That glass ceiling! Part 2

[var123]

Continuing the discussion about artificial limits placed on G&T children, and the resulting impact on their health and happiness (not to mention futures).

Do they really matter less because they have a perceived "advantage"?!

original thread here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/gifted_and_talented/2507232-The-glass-ceiling-for-very-able-children?

I should add that I have actually been very careful NOT to demand anything special for maths for DS, the additional work is entirely the teacher's idea.

All the children's books that have been made into plays, musicals and films (that's a lot of well-known books) are going to be familiar to a lot of DC. Plays etc promote the text no end. But I have never heard a teacher complain about a pupil's prior familiarity with the text. On the contrary, enthusiasm for a text can inspire the rest of the class. I can see, however, why this doesn't work in maths!

bobo it can't be helped sometimes!

DD played Dr Faustus in year 10. Watched several performances.

AS English Literature this year ... You've guessed it'

I'm not sure that AS Eng Lit will allow your DD to do justice to her knowledge, Eric

I do see the point noble is making. I just don't think it's that easy. Dd was an early talker. I didn't consider it a sign she was a gifted orator. I just (correctly) thought it meant nothing in the scheme of things and by reception age they'd all be the same. So when she was early with number/ maths, I didn't see it as racing ahead. I wasn't a parent who went round making comparisons with other kids, and even when it was obvious she was ahead I put it down to being bright, but also very interested. I had no reason to believe the average child couldn't do the same if they were interested. So it didn't cross my mind to wonder if anything I was doing impinged on future schooling. As far as I was concerned I was doing the same stuff everyone did. Not like I rolled up to nursery and said 'hey, can your toddler do x, y, z'.

I also hadn't got a clue what was on the nc, I just answered stuff in a child appropriate explaination of my logic. We never did number bonds, or number lines, or many other methods because they didn't even register on my radar as methods to use for what she asked. And if I'm honest, even in hindsight, I wouldn't have been happy to tell her 'I'm not answering you as it will mess up future lesson plans'. So it just happened by accident/ability that dd started reception ahead on the nc. And it was well into ks2 before I realised she wasn't just able compared to the cohort. I assumed that in most primaries in any class of 30 there would have been a top table with several kids just like her.

bobo it is good for her to concentrate her mind on less, shall we say, interpretive aspects .

I move between being so very proud of her individualistic approach and despairing.. .

In my experience primary teachers were entirely unable to spot how gifted dd was at maths. They just didnt have the tools, thought they understood her level and so we were foisted off with a lot of platitudes and had a child who would cry if she made a mistake and was generally very unhappy in lessons. Murderous maths books were her saviour. Looking back I feel really quite angry with both the schools and with myself for not pushing harder to find a solution despite frequent meetings. We used other activities to keep her brain busy.

in secondary school things rapidly became better, but their solution evolved in to dd sitting in the back teaching herself and by half way through Year 9 her selecting which areas she wanted to study and us providing the material. She is incredibly self motivating and hardworking and maths is her first love. For her it has worked out, but for a child with a different personality I could see them becoming very disaffected.

I do wonder what her path would have been like had she had access to a highly selective education rather than being in state schools and a comprehensive at that.

April I saw this on Twitter the other day which has some lovely-looking book recommendations for kids, some of which would be fine for kids under 14. mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/some-book-suggestions-for-a-14-year-old-who-loves-math/

The Number Devil by Hans Magnus Enzensberger is a primary child-friendly introduction to things like infinity, permutations, imaginary numbers.

For older secondary children Simon Singh's books on code breaking, Fermat's Last Theorem and the maths in the Simpsons are pretty accessible although written for adults, and Marcus du Sautoy is also very good.

Actually, the book that made me decide to study maths at uni was Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum in the film) was the hero! It talks about fractals and chaos theory.

My favourite book about maths is a fictional novel, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture by Apostolos Doxiadis. It goes into number theory, proof and the devastating blow dealt to maths by Goedel.

There are some good Martin Gardner puzzles in this article:

www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2014/oct/21/martin-gardner-mathematical-puzzles-birthday

cat I'm not saying don't teach any maths outside school. I'm saying don't teach school maths early.

I expect it's easier for me to say as a secondary teacher than a primary one, it would be much harder when school maths is basics like numbers and fractions. But I can't see any reason why a child should be taught e.g. trig early when there are so many other areas of maths which aren't on the curriculum to choose from.

agreed noble, the aim is to for kids to learn to see the beauty of maths and develop fundamental understanding. There isnt much beauty in the NC.

How can you separate school maths and other maths in primary?
All the things they learn at school is fundamentals and basics of maths. If they avoid that, how can they extend their knowledge?
I don't have maths brain myself, so I can't guide him the way some teacher or parents can. I do understand what noble is saying, but I don't really want to stop him doing things he loves.

with problems from nrich and looking at codes. It helps if they are keen readers - all I felt I could do was to order books for her. I was quite clueless.

Moving ahead on the curriculum using workbooks with your DC is only for the very dedicated. I have had to do some supplementary things with my DD using workbooks to bridge gaps because she is at a bilingual school that didn't have time to cover some of the stuff taught in English in England. It required a level of self-imposed discipline due to dullness that sharing a book/film/play just doesn't!

Thanks noble, some great ideas at the link. We have the Number Devil, which DD enjoyed.

Ds was once hooked on nrich and spend hours doing stuff on there. Also got into coding but kind of hitting a wall at the moment. Things he wants to do seems to be too complicated and he is bored of basic stuff. He is a kind of child talking about random prime numbers and figuring out 9 to the power of 4 while walking down the street. If I said don't do the maths at home, he will be very miserable.

var123 "As silly as it sounds, I can picture Ds2 age 6 doing maths. He was enthralled with it."

That doesn't sound silly. I can clearly picture (summer-born) DD doing maths when she'd just turned 7 at the start of Y3. Long story around deliberately depressed KS1 NC levels, but we had her doing optional maths SATs papers from a couple of years upstream in more formal conditions than they likely get for the real-deal at school. She absolutely [bleeping] loved that and wanted to do it again the next day. Would bite your hand off...

My overriding aim/hope re. her time at school, has been the preservation of that enthusiasm. I suppose it's possible your DC's might have waned regardless and perhaps they're more sensitive to in-class boredom than a rather stoic child like DD, but it definitely sounds like it's their experience wotdunnit.

If the answer is n-rich or UKMT or whatever, why not give it to them when they're bored in class? It would cost the teacher barely any time or resource compared to what they spend on an average student who actually needs help with the syllabus, needs work corrected and explained. Happy students, happy parents, no undermining.

It just seems to me that if we are going to push responsibility off onto the parents, we also need schools to pass over some degree of control. You don't expect an out of school music teacher to wait until the GCSE syllabus has introduced Bach. You don't expect an out of school sports coach to pay the slightest attention to what PE lessons may or may not cover at some future point.

A gifted child who reads around is likely to have picked up some form of these topics you were trying to hold back for "school maths" anyway. Or pick them up in class and extend for themselves quickly enough that they seem always ahead anyway. We get accused of teaching DS things even when we haven't.

Agreed catkind. Its one easy solution for those who are bored, as long as they will then do the extension, some very bright kids have learned that sitting there glassy eyed is a reward for having rushed through the work. You need to catch these kids early.

But I think that having a box of problems ready for those who have mastered a topic and can prove it is one solution. Much better if the problems are pertinent to the topic they have been doing so they can make links between things.

Saying maths students should do chess (or coding or go or ancient greek) seems a little akin to saying the tennis player should go and do swimming because there's a local swimming club.

No, these things are not remotely comparable. Chess and coding is much more relevant for developing higher level maths skills than jumping up in the primary school or KS3 maths curriculum. Going swimming to practise tennis on the other hand clearly doesn't help with specific skills required for tennis.

The real irony is that those who are doing maths at home, moving up the narrow school curriculum, making maths even more boring at school, are actually doing more harm than good but on threads like these nobody seems to want to listen to alternatives. Noble continually gives very good advice on what else one could easily do. This is the same advice given by the top UK maths departments.

disquisitiones, I am not ignoring what noble says, I totally understand. But honestly don't know what to do. Ds does nrich, wildmaths, and coding. He doesn't show interest in playing chess(My dh plays), read number devils, murderous moths. We are now doing some mastery assessment thing teacherwith2kids recommended. I am just hoping to keep him interested in maths, instead of getting disengaged because of repetition he does at school.

disquisitones, I think its more that many parents just can't envision what maths is outside of numeracy. Especially for younger kids. Many primary teachers cant imagine it either, they may have a few problem solving books, but they then dont know how to encourage problem solving skills.

I don't think anyone on this thread has said they've sat their child down and worked through the maths curriculum. Just that it's quite often unavoidable. Playing something as simple as snakes and ladders, or any board game with dice has many cross overs with primary nc. What do you say? No, 42 add 5 is not 47, just count the spaces. No, two 6's do not make 12, just stick to counting the dots.

People are entirely missing the fact that a very able child who is interested can't just be told they aren't allowed to know things or have their questions answered because they aren't yet at the age the average child is taught them.

who have mastered a topic and can prove it is one solution

There's an issue. You get the kids who moan about being bored in lessons to their parents and they aren't doing the bloody work. Yes I will provide extension questions and try to challenge the really bright kids, but I want to see that you can do the topic first, otherwise we end up with the problem discussed where you get kids who think that they are good at stuff but have shallow understanding and gaps in their skills. Then you also have the kids who think thinking a topic is easy is an excuse to not work hard, and slack off. Yes question 1 is straightforward, but question 2 isn't, and question 3 is really quite tough, but you never actually got to question 3 because you decided the work was beneath you and pissed around instead.

I'm not saying this applies to anyone on this thread's kids, but I've definitely seen it a few times. Arrogant boys, mainly, I have to say.

lurked there have been! There have also been people complaining about children having to master the work appropriate for their year group instead of being given work from higher years.

Playing snakes and ladders and discussing numbers isn't the same as what I'm talking about. I'm pretty sure that early primary teachers are used to having some kids who can count and add up and can deal with that appropriately.