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?

Catkind,

The point I would make is that my approach is limited when faced with an 'extreme outlier'. I would say it - and I should say it's not 'my' approach, it's one that is common everywhere I have worked - is probably fairly robust up to a 1 in 100 outlier in most areas of Maths, and where I have taught a child with dyscalculia, then the additional differentiation was primarily through 1:1 support which enabled wholly different objectives to be addressed.

However, as I wouldn't have a 1:1 available for an outlier at the extreme top end, I don't think I would, on a daily basis, be able to meet their full needs in every lesson. It wouldn't mean that I wouldn't know what those needs ARE, just that the disconnect from the main thrust of the teaching might sometimes be too big for that child to be given well-tailored material in every lesson IYSWIM?

(I should also point out that I am one of 'us' as well as one of 'them' - DS is an outlier in Maths, and DD, although not quite as spookily able at a young age, is among the very top of her year group in Maths in secondary. So I am probably 'more aware than average' of the problems of being at outlier.)

Oh I totally get that. Just something sometimes would be wonderful. Even if it's just a puzzle type question to do when he's finished his worksheet. Just something so that DS wasn't coming home saying maths was too easy, we did adding 10s again, exactly the same as yesterday, groan. He's not out to put it down or anything, he's permanently optimistic that this will be the half-term that he gets "some tricky maths to do", and then he's disappointed. I guess at some point they do get disillusioned though.

Thanks for all the link and mentions of different activities/website/games that can encourage maths abilities.

One thing I would like to highlight, esp with teachers, is that parents don't always know that these sites/games exist. I discovered Rasperry Pi just chance at Christmas for example.

So in some ways, yes it's easy to say to parents 'Don't teach them stuff that they will do at school later on' (which is what I've done anyway. And got some horrified look from the primary teachers I said that to).
But what about telling said parents whatelse they can do instead of expecting them to know?
Instead I got the complete non acceptance that dc1 was very ahead

Tbh it has taken me this thread (and the previous) to get my head around what can be expected from school and teachers. Why I have some issues with the nc. What sort of skills I want to encourage with my dc and will need to be taught at home. That actually I probably do need to make my dc do some exercise sheets etc. But not the ones you would expect.
To do that, I need an idea of what is the school curriculum and what my dc is doing (not easy to know when there is NOTHING coming back home, despite school website, ipads etc...).

I think it's very easy to overlook the amount of work that is involved in that. It is much easdier when you are teacher yourself and have an idea of how things work etc... It is extremely hard to sort out when you're not and have no idea how things work (which will be the case for most people).

I also agree with var about attitudes and having to work with your dc about how to handle situations.

Even you are NOT teaching them ahead, I know my dc is finding hard to get passionate about happens in maths class. Even when there is a new skills/idea that is been tought, his speed of learning is such that it would take him long to get it compare to what happens with others.

Fine for one subject, harder when it's most of the subjects. So the one thing you have to teach is ways to handle being bored, how to find interest in things they already know whilst keeping their curiosity in the subject intact (see var's dcs not liking maths anymore).
I'm sure we've already said so. When a child sees school as a social activity, it's easier than when you have a child that sees school as a place to learn....

As an aside, if as parents we shouldn't teach children ahead why is it that schools do? By that I mean that it is expected from the school to teach children in Y6 to a level 6 (good for SATS results). But then the same system is expecting them to wait all Y7 whilst they redo all the level 5 and start of level 6. And somehow we and our dcs should be happy to do so because they are too much ahead . How can that be good?

Other teachers on the thread have said that it's not their job to teach the most able students and parents should be paying for this to happen at home, some even seem to think this should be happening without any actual maths being done at all.

This is a bollocks misrepresentation of what you presumably mean is my position.

The point I was making is that it is accepted in other subjects that it is not the job of the school to provide specialist coaching outside of the curriculum, within lessons. The teacher's job is to teach the school curriculum. The research also shows that it is not in the child's best interests to accelerate them through the school maths curriculum way beyond their peers. Then you have parents who decide that they know better and teach (I mean actively teach, either themselves or with tutors or whatever) their DC the school curriculum from years ahead to their DC, thus causing problems with boredom in school, then demanding that the school continue the ill-advised acceleration or teach an entirely different curriculum to their child to the one that is happening in the classroom, the one that it is the teacher's job to teach. This is something that you don't see with other subjects.

I also suggested appropriate activities which would be suitable for extending an able child in maths at home without infringing on the school curriculum, but you, in total ignorance, are arguing that they are nothing to do with maths at all.

"If he didn't play he'd be excluded from those conversations"

The older they get, the bigger the collective pool of um.. guilty pleasures. To fit in especially well with her newer bunch of secondary school friends, DD would have spend the majority of her home-time with a gadget/screen.

The common ground with one might be say higher ability, personality and extra-curricular music, but that friend also loves some dire US TV series so DD wants to watch it too. Add another half-dozen friends, perhaps a couple from of feeder primary schools that were infected with Instagram and...

"Then you have parents who decide that they know better and teach (I mean actively teach, either themselves or with tutors or whatever) their DC the school curriculum from years ahead to their DC, thus causing problems with boredom in school, then demanding that the school continue the ill-advised acceleration or teach an entirely different curriculum to their child to the one that is happening in the classroom, the one that it is the teacher's job to teach. This is something that you don't see with other subjects."

To be fair, noble - and I agree with many of your other points - if you are a parent with relatively limited maths (apart from school maths) and have an unusually able child in maths, then the school curriculum is the only maths you know, and the only provision for their more able children that they can imagine.

If you are a teacher, or were a more able mathematician, or did Maths beyond school age, then it is significantly easier to identify possible avenues that your DC can explore, and ways of accelerating them that are not linear.

In the same way that my school has pointed a very able singer towards avenues to explore to maximise their potential, maintains a list of extra-curricular provision for a variety of sports to a high level etc, then I do see it as the school's job, as well as saying 'don't just look at linear acceleration', to actively signpost able children and their parents towards ways to extend Maths outside the curriculum. You can't just say 'don't go that way' without giving any indication of the preferred route IYSWIM?

(I also think that the main risk of 'linear acceleration' is not for more able mathematicians, who have a natural 'feel' for the basics and don't need lots of explanation of the underlying principles. It is for those who are not so able, but whose parents are very anxious to 'make them able' by encouraging 'rote learning' of arithmetical processes without understanding. Thus you can end up with less able children who say 'but I can find the answer my way' in every lesson that uses methods to build solid understanding, can use the standard written methods very fast and competently, but is COMPLETELY thrown by any question that demands understanding.

Over the years I have had MUCH more difficulty with teaching the children (and communicating with their parents) who fit in the latter 'inappropriately hothoused' group than I have had with those who are moving faster because of their natural ability.

Any child who needs an efficient written method because they come to you with 'I can see that to solve this problem I need to multiply 456 by 7, but I can't do that except by repeated addition' is absolutely fine to learn the process of written multiplication. But a child who says 'look, my mum has shown me this trick to find the answer, I do it like this', but hasn't got the first clue what the problem is actually asking them to do, is much more of an issue.

DS could add and subtract 3 digit numbers in his head around the time he started Reception. He got frustrated because he couldn't hold e.g. hundreds of thousands in his head to do the same thing with. So I showed him how to write it down so he could keep track of what he was doing - it happened to be a full partitioning method that he used mentally, so that was what he did on paper too. I wasn't a teacher then, but it was obvious that he had the understanding, just not the capacity to hold 6x2 partitioned numbers in his head)

The problem is teacher, often primary school teachers are not great at maths either and have the same view as the parents. We've had kids where the primary has been the one accelerating them through the secondary curriculum, which caused all sorts of problems.

I did say that there was obviously a gap in the market for external agencies to provide appropriate extra-curricular maths support to able primary children. Primary teachers ought to be aware of sites like nrich, the primary maths challenge and so on, I don't know how much support primary schools get with maths; given the paucity of primary maths specialists I guess that would have been an LA role?

Our local Maths Hub is where we get most of our support from at the moment. It's based in a local secondary, who have, since L6 became available and maybe before, sent out their teachers to teach e.g. able Y6 mathematicians once a week or once a fortnight. Fantastic website, collaboration with other countries, training (both formal and through networking), resources put together by groups of local teachers etc etc.

Find your hub

We use the NCETM (co-ordinator of all the hubs) resources quite a bit as well.

The Mastery resources I linked Irvine to way back in the old thread are NCETM and Hub resources.

[We are probably more aware of the Hub than others are because of the geographical proximity. I don't know how well e.g. my old school, way out in the sticks in a neighbouring county, would have known about them)

DD in Y4 has been fortunate enough to have a secondary school maths teacher coming in once a week to teach the more able children. The lovely thing about this is that he is not focusing on getting everything right in every calculation 100% of the time. He seems to be focusing on doing mind-stretching stuff and being able to explain what you are doing and (crucially) why you tackled it that way. They work on open-ended problems in small groups and then are invited to talk about them to the whole class. There's no right or wrong, just talking about what the thought processes were. It's lovely. No pressure, no right or wrong, just thinking logically and trying to explain your own logic. It has been wonderful for her and I am so grateful that she has had this opportunity. It's the first time since Y1 that I have seen her really enthused about anything maths-based that has gone on in school. I really hope they carry on with it (it's a new initiative).

We've had kids where the primary has been the one accelerating them through the secondary curriculum, which caused all sorts of problems.

Is it not what is expected when schools are told that children will be evaluated to level 6a during the SATS, when the level expected in a 4a?
I have an issue with primary school giving 'special tuition' to Y6 children for the secondary school to then tell them they have do the whole level 5 again as it's where they are supposed to be (that includes the top set).
It seems that a certain level of 'acceleration is acceptable (so let's say between a level 4 and a level 6) because it works for the schools/teachers/the system but anything above that isn't (even if it works for the child).

teacher YY.
You explained what I wanted to say much better than me!

teacher
Do you mean that your school uses Maths Hub? Or is there a way for children to be involved through them?

I agree with the special tuition to get a kid to a level 6 issue, especially where they are expected to attend after-school sessions to get this. We do have a mishmash of bright kids in Y7, some have a level 6 because their primary hothoused them, some who have it because they're good at maths, and some who 'only' have a level 5 but at near 100% because their primary didn't enter anyone for the level 6 papers, or who didn't teach them level 6 stuff. We have to spend some time at the start of Y7 assessing them ourselves and making sure the right kids end up in top set.

While top sets will be pushed on in my school, they may well end up revisiting stuff that they did in primary. This is partly because it's a spiral curriculum and they will meet the same stuff again and again throughout school but at a higher level each time, but also because they forget stuff from primary and need to see it again. You wouldn't believe how many even in top set bodge long multiplication. The kid who goes 'oh we are doing the same stuff again' is also probably unaware of Daniel Willingham's research into spaced revision

"When a child sees school as a social activity, it's easier than when you have a child that sees school as a place to learn..."

Sorry for quoting you out of context wood but aren't schools supposed to be places to learn, with the social side a bonus if it works out?

I have always told my children to treat school as a place to gain an education and to put themselves into the mindset where they expect to work. By all means, play in the playground and enjoy yourself in the class room if you can, but the primary purpose is to work.

Now others seem to be saying that this is bad advice and I should be saying that school is a place to be entertained. Am I misunderstanding? If I am, then it would explain why some children (not the ones whose parents are on this thread) seem to think the teacher is there to entertain them and its the teachers fault if they don't like it.

I'm not sure what the point of your sports analogy was then noble. Maybe it just doesn't work well. Talented students in sports or music - their main education in that field is outside school, no-one disputes that. Whatever you think about chess it's not a part of a mathematician's main education in their field. Don't get me wrong, i think chess or coding are great things for a mathsy child to do outside school, I just don't think they're any substitute for appropriately challenging actual maths happening somewhere. Both from the point of view of progressing their education, and keeping their interest, hopefully inspiring them. It doesn't seem to be happening for DS at school at present. I also don't like the weak foundations DS is building up by working out things for himself. That's why I am inclined to get involved with actual maths as a parent. (I don't think DS is gifted, just enthusiastic.)

It seems that a certain level of 'acceleration is acceptable

Well yes, when it's a whole class of children doing it, it's done properly in a way that strengthens knowledge rather than causing shallow understanding, and there is a plan for what will happen at the end (e.g. an extra maths GCSE), then it's not acceleration beyond their stage or their peers. But when you've got a single child doing it outside of school time, with no plan for what happens when they run out of curriculum, then that's just going to cause problems.

I just don't think they're any substitute for appropriately challenging actual maths happening somewhere.

Yet you've had a maths teacher and disquisitiones who I think is a uni maths professor tell you that it is.

What's your maths background?

Still Maths..............

noble my point is that if you say to parents, who have no training at all in education and teaching, that it's OK to accelerate children, then they believe that's what should happen.

Instead what you are saying is that it's OK up to certain level (the famous glass ceiling??) or when it suits, like with the SATS, but not further.

I just think its a very confusing message for people who don't know how the system works, what is possible and what isn't.
For you as a teacher, I'm sure it makes sense.
For me as a parent who doesn't know anything about the system (and I dind't as I don't even have experience this system), it doesn't. I 'only' hear acceleration is OK and expected. and realised pretty quickly it wasn't going to happen

var, I'm not sure the point is to say to our dcs that school is only a social actvity.
I think it's just easier for those who look at it that way. And harder for those who think school is for learning (like dc1).
I DO think that the impact of bad teaching (as in very little work done on deepening actvities in the subjects the child is excelling at) is one to consider. And some schools are clearly not as good as others.
I would have no issue with our school evaluating dc1 within strict parameters (eg only between level 4 and 6 in Y7) IF they were also able to show that they are offereing deeping activities AND progression within these actvities.
ie they can prove the child is still progressing even though no new theories/facts/skills has been taught.
And I feel I need that 'proof' because so far, teachers (in general) have consistently proven to me that they don't do that.
Maybe that was bad luck

Bet, tbh I'm not talking about 'just' maths there.
My comments apply to any subjects.