Should I prod school again? Told DD GandT in yr2 last yr, but nothing been done in yr3.

[Spatz]

I was told at parents' evening last year in yr2 that DD was G and T in maths. Now almost at end of yr3 and the school are not giving her anything extra to stretch her. I have mentioned it, but all the school says is 'she's doing fine'. I was also told she was in the 'top 3' in a recent assessment, which means she must be in the top 10%.

I don't think she is a genius, but she does seem to have a good maths head. I recently showed her some simple simultaneous equations (a+b=5, a-b=1) and she grasped the concept immediately. I don't really know if this is even unusual at 7.

I don't want to be pushy, but wonder whether she is missing out at all. Do you think I should push the school more? I'd love to hear your experience in this area.

PS her spelling is shocking and she dislikes writing so they may be wanting her to concentrate on that...

Does she want to do more?
Is she happy with things the way they are?

If so, I'd just leave things as they are. As you say perhaps she needs time for other areas to develop.

Dont hold your breath, my DD was put on G&T yr 1 and is now in year six and still pretty much left to her own devices,bored stiff. Hope you have more luck.

It's not often a good idea in maths to get ahead in the curriculum as then you get to the end of school level stuff and have to either go to university early or stop maths for a while (which isn't considered to be a good thing if that's what you want to study at university), so the usual advice is that a school should try and enhance the work being covered with more challenging questions. This may be happening in the classroom already, especially as there's a couple of others of her ability.

Very able mathematicians will still find this quite easy, but as long as they're not too bored it should be fine (a little boredom is fine, especially if her other areas are not as trivial to her). They can also work on getting their speed and accuracy up on the same stuff that the rest are doing.

I don't think her maths will suffer from not pushing ahead or having extension work beyond the normal classroom stuff. As an example, Ds (now 15) was always very good at maths. Never formally identified as G&T (but I reckon he would have been if the school had gone for that sort of thing ), his maths has remained at the top of his cohort (and seems to have kept near to the top of his national cohort based on maths challenge results) without extra intervention beyond normal good classroom teaching. In class he's always seemed to already know whatever's being done, but has still managed to enjoy lessons when the teaching has been good and got on with it anyway when it hasn't (he often misses maths for music lessons too as that seems a straightforward way of avoiding boredom).

The other things schools can do for the able ones is enter some maths competitions - There is a Primary Maths Challenge for individuals that I think is aimed at years 5 & 6 that might be nice for her to try when she's old enough. Team events are always good too, (I'm not aware of any at primary age, but they probably exist in some places at least). These won't happen often (would interupt teaching too much), but can provide a bit of fun when they do, and it's good to do some things where you don't get 100% sometimes. You could ask the school if there's any possibility of doing anything like this - I don't think that would be pushy.

I have remembered though, that one thing he did do a lot of at around your daughters age was read through the 'murderous maths' books voraciously. I think they gave him a very secure grasp of mathematical topics (proably up to KS3 level) in a lighthearted way. So I suppose he did 'work ahead' in a sense independently. You might like to see if your daughter ejoys them too?

shivermetimbers, It felt like ds spent the entire year 6 doing sodokus in maths which he found enjoyable at least. Bored stiff isn't good though - hope things improve for her at secondary.

Thanks everyone - I've had a chat with her and she's not bored at the moment - they have split the class into groups for maths and 'blue' group is given the most challenging work! It's a good school so maybe they are judging it well - tis possible

Thanks for letting me know it's not considered a good idea to get ahead of the curriculum - that was one of the things I was unsure about. I've been wary of doing extra stuff at home because it's all taught so differently to the dark ages when I was at primary school.

I'll try and find the murderous maths books because she does like reading and might well enjoy them.

My DD yr 6 got flagged up for g&t in maths in Yr5 and was taken out of class with two others to do sideways stretching rather than going ahead in the curriculum. They did logic problems, she has also done a couple of master classes at the local secondary school.
DD is loving year 6 at the moment, but then she has never had a problem being bored at school as she is interested in everything.
Her main problem is that she is so quick that she tends to rush and makes mistakes because has read the question wrongly.

DS yr8 is doing the Junior maths Challenge next week, it wil be interesting to see how he does.

Maths challenges are only one indicator of maths ability bruffin. Because they only test specific (and often fairly obscure) areas of maths, some children who are excellent mathematicians don't fair so well at them. A maths teacher at our school often cites someone who went on to read maths at Cambridge who never did well at them.

ds2 (y4) is on the G&T register for maths and gets extra "top secret" challenges from his teacher during lessons and for homework

It's thinking around the topic they're doing in class rather than racing ahead - he still finds it incredibly easy but enjoys it

It does very much depend on the class teacher though - last year's was rubbish and didn't give him anything other than the top table work which he finished (accurately) in a flash and then sat there twiddling his thumbs ...

my dd is g and t for maths (year 2) and this involves being set harder work in the class (all the kids on her table do this harder work apparently), leaving the classroom for one session a week with 4 others to have more challenging teaching (fractions i think at the mo) and she has a harder homework book that she brings home once a week and has to do 20 mins work from

i know this from what she has told me - the teachers havent told me

i think that is plenty