Gifted or highly able, how to support?

[knopka]

Not a bragging space but asking for advice.
DC has always been ahead of peers in development; is multilingual and for example, learnt to read in English by watching alphablocks. Not highly unusual in the family context but clearly the child is very inquisitive, eager to learn, driven etc. Not just academically but also in other areas. Child is aged 6 and is in Y1.
Small independent school doesnt have gifted and talented policy and I am not entirely sure that they can support the child to achieve their best, overall the child is happy with learning at school but complains of being bored sometimes. No behavioral issues.
The school did do a GL based assesment earlier in the year and they came back very high but nothing was suggested and I feel like one of those pushy parents but all I want is for my DC to be happy and progressing at her pace rather than being held back.
WWYD? Is there such a thing as a test for giftedness that allows to support child's learning journey?

Ignore school.
Give them opportunities to expand and develop different skills outside the classroom - and ideally wider, not deeper.
So, don't start teaching next year's maths concepts - that just makes next year boring.
Get them playing chess (and other board games), fiddling with science kits, cooking, programming. Sukuko and maths problems. Play an instrument. Learn a language (you've already got this covered!).
Take them places. Museums, local places of interest.
Take them to a city if you are rural. Take them to the countryside if you are urban.
Read, read and read.

Basically, show them as much of the world outside the classroom as you can.

I am doing all of the above to the extent of my abilities and resources (for example, child was adamant that they want to learn the piano, I finally gave in so they are doing that).
BUT the child is very intense in terms of being bored when not learning - I have variety of activities like maths problems etc (she is currently learning times tables because she wants to and reading books that interest her, for example, Goodnight stories for rebel girls was a recent favourite).
I find myself asking for more homework at school because the child is asking me to but I dont think the school are very supportive).
I feel that I need some proper support with supporting the child, surely there must be something for highly able children, not just ones who struggle academically?

Your child would be best served developing their own hobbies and interests, not racing ahead in the curriculum. I say this as someone who was educated semi-separately in a gifted programme and taught myself high school math when still in elementary school. School should be finding ways to stretch dc in breadth, but pushing them too far ahead in the curriculum isn’t going to confer lasting benefit and just creates a disconnect with their class - speaking from experience on this. Racing the curriculum isn’t furthering their education, it is just teaching them to jump through hoops.

In your first post it sounds like dc is enjoying school, despite being a little bit bored occasionally, but even low achieving children are a bit bored in school. Letting them be a bit bored at home is probably the best gift you can give your child as it cultivates resourcefulness and self-drive. I would not look to fill downtime with times tables and extra homework x I would probably actively discourage that. Find a hobby that is interesting but challenging and encourage them to explore it with your support or (even better) independently.

Absolutely agree with Labraradabrador - my older two were designated G and T way back in the day. My mother had me registered in some mad gifted child society and had me doing Mensa tests. If your child wants more boredom breaking activities, they need to learn how to have fun. Believe me, I speak from experience. Cubs and Beavers (beats Brownies/Guides ime), den building, star gazing... sport. Social skills and soft skills are just as important for children to build up.

I'd look to switch to an academically selective school. The base level will be higher there and they'll be more used to children working at the top end.

A highly intelligent child is not going to be bored when you are not teaching her at home, as she would be able to make her own entertainment. Maybe concentrate on encouraging this

Definitely not interested in mensa testing. I value soft skills as much if not more than academic side, believe me, she does a lot of activities (initiated by her) but she does ask for more learning. This week she has been writing down times tables and making habitats for various animals, doing lots of arts and crafts, she also started learning how to play chess. We absolutely do what 6 year olds do and go to parks, museums, do silly stuff and play the floor is lava.
She really is hungry for knowledge and I need school to be supportive as she spends a lot of time there. I dont want to move her but need to understand on how to push the school a bit and be prepared to advocate for my child

She does make her own entertainment a lot of the time, she is also not an only child. I dont teach her at home, she is asking me for more "homework"constantly so I do get some activity books amongs all the other things.

But she is also very sociable so absolutely does get bored if noone is around to play.

I do encourage her to make activities for herself but since moving to current school, she is finding it harder to find friends who she finds interesting to play with and of course life doesnt revolve just around my DC so sometimes she gets bored and unhappy becase I have other things to do.

If your child is interested in learning, then a couple of suggestions:

Most places have a junior chess club and encourage younger members.

Your child might also like Go which is sometimes called Chinese chess. www.britgo.org/clubs/list?page=1

Both of these can be played against a computer and there are championships and learning programs online on YouTube.

Learning a (or more than one) musical instrument is also a good way to encourage persistence and soak up some of that desire for learning. There are often musicality classes run by music hubs, and if your child is interested in brass instruments many brass bands run a junior band and will lend instruments.

In terms of learning that is closer to school learning, NRich are good for maths problems

nrich.maths.org/frontpage

Parallel is probably a bit old for him but he might be interested in some of the videos etc

parallel.org.uk

In general there are limited things schools can do with students who are ahead at this age, whether they are indie or state. It's worth pushing school but g and t opportunities tend to be for slightly older students.

I work in a school and have 2 very academically bright boys. One has won two prizes at University. I never asked school to provide more work, that’s not their role. If you want your daughter completing more work my suggestion is to look for it yourself. Don’t worry about her being bored at school, she won’t be. I’m yet to see a bored child in the classroom. Parents tend to say the children are bored but they’ve never seen them in the classroom. They then ask their children leading questions which result in the children saying they’re bored, it’s much more about the adult’s reaction and the child realising they’ve got a reaction and their full attention. Out of interest what were her GL scores?

You can get the WISC-V done which looks at 5 areas of ability and then you will be given recommendations based on their strengths and weaknesses for example my DD came out as highly gifted in 3/5 sections but her working memory and processing were normal. This spiky profile is common in autistic children and explained why she found doing mental arithmetic and manipulating numbers in her head difficult but could do extremely challenging maths if writing it down.
However, whether a school would do anything special with this information without additional SEND I'm not sure.

I don't particularly want or need her school to do anything out of the ordinary for her as actually the school experience is tough already and cater more for her at home exploring new topics and opening horizons so she is aware of things she could pursue. She was never bored at school either, yes she completed the work quickly but topics covered are so wide that if you supplement them with deep dives at home and museum visits or watching age appropriate dovumentaries then the topic remains interesting - although ideally you would do this with all children not just gifted.

In terms of supporting her giftedness at Primary she and the other higher ability children were taken out on some stretch and challenge classes. At this stage autism wasn't a issue and her ability masked her disability. At secondary they have an invite only after school club where the higher ability go and they learn additional things like philosophy and do research projects and additional trips and outreach projects to universities, inter school maths and computing competitions. - This is in bog standard schools in a disadvantaged area so I would expect a private school to offer these things already.

In terms of utilising her giftedness, it allows her to have days off when necessary if her autism is challenging as I'm not concerned for her grades. Other than that it's giving her access to resources to follow her own interests so she's is particularly good at languages so a Duolingo subscription and I buy her books in her preferred language of the moment.

The only thing I regret is although we have instruments at home and she'll use tutorials and apps online for keyboard, drums and guitar learning properly was financially prohibitive and she always wanted to learn the violin and I was unable to facilitate that.

She actually told one of her teachers she is a bit bored and asked for more work. Unbeknown to me, only found out at the parents evening.
I do know that word bored can mean absolutely anything but she is asking for more academic work and I struggle to see why the school isnt responsible; she does go there to learn, as well as socialise

You could also extend them by offering the opportunity to program:

Scratch is a computer programming language designed for kids of that age.

scratch.mit.edu

A lot of schools teach it in year 1 as their introduction to programming.

www.scratch.ie/primary/resources/

There are a lot of YouTube tutorials on how to use it

education is quite boring, really. But highly intelligent kids are bored the least - contrary to popular mythology

School can only do so much in mass education though. Is she getting good results or is she rushing the work. Finishing finite tasks such as a page of maths sums and getting them all correct is one thing but completing a piece of extended writing or other project work has infinite room for improvements. It might be that she needs a checklist infront of her for when she feels that she is finished, Check spellings, underline nouns in one colour, adverbs in another etc.

You can easily find worksheets online free or buy workbooks for extra work. You don’t need to depend on the school for this. But your child is young, I would spend more time taking them to the park to play, socialise, play dates. Put them in sporting activities. Learning new sports or navigating friendships is also very important. My dc also got bored at school at times. But outside of school, never bored. They do sports/activities 6 days a week.

The GL score for English was 138, bearing in mind DC is trilingual (as in she can read, write and speak in all 3). Maths was 120. I would be interested in seeing other areas which are more to do with non verbal skills, sort of like CAT4s, in order to support her in her journey. She definitely has the determination and I dont want to discourage but I want to ensure she is working on her weaker areas as well.

Her siblings both had various scores on CAT4s, with verbal score maxing out but mean one was 132-133. It was quite useful in understanding their learning profile and actually realising they were coasting.

Unfortunately there is some quite boring work on the curriculum these days.

I definitely second getting her into chess. Provide her with whatever books she's interested in (and good quality documentaries as well - Brian Cox, David Attenborough, Hannah Fry). If she's very keen on maths, nrich.org has some really nice problem solving questions arranged by age and challenge level, some short questions, some longer investigations. They also have two-player dice and counter games that are fun (like Nim).

Yes, but when they are constantly reviewing easy math that you have learned two years ago I can understand it gets boring. The school tends to go back to review. My dd couldn’t understand why they would go over things again and again. I would say the other subjects shouldn’t be boring though as it is generally new topics being covered.

I did some research on this when I felt my own kid fell into this category. From what I could gather a lot parents felt getting their kid recognised as gifted and put into suitable schooling would solve all their problems when in fact it just opened up a bunch of new issues.

I don’t really know what my advice here would be except to say that there doesn’t seem to be any clear cut, foolproof pathway for gifted kids in general. It’s largely up to parents to decide what will best suit their kids while balancing their academic and social needs.

This. Dd thrived and when we put her into a very academically selective private girls school.

You can also further explore learning in your other languages. Have your dc read books in the second, third languages.

If you are interested in exploring where they are on maths/verbal reasoning/non verbal reasoning then the bond books are good.

They are intended as preparation for the 11plus but they have books for each year group.

So you could start at age 5-6 and work through them.

www.books4people.co.uk/products/bond117-8years-4bks-bond-11-plus-maths

Yes, of course if this is an option, do this. The private schools work ahead from state schools. My eldest is now at an academically selective private school and it is great.

She does go to a Saturday school for one of her languages and goes to a bilingual stream for the other 2 and we do read in all 3, she has been interested in learning French and has gone to a club but French is the language I dont speak (I speak the other 3). Maybe I will support her with that instead. I do want her to have as much fun as possible, she is 6 years old after all but equally, being bored of going over the same concepts at school is tough. I still have nightmares from my older children in a state school and I dont wish to go through this again. Her current school do have sets so its not the worst case scenario and I dont want to move her to an academically selective school as they dont have a bilingual offering.