Qn for teachers: if one child is ahead of the top group in class what do you do?

[chatworth]

Possibly a stupid question, but if one child is quite a way ahead of the others in the top ability group how exactly do you handle that?

Do you do extra one on one or do they go up to the year above for some lessons? What works well?

I don't think my child is a genius or anything but he is ahead of his class by quite a way in some areas and I want to ensure that he does still learn. Not convinced that's happening at the moment in these particular areas. Very over-stretched teacher and a wide ability range in class don't help and I think ds is lost.

I don't have ability groups so it is quite easy to personalise the learning

The advice is not to just hurry the children up through the year groups, but to widen learning. For example, in maths he could do an pen-ended investigation based on what the class is learning, in literacy he could research an author, write his own poem, work on producing a bank of similes, etc. There may well be a class computer or access to a laptop, where there will be lots of suitable websites for independent learning. Could he have his own project to work on?

He should be given work on a similar vein to the others, but to his level. Trust me this is possible, I have a child working at year 7 level in English and maths and he works at this level on similar topics to the rest of the class.

The difficulty is that I can only afford him a proportional amount of time to the rest of the class 1/25 of my time.

I agree with UnSerpent that open ended is the way to go for the other lessons.

This is all really useful. Especially the broadening learning. I don't think this is going on at the moment.

Chatworth, Laura has identified the main problem; one child is entitled to only 1/37 of my time in class; ie less than 2 mins in an hour-long maths lesson. The TA (when not involved in fire drills, displays in the hall etc) works to support the less-able children with special needs, which possibly gives me 4-5 mins to spend with a high-ability child with special needs. Hard to run a separate programme in that time, and the TA does not get to work with the more able.

I think, realistically, that you might need to think what you can offer at home to widen learning.

That's what I suspected was the crux of the problem. I can't be precious and expect my dc to get lots of attention when there are 29 other kids and some who are struggling to keep up and need the attention more to just stay afloat.

Yikes at a class of 37 unserpent.

Maybe I am mad not to go private - smaller class sizes must make this easier to deal with?

Chatworth - does your chidl like school? HAs he said he is bored?

does he do anything outside of school?

Surely schools have a gifted and talented register and have to cater for high ablity children. My son is in the top groups for everything, but is not exceptional. He is ahead of many of his classmates because the school is in a very deprived area.

My son is two years ahead academically of his age and he is doing really well in his large state school. He has only taken off academially in the last two years as he was slow with handwriting

A lot of tasks are open ended and there is a far amount of differentiation by outcome. For maths there is support from the local secondary school to help talented mathematicans. The children are extended sideways rather than jumping to year 7 material.

To widen learning my son does a lot of music outside school. It doesn't need to be expensive. For example my son is in a local church choir and gets paid 23p a week.

Before I moved him my ds was made to do the same work at a higher level than others. That didn't work as he was so fast.

Then he was allowed to use the computer and more or less amuse himself. He worked his way up to the highest level.

Then he got moved up a year, then another year. Then the school more or less threw their hands up and offered no more.

I like the sound of what mrz does and also the widening and extending sideways.

Moving up a year is more or less pointless as the ability spread probably already encompasses that and if a child needs more it will cause frustration and social problems too.

I kept my ds with peers as long as possible because they tolerated him very well. Alas he had to move up eventually.

He does lots and lots of projects and independent learning at home and I leave him to get on with it.

He has now moved schools and moved up several years and takes different subjects in different year groups according to which subject it is. For maths and Physics he has one to one with Teacher as he is so far ahead in these areas.

HTH

Dontdilly, yes he does stuff outside school, very happy in school and only says he gets bored sometimes. But if you're getting at the idea that that should be enough I'm not sure I buy into it. I don't want anything to get in the way of him being happy at school but if all the other kids learn at their level (roughly) why shouldn't he?

Nobody - I don't think ds is as far ahead as yours sound like he is so some of those issues aren't as acute. I definitely don't want him moved up as he is a June birthday and would be too much younger. Not really an option in a state school anyway these days I believe. I would support him going to a higher year for some lessons though.

In a larger school there might be one or two others the same in his year which would make it more 'efficient' as the teacher wouldn't have to do something different for just one child.

Thanks for your input so far - helpful as parents evening is coming up and I want to ask the teacher what she thinks the approach should be and understand what might be realistic.