Y1 child very gifted at Maths

[ILJG]

Hi,

Writing here in the hopes of getting some guidance on how best to approach the situation of our son abilities in Maths. We live in the UK and DS just started on Y1 this term. He was born late June 2016, so on the youngest side of his class. Just to explain at what level his Maths are, after an half term on Y1 he can menthally do things like:

• add and subtract numbers up to at least 10,000;
• knows numbers up to the trillions;
• do complex multiplications, like calculate 15 to the power of 3 (15x15x15);
• does divisions and simple square roots;
• knows timetables up to 12, to the point that does 60s time attacks on doodle timetable with at least 15 answers, all correct;
• he understands the concept on infinity. Once I asked him what a number divided by infinite would be, and he not only gave me right answer, he also explained how he deducted it;
• his teacher recentelly taught him prime factorization, 2 days after that I asked him if he could determine the prime factors of 540, and it took him about 20sec on his way to school to do it menthally;
• and yeah, ha knows what a prime number is;
• the speed that he learns new Maths related things is staggering. He just understands the concept behind it, sometimes wiithout the need to give written examples. I taught him successfully negative numbers in about 10sec;
• and I could go on...

So, he has some serious brain horsepower when it comes to Maths. He loves all things that are logic based, and this was all mainly led by himself. He really enjoys Maths, likes to watch Maths related stuff on Youtube, loves all sorts of STEM toys too. On all other areas of learning he appears to be remarkably average. He is socially well adjusted, has plenty of friends and loves school.

In class his teacher is giving him some extra Maths work for DS to feel challenged, which is a good thing. However, it appears to be without any "structure" to it, just some random Y4, Y5 or Y6 subjects that teacher thinks will keep DS busy. Teacher must also not be too sure on how much DS knows, and since his "home learning" so far did not follow any formal structure, DS definitely has some basic knowledge gaps. For example, he can add numbers up 10,000 mentally, but he doesn't know how to do it in a piece of paper.

Both me and my wife were quite acomplished academically in Maths, both top of class, myself more naturally gifted, mom relying more on grit and work ethics. We both have Masters degrees in a related area. We came to the UK less then a decade ago and DS is our first child. He always realized he was quite able, after all we did teach him a few things when he asks about them, but only in lockdown during reception did we realized how far advanced he was in relation to his peers. At the time we sought advice from school on if we should stimulate this further or not, and they just said to continue to do the same. And so we have been doing, at his own pace. But being perfectly honest, it is becoming very disconcerting to see a 5 year old doing maths often quicker than his very accomplished mom, and with a speed not far from my own.

The main driver for this post is that both me and my wife had no contact with UK school system until now, so we are a bit unsure on the best way forward. The teacher his willing to give him extra work, however we feel it may be good to try to baseline his current level of knowledge to assist in developing a more structured learning plan. I read online we can get him tested by an education psichologist, but what sort of result will we get from it? Surely it will measure his ability, IQ, but will it identify learning gaps on specific maths topics? Also, how should the school assist? They have an appointed SENco, however online I find mixed answers on if this person is the best route for getting the necessary support for a gifted child? There are also council educational psichologists, shall we give it a go at that? We just had our parents evening and teacher mentioned Potential Plus UK as well. Pretty hefty fees in their assessments though, but we may be willing if its worth it, did anyone used their services that can offer some insight? And apart from the obvious short term benefits of getting the assessment report, on a longer term is there any benefit in having this certificate for ingress in schools in the future, etc? What about thoughts on joining Mensa? Any other advice on how best to take advantage of DS amazing ability?

Thanks a lot in advance

"the advice now is"n’t too accelerate them but to go for depth/mastery"

Mastery as a brand of maths instruction was adopted with no evidence of what its effects would be on high-ability learners.
See: mccourt, dracup1, dracup2 and in particular Dimitriadis which notes that :

"ignoring the acceleration aspect of provision in order to adapt to the mastery initiative could mean insufficient and incomplete development of mathematics potential. This concern has also been highlighted by practitioners who felt that the mastery initiative lowered the ceiling for gifted mathematicians"

There is overwhelming evidence for the effectiveness of acceleration (e.g. study1, study2, study3). Evidence-based approaches first accelerate, then enrich.

My experiences mirror those of TupilaLilium and Mama1980. The UK school system has an extremely rigid approach to learning, limited by chronological age, and "mastery" has made this worse. If the school will not accommodate his needs, try to find a school that will, or consider home/online schooling.

@Namenic thanks for the kind words and the links.

@TupilaLilium, wish best of lucks to your eldest! It must have been tricky for you to deal with such disparate behaviours. DS is a happy child, has a bit of an happy aura around him all the time, something that even his teachers have been recognizing. As for not making his intelligence a massive part of who he is, I'm not sure how it can be avoided. We try to emphasize the effort, not the result, but he knows that maths wise he is quicker than most adults that surround him, let alone his peers. It's a fine line to walk on how to downplay his abilities without damaging his confidence. He is also very competitive. At the moment we are OK in managing him, just trying to understand what the best course of action would be to give him the best chance to realize his potential.

@Santastuckincustoms, no bias, maybe some language lacking on my part as English is not my mother tongue. If anything, her skillset proven to be more successful than mine into adulthood. Which to be honest adds to the issue of the thread, I don't DS to become a lazy student like his dad was

@extrastrongmints, thanks for these views, I wasn't even aware that Mastery was even a thing. A bit saddened to learn that likely school will have a very limited role in supporting him. I was expecting a bit more effort. At the moment we are not prepared for transitioning to home or online learning, our lives are just not set up for that in any way of form and ultimately, at the moment he is happy at school and is still being challenged, so we won't go down that route until he starts to have different feeling towards school.

Once again, thanks everyone for your views, you lot are a really helpful bunch

Just thought - Andrew Solomon’s book ‘Far from the Tree’ is worth looking into.

At that age my advice is to let your child play - by all means with maths, but elsewhere too. He will clearly gobble everything up at school and this is great; it leaves 'brain space' to soak up other stuff too. I really would celebrate that you have a bright and engaged child and use that more generally.
Both my DC were A* students across every subject at GCSE and A level. One went to Cambridge, the other to Durham and has just completed a Masters and got a junior rung academic job. Both have had mental health problems tho and that is with us doing zero academic pushing (literally zero). I'd have swapped a couple of A stars for a few happier times in their late teens.
They're fine now but yeah. Just saying!

I would be really torn.

I have a daughter who was a little anxious and out of step with her peers at primary school and we tackled this by sending her to a vocational school with a insane schedule which seemed to soak up all her mental energy. This was available to her very cheaply due to a specific talent but this was a complete coincidence and not the main motivation.

But for her she was really just a typical Very language minded girl which makes it very easy to excel in primary school. I have read that for very elite mathematicians working to a high level almost as young as possible is beneficial (i.e. starting oxbridge degree at 15) but I think the author meant beneficial to the discipline rather than necessarily to the mathematician!

My dad was a sort of specialist maths tutor for a few gifted children for some years and he would put them in for their GCSE age 10 or 11 as in his words - the schools can’t argue with that or ignore the level. The parents could ask exactly what the schools plan was to provide education beyond this.

Could this school perhaps advise:
www.kingsmathsschool.com/about They might be aware of some support their pupils have received prior to joined them? Or are there one subject online home schooling programs maybe?

really easy to be streets ahead of your peers. However, it is not really advisable. Maths-learning builds on what went before; if you are not careful you can "run out" of syllabus. You could look up the sad story of Ruth Lawrence

Codswallop

My experience is you don’t “run out of syllabus” ever.

Run out of syllabus with maths? I fucken doubt it

I have a dc who is really good at math. But unless you really think he/she is some kind of true prodigy who can go to uni at really early age, other things are actually important too.
Give him access to lots of problem solving and extending his understanding. But also give him lots of other opportunities to explore other interests.

I remember seeing a documentary about gifted children and there was a little boy who had extraordinary maths ability. The parents were understandably focused on this and I remember the psychologist saying gently, "He's already good at maths, how about extending his interest in other areas?"

I don't say this by way of criticism, but it stayed with me. My own child was/is highly gifted and I was slightly obsessed with extending her until I realised that out of all the things in the world I could be worrying about, her academic progress was not one of them, she was doing just great both at home and school.

Not to minimise here because clearly your child has an extraordinary gift.
Gifted children's groups, an ed psych... these are good sources of support.

My son is very good at mental maths, however it’s meaningless without the building blocks before and unfortunately if you can’t or won’t (in my sons case) show your working out on paper it will impact on exam scores etc

A relative of mine was gifted in maths and took exams early. His other subjects held him back so my advice would be to concentrate in subjects he finds hard and challenge him in these areas so his skills are brought up in unison.
No point being amazing at maths if you can't write or spell.
We all love things we find easy and enjoyable but unfortunately life's not really like that.

Thank you all for sharing your views. Plenty of food for thought!!

You have had such good advice I just wanted to also encourage you to expand his other skills. My sister is off the charts gifted in maths. My mother refused to let the school jump her ahead in grades because she was worried about her emotional development (this was in the 80’s) yet did nothing to develop it and other skills. Today she has ocd and is obsessive about numbers, as you say your son counting steps etc. She goes to the local farmers market at 5am on a Saturday to count their coins for example. Her social skills are very poor and she has few friends as she just cannot relate to other people. As kids and as a student she never had to study for any test and still graduated top of everything so she never learnt to work hard or chip away at anything. I honestly think extreme intelligence is also a special educational need and for her is almost debilitating. Sorry if that sounds glib.
Can you afford to send him private?

Good luck with your boy he sounds lovely.

@BurntTheFuckOut

Run out of syllabus with maths? I fucken doubt it

Go on then. Show me the infinite GCSE or A Level syllabus. Any examination Board will do.

I didn't say that you can run out of Maths. I said that you can run out Secondary school syllabus if you gallop ahead too fast. And then what? - English Universities don't tend to take minors these days.

Oh - and if he is ok with times tables and powers then maybe introducing him to counting in different bases, some power rules.

Turing tumble is a bit fiddly but has some binary counting (my 7 year old did some counting in other bases and lost a bit of interest in Turing tumble - but I hope we can go back to it in a while - I find it quite fun at least!)

senua

There is no defence for your post, I think you should admit defeat. A good tutor can provide endless learning opportunities and if a child is gifted they need to be challenged and learn at pace - the length of an arbitrary syllabus doesn't come into it.

This is why people home educate.

There is no defence for your post, I think you should admit defeat.
Is that code for "I can't find the infinite GCSE/A Level syllabus"?

I'd love to see any prospective student telling Oxbridge that exam results in an "arbitrary syllabus doesn't come into it". You don't get to write the rules, they do - and exam results are usually their first sift.

English Universities don't tend to take minors these days

That's rubbish. Ucas statistics show UK universities take thousands of minors every year. That includes top universities like Cambridge which takes about 70 under 18's every year. The reason they're not more noticeable is most of them are from overseas and therefore seen as overseas students. Recent examples of UK students who have radically accelerated in different ways include Arran Fernandez, Yasha Asley,, Wang Pok Lo and Agnijo Banerjee.
The 2010 equality act obliges universities to accept students regardless of age. Most UK schools don't allow exceptionally able kids to accelerate, whereas other education systems do. It's a sad indictment of our school system that UK universities accept thousands of foreign accelerated students while our schools continue to hold our own brightest students back.

if you are not careful you can "run out" of syllabus

The error here is to presuppose that one has to stick to the national curriculum or exam curricula. While the UK national curriculum is finite and can be easily covered by an exceptionally able mathematical student by early to mid teens, that is no reason to stop allowing them to progress in the subject. Regular curricula are designed for regular students. The national curriculum and exam syllabuses are designed both to meet the needs of non-gifted students, and to be delivered at a rate that they can keep up with. Some schools such as St Pauls depart completely from the regular national curriulum for this reason. Gifted students need a higher level and faster pace of instruction, reduced repetition and greater breadth and abstraction. The more gifted they are, the greater the degree of acceleration and enrichment needed, and the earlier it needs to start. For some students, early university is the best choice. For others there are alternative avenues such as mathematics competitions/olympiads e.g. UKMT/BMO; non-standard curricula intended for high ability students like AOPS and EMF; MOOCs such as those provided by MIT and Stanford on EdX; Distance learning opportunities such as those run by Johns Hopkins CTY; Open university on a part time basis.
Not allowing a gifted student to progress at their natural rate because of some spurious notion that they will "run out of syllabus" several years in the future is an excuse based on falsehoods and ignorance and is dangerous nonsense.

I clicked to compare to my June 2016 born dd, bit your son is clearly better at maths than me let alone my 5yo. What an amazing gift and I hope you find some good resources.
Had parents evening today and my 5yo can do simple + , - doubling etc.

if he can't bring it to paper he is not ahead. sorry.

I agree that he clearly has a talent but it's easy to drop focus on the other important school subjects and social skills.

Not allowing a gifted student to progress at their natural rate because of some spurious notion that they will "run out of syllabus" several years in the future is an excuse based on falsehoods and ignorance and is dangerous nonsense.
Can you drop the insults please.
I can't be bothered to argue it any more. Hot-house DC if you want to but I've seen how it can go badly wrong.

@senua what was insulting in that quote? How is it “hot housing” to go at a child’s natural pace? There’s loads of maths to know and understand and yet more to be explored. Find what really catches his interest and go as far as you can.

He sounds very impressive OP!

I know you mentioned wanting to look for gaps, it sounds like his arithmetic is off the charts but there may be things that are less intuitive he can work on. If you want some free assessments White Rose have primary and secondary assessments, both end of unit and termly:
whiterosemaths.com/resources/assessment/primary-assessment/

whiterosemaths.com/resources/secondary-resources/

Many schools base their Maths planning around White Rose so if you discover a gap in say Year 6 Geometry, they then have a starting point to plan for him, they can talk to the Y6 teachers/share resources etc as well.

If you're on Facebook look for the group "parenting high potential" it's linked to PPUK an organisation that supports gifted kids