mrs shears's point that school say they are differentiating, but that it may not actually be much use for the child concerned.

I don't mind what DD reads either at home; what I did mind is that this was meant to be some challenging extension work for her. Guided reading probably isn't the answer at all, but for now it's all we're being offered. If anyone's got anything better that I can suggest to school and that they might actually be able to do, I'd love to hear it.

Hmm. In my opinion guided reading is completely the opposite to differentiation. Unless they've got her sitting at one table with a TA and everyone else on other tables doing their own thing. Which I doubt.

So, ds had his psych appt today. He's such a mixed bag. First session so it was all get to know you stuff, and then she changed her mind completely and just wanted to speak to dh and I. Gave her his report from before Christmas before we left (she's seeing him in two weeks on his own) and she was just flicking through it whilst we were finishing up. She stopped on the page with the summary table and told us how remarkable it was (not the iq thing, but more the spiky nature of his profile) and said it was absolutely as adhd as it was possible to get (even though the specific adhd tests weren't enormously conclusive) and the spiky stuff must be really very frustrating for him, so I'm guessing she's going to go through it in detail and then get to know him 1-1. She seemed v genuine though.

I had to drive dd2 into the city this afternoon for an orthotics appt, and so had an hour or so of thinking time afterwards (we were with the psych for two hours). I think I might float the school question with her tbh. She could see how much he struggles with the square peg, round hole stuff I think. It would be interesting to see what she thinks would be best for him once she gets to know him a bit.

She sounds interesting. If it were me I'd ask her about the school thing, as another opinion - esp a thoughtful one - can't hurt.

The guided reading wasn't as bad as it could have been - her and a couple of other kids + teacher. But she's in Reception so they're not doing anything of the sort in class right now, and it's about all we've got in the way of differentiation. Well, except that she doesn't have to take books home.