Academic Acceleration - Our Experience: 2014

Saturday, July 5, 2014

4 TO 5 YEAR OLD: PLANNING FOR MATH COMPETITIONS

Deciding what competitions your mathy kid will participate in can be pretty confusing. There are many math competitions out there, and clearly you have to choose. We started out by considering the Continental Math League: the first division they offer is '2nd-3rd Grade', and you can have your child participate as a homeschooler (it is the honor system: you basically proctor your child). I thought that Joey would breeze through this since he is doing 3rd grade math now at home and got an A+ last year in his JHU-CTY accelerated 3rd grade math course, but the reality is that the Continental Math League problems are strictly word problems, and most often not the straightforward kind. So being a four year old who is four grades ahead in math is not a guarantee of success. He did ok on the competition, but did not get a perfect score, so we are spending this year going through every problem in the practice books (one a day), so he starts recognizing problem types and developing strategies to solve them. Since this isn't completely satisfying, I started looking at other competitions, and asking around. And I made a stunning (ok, it was more like a 'duh' moment) discovery: parents who have gifted/mathy kids do NOT accelerate them for competitions. In other words, the competitions are already geared toward gifted kids (duh) and parents wait until the child has reached the typical age for that grade level to enter him/her in the competition (re-duh), even if their child is several grades ahead in math. Now that explains a lot.

I also discovered another competition that younger children can participate in: Kangaroo Math. Apparently, it is very popular, not as word problem-oriented for younger children, and the first division is 1st grade. The competitions happen once a year and are locally administrated. The only thing is that the kids have to learn to use a Scantron answer sheet, but these are available for purchase ahead of time from a variety of places, so you can show your child how to use them. They also have practice books available for purchase.

As your child gets older, the choices for math competitions expand. Apart from the Continental Math League already mentioned (which provides contests through 12th grade), students in 4th-8th grade can participate in Math Olympiads. While the website says that only homeschool associations (not individual homeschoolers) or institute teams (so I assume if there is a math club in your area, that might work) can participate, the form to register does give individual home schools as an option, so I am not sure what the real deal is (but I am trying to find out). JHU-CTY has a prep course for this contest.

Mathcounts is for 6-8th graders and is open to individual homeschoolers. The overall level of the child has to be 6-8th grade, so for instance, a child who would be younger and accelerated only in math would not be eligible. S/he would have to wait until s/he is caught up to at least the 6th grade level in all subjects. The Art of Problem Solving (AOPS) has both online classes and books available to prepare for these contests. JHU-CTY also has online prep classes.

AMC is for 8th graders and under (AMC8), 10th graders and under (AMC10) who have mastered algebra and high school geometry, and 12th graders and under who have mastered pre-calculus. There is no lower age limit to participate, and the web-site states that children as young as 8 have participated. My understanding is that you can participate as a homeschooler, but the your child has to take the test at a private school at the same time as their team or some other proctoring arrangement has to be made. Solving (AOPS) has both online classes and books available to prepare for these contests. JHU-CTY also has online prep classes.

MAA sells prep books for all kinds of math competitions.

For high-schoolers, there is also the Harvard-MIT Mathematics Contest. Unfortunately, all the competitions take place on Saturdays, which is a hindrance to Jewish students who are observant. They require you to be on a team of some sort (a team of homeschoolers who live in the same area would qualify). There is an online version of the tournament, on the same day as the face to face one.

There are many other math competitions, of course, but these seem to be the most popular and those for which prep classes and books are the most widely available.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

4 TO 5 YEARS: THE GIFTED CHILD AND BEHAVIOR ISSUES IN PRESCHOOL

On my previous post, you may have noticed that the picture shown was of Joey graduating (a year early) from pre-school. So you might have thought that his last year in pre-school went perfectly. The first 'semester' was actually great, but not the second, far from it.

The first part of the year went well because the teachers had been prepped by the school director, after we decided not to leave the school after all (see the events that had lead to us considering calling it quits on this previous post). All and all, they didn't know what to expect with Joey (or perhaps they feared the worst). What they got was a child very advanced academically, but who was acting his younger age compared to his classmates.....nothing extreme, behavior-wise, so I think that there was certainly an element of relief at first.

However, in the second part of the year, perhaps due to the pressure of getting all the (other) kids ready academically for KD, not to mention the pressure of preparing the kids for the very important graduation recital, I feel like the lead teacher lost her patience for Joey's 'differences'. Almost every day at some point, there was a bad report coming from school (and never a good report about all the things he could do, of course, because differentiation was basically non-existent). Apparently, he had 'not listening' issues, 'bossy' issues, 'transitions' issues, emerging "class clown' issues, and 'personal space' issues (not extreme, but that needed to be worked on). If you have a gifted child, you probably know that all of these issues are actually quite typical of gifted kids in non-enriched school environments, which I diligently tried to communicate to the teachers (and sent articles, etc.). He also continued not to answer group questions until addressed directly. Joey also started exhibiting signs of stress and anxiety, such as delaying tactics before school, and when I visited his school (it was my turn to do a reading to the class), Joey clang to me as if he had been two years younger.

Don't get me wrong, every time we got a bad report, Joey lost privileges and got a lecture about how to get along with other kids, listen to the teacher, obey, respect personal space, etc. because I am a big believer in showing a united front with the teachers... and he does have listening issues (after observing his behavior for 5 min, the pediatrician told us to read Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, and Energetic, and it turns out Joey is only 'spunky', not 'spirited', according to this book). But in truth, I have seen Joey being corrected by his teacher about little things which other kids were doing as she spoke. To boot, because the kids in Joey's class were substantially older (not just a year, as many kids nowadays are held back by their parents), he was starting to face isolating behavior by children who perceived him as different, not just because of his academics but because of his younger age. I certainly did not care for this and I saw that as foreboding. While he is not an easy child at home, his behavior at school became increasing dysfunctional compared to home. After one of his bad reports, the school director said something to my nanny to the effect that Joey 'needed to play more'. Joey does play, but his idea of fun is to play for hours with his Elenco 200-in-One Electronic Project Lab, a toy designed for 12 year olds. I did not have the energy to argue at that point because school was almost over. Thankfully. Until next year.

Interestingly, right now, he is in Science Center camp, with new material that is presented to him, almost 1:1 child: counselor ratios, and a relatively quiet environment and Joey is, for the most part, doing great. This is also a more diverse group of children, some with disabilities (ASD, I believe), so by comparison, Joey is more typical.

As the new school year starts, I would like to establish a relationship with a counselor who has experience with highly/exceptionally gifted children, so we can have tune ups whenever issues arise, to give him tools to actively participate even when he is not that interested in what is being taught, behave according to school expectations, deal with the less accepting children, and hopefully make one or two friends. I hope this will do the trick.

Monday, June 9, 2014

4 TO 5 YEAR OLD: SCHOOL CHOICES REVISITED (AND RESOLVED?)

So it finally came down to decision time. Where would Joey go next year in KD? The fact that he is accelerated by one year (in school) - and by four years overall - limited our options to private schools for KD (see this post) because public school around here won't budge about cut-off dates. The fact that we wanted him homeschooled part-days limited our options even further. The Montessori school we were initially considering flatly said that they couldn't meet his needs and that they couldn't accelerate him into the next group (so he would essentially be back with his age peers). I still can't understand why, since the premise of this school is to individualize each child's experience as much as possible. Also, they wouldn't do part-days and wanted 'minimal' input regarding how the education of our son was going to go... so the verdict was definitely 'no'.

The mainstream Jewish school definitely wanted Joey there. He really aced the first screening, in part by drawing this picture to the left when the school director (that's right, they definitely gave him 'special attention'...) asked him to 'draw a triangle", and he ended up drawing this complicated contraption (there is a triangle in there) with belts and pulleys, pawl and ratchets, etc. She was amazed at his creativity and at what she called his spacial visual skills because when she presented him with letter flashcards upside down, he could put them back the right way. Parents of other kids like mine reading this will no doubt chuckle too. Unfortunately, she wouldn't budge on the part-day thing, and that was really too bad because in many respects this school would have been perfect for us. Or would it? The way she tried to convince us that Joey should go full time was by insisting that the other children would reject him because they would see him as 'different' due to his part-day attendance was a red flag. Pointing out that maybe they should be working on these kids instead of on Joey's attendance, and that regardless of whether Joey attended full- or part-time, he would always be 'different', seemed kind of pointless, although we tried. No deal either.

Then the solution (at least I hope it is) appeared out of nowhere. A friend of mine recommended I check out one of the very orthodox Jewish school nearby. And to their credit, they didn't even try to pretend they could accelerate Joey to the level needed to be challenged, and the part-day option was brought up immediately. So, lo and behold, Joey will be going to this school. It will be a challenge socially (we are definitely not orthodox), and it may create issues for Joey in the long run, but we are committed to giving it a try. As I mentioned before, the local program for the highly/exceptionally gifted does not accept children until the 1st grade (and whether they will accept Joey a year early is still unclear, if we apply for next year). To be continued.

What would we have done if the school above had not come through? Full-time homeschooling is definitely still an option, but I think I would have to hire a tutor to teach part of it, in place of our nanny, because being with Joey all day long can be a little intense. I am still intrigued at the idea of having all this extra-time to pursue a sport seriously, for instance (I believe Joey could do really well as a swimmer), since homeschooling a full-time program does not take all day.

4 TO 5 YEARS - UPDATE - WHERE ARE WE NOW ACADEMICALLY?

Wow, only a mere five months or so since the last update! Life happens, right?

Math: We pretty much followed our plan. Joey is now taking Grade 4 Accelerated Math with the John Hopkins Center For Talented Youth (JHU-CTY). We are going slower with traditional tools but we have started with Grade 3 Singapore Math and have now added Beast Academy 3rd Grade, the elementary program from The Art of Problem Solving (which came highly recommended). The graphics are a bit distracting for his age, but he is doing ok with that and is getting more comfortable every day. Joey also did participate as a homeschooler in the Continental Math League (CML) meets for 2nd and 3rd Graders. He did well, but did not get maximum points, so we are doing one of the review problems every day, and will try again next year at the same level until he is ready to progress from there. JHU-CTY offers a course to prepare for the Math Olympiad For Elementary School Students, which he will take if not this year, next, even though he won't be eligible for this type of competition for years. We will also be looking at other math competitions (I will have a post or a page on those soon), but probably not until he is actually physically in 1st Grade. One thing I learned from asking other parents of highly gifted children is that they enter them into the age-appropriate categories to give them a maximum advantage, as opposed to entering them into the level to which they are normally accelerated. So we will do the same..

Language Arts: We have finally gotten Joey's reading tested, using a great program called Total Reader, and his lexile came at 910, if we let him look up words in the dictionary (he has started being able to do this on his own), and 750 if we don't. The latter score is toward the end of 3rd grade (see correspondence chart here) and the former somewhere in 5th grade. We are almost done with the Kumon workbooks (Reading, writing, simple sentences, etc) and will soon start with the Michael Clay Thompson curriculum, which looks really promising and I believe will take his skills to the next level.

Science: We have started Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2 and let me tell you that I absolutely love this program. It is concept-centered, rather than experiment-centered. What that means is that instead of introducing concepts through what I call 'wow' experiments, which in my opinion can be very distracting, it starts with the concepts, then illustrates with very simple and targeted experiments or observations. The concepts are organized in a map from simple to more complex. If I had written a book on how to teach kids science without underestimating them, I would have written this book. Joey is also in camp at the local Science Center this summer, but it is always so hard to tell whether there is actually any learning going on.

Languages: we are continuing with our formal French program (all the details are here) and so far, so good (we have hired a tutor who comes in every other week to check on his progress)! Joey will also be in an immersion French camp this summer for a week. While he still resists speaking French to me, although he is bilingual, he is clearly absorbing the material. For Hebrew, we are done with Shalom alef bet!: A pre-primer for Shalom Uvrachah and with Shalom Uvrachah: The New Hebrew Primer, so we are moving on to the Hineni series, which comes with separate workbooks, until he is a fluent reader. We will also supplement with the Artscroll Children's Siddur to make sure he starts becoming solid on the basic Jewish prayers and blessings. Once Joey can read Hebrew fluently, then we will devise a program similar to what we are doing in French. I will have a separate post to teach Judaics for those who might be interested.

Geography/History: We are still sticking with Replogle 12" Intelliglobe; there aren't enough hours in the day to add anything else!

Other: I will have separate posts on all of Joey's 'engineering' activities!

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

4 TO 5 YEARS: UPDATE ON THE VIOLIN AND MUSIC

When Joey first started the violin, I had my doubts about the Suzuki method. But now I admit that I am completely sold on it. Joey has made so much progress in the six months since he started with a real violin (this is my opinion, and I am not a musician myself, but his music teacher seems to be pleased). But of course, I think this is more than the method because Joey took to reading music like a fish to water, so technically, I am not sure we are still doing 'pure Suzuki', except for using the books and the amount of caretaker involvement. He is completely ahead of us in his ability to read, absorb, and apply the material, although we try to keep up so we can provide direction.

Joey is even starting to write his own music for fun (nothing extraordinary, but the interest is definitely there). He also started playing the same tunes on his little piano (with one finger). But the most amazing aspect of this for me is that he is developing a real ear for music, i.e. he knows when the violin has to be tuned before we do, and I have come to really trust his judgement.

His progress has been constant, up the point when he had to prepare for his first 'public performance' (to play in front of a few friends and also at his birthday party which coincided with Chanukah). We worked him really hard so he would master "I have a Little Dreidel" well enough to produce a relatively flawless recording of the song in its entirety. He did not perform flawlessly in front of the real audiences, but he really found that zone of concentration where nothing could distract him from getting through the tune as best as he could, and he concentrated very hard.. well beyond his years. This was a real lesson in grit.... the satisfaction that comes from success and recognition after a lot of hard work. After that experience, he now knows the amount of effort involved with preparing for a live performance and he knows he can succeed. I think that in the two videos I have recorded after 'I have a Little Dreidel' (see below), one can see his boost in confidence and improvement in technique. For up to date information and videos on Joey's violin progress, please consider checking out (and perhaps subscribing) to my Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/Carolerivi

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4 TO 5 YEARS: PRE-ENGINEERING SKILLS AND (PERHAPS) PREPARING FOR JR FIRST LEGO LEAGUE

Assuming advanced math skills are a pre-requisite to becoming an engineer and a fascination with biology necessary to becoming a physician, then Joey has a better chance of becoming an engineer at this point than anything else. But is it sufficient? Probably not. So far, our educational efforts have been pretty didactic, so focused on basic memorization, understanding, and applying.

But now we would like to start encouraging the development of critical thinking and creative skills. What is interesting about it is that regular pre-schools start with those (especially creative skills), but there is no foundational knowledge children can base their creations on, so they can only go so far. Along with the limitations of normal development, this is in part why, in my opinion, there is not much sense in the many crafts and drawings produced in this environment.

Joey is definitely interested in building and designing things, and his focus is good enough to get him to actually produce things that have a story behind them and that 'work' in one respect or another. For a while, he was obsessed with marble runs, such as the Marbulous. At school, he kept making or improving those for other children. We tried several other things to grow from there (I didn't think that regular Legos engaged the creative process that much, so we actually stayed away from those), but Joey's building skills remained dormant until he started playing with the wonderful Elenco Snap Circuits. We had gotten these since he was two years old, and we used that for the purpose of teaching him to follow more complex directions and some simple electricity concepts. Then, we he was about three and a half, he started using them on his own and following the directions, in addition to trying out some of his own modifications. Now I do think that the educational value of Snap Circuits is limited because there is very little trouble-shooting involved or options for permutations in the manual (for example, to determine the effect of different capacitors, etc). Fortunately, Snap Circuits are pretty heavily reviewed by parents who have engineering backgrounds, so it helped us decide that a similar toy that required higher thinking skills was the Elenco 130-in-1 Electronic Playground and Learning Center (we started with the one offering 130 projects). Basically, all the components are on a board, but they get connected differently through wires (springs that you can bend hold the wires in place) and it encourages experimentations with the different components in a way that Snap Circuits do not. Joey can do the basic projects on his own, but he needs help with the permutations (variations on the basic project) and any trouble shooting at this point (this is a toy normally designed for 12 and older). He does not love it as much as the Snap Circuits, but I expect this will change.

Another building toy that Joey loves is the Straws Builders 720 pcs set. This is a wonderful toy in terms of promoting creativity and I love its simplicity.

Legos and Jr FIRST Lego League: a natural way to encourage the development of engineering skills is participation in the Jr FIRST Lego League, normally tailored for 6 to 8 year olds (K-3). The next program is the FIRST Lego League (Grades 4-8), and finally the FIRST Tech Challenge (Grades 7-12) and FIRST Robotics (Grades 9-12). I am still wrapping my mind around these programs and how one goes from just participating to being invited to actual competitions, but I assume that this will become clearer as time goes on.

This program is not just about engineering, but also general creativity, teamwork, presentation skills, and organization. It is so highly regarded that a slew of scholarships (some full rides) are available for kids who have a history of participation and participation is also a real plus for admission to some of the most prestigious schools, particularly (not surprisingly) engineering programs.

The pickle is that it takes time to coach and be in a team (about 4 hours a week plus individual prep work during the season which roughly runs from November through April). This is not a playgroup but a real commitment, like a sports team. My plan at this juncture is to have a 'pre-team' (no competition yet) next academic year (so starting in fall 2014) that would basically prepare for the challenge as if they were going to participate, and then start competing the following year, once we have ironed out the kinks in the team and our process. There is also a list of past challenges that I can use for additional ideas. The challenges have an engineering component (design a machine that would help solve the problem) which requires research, a preliminary design, improvements, and a presentation. So it is important to understand that a lot of the work actually involves no handling of Legos (although every meeting can have some Lego time, but they are not necessarily the focus). Like in any team, the kids don't have to have the same strengths, so maybe there is the engineering geek, but there is the kid who is good at researching and presenting, although all should participate in all the activities because the point is for everyone to learn. The daily guidance is provided by the coach (that would be me), but every team also needs a mentor (someone who is an engineer), so this is a person I would have to identify sometime in summer 2014.

I sort of have a preliminary plan for a mock challenge season. I can put a timeline together based on this:

1. Study topic and come up with ideas

2. Draw ideas

3. Come up with preliminary designs (with actual Legos)

4. Run designs by engineer

5. Execute a prototype

6. Refine design with CAD program (Lego has a CAD program), comparing different options for mechanical components

7. Execute design

8. Prepare presentation and practice answering questions about the design

9. Study more background information to be prepared to answer more advanced questions

For the purpose of preparing for this mock season, we have started getting the Educational Legos that are required (or suggested) for the Jr Lego Leagues. These can be purchased directly from the Educational Lego site prior to registering a team. They have kits for homeschools (so 'single' kits but with teachers' guides) and we have found that it has been really helpful to learn the simple machines (like levers) and other components that will go into more complex designs to solve the challenges presented. Joey absolutely loves doing this.

The challenge of finding a team-mate: I think that we will stick to a two person team at first, but finding a child whose parents are ok working with a younger but highly gifted kid may not be so easy. Right now, I am making inquiries in our circle of friends who have proven non-threatened by the gifted label and whose children may have skills that complement Joey's.

If any one reading this blog has any advice to offer regarding participating in Lego competitions, I would love to hear from them!

Sunday, January 5, 2014

4 TO 5 YEARS: WHERE ARE WE NOW ACADEMICALLY?

It has been a while since I updated this blog, and Joey turned four recently in December 2013, so I think it is time to take stock of where we are at, academically.

Math: the last update I provided was in October 2013. At the time, Joey was taking Grade 3 Accelerated Math with the John Hopkins Center For Talented Youth, which we love. Even though he completed 3rd grade in a little over a month (with an A+), we thought that he wasn't as solid on these skills as he would have been in a real classroom, so we decided to wait until next fall (fall 2014) to continue with 4th grade math with this program. In the meantime, we are still doing Grade 2 Singapore Math (we are about half-way) and will probably start 3rd Grade next fall, right about the time Joey will tackle Grade 4 Math with JHU-CTY. Another area we thought we should focus on before moving on to 4th Grade math were word problems, the kind where you have to generate an equation and then solve it. Solving simple algebra equations (up to two unknowns, depending on the problem) is not an issue for Joey, but generating them from a word problem is still a struggle. JHU-CTY provided a lot of help in generating equations, and I think this is a limitation of this program. So we decided to have Joey participate in the Continental Math League (CML) meets for 2nd and 3rd Graders, and we registered as a homeschool for this purpose. Honestly, these problems are hard for Joey because they are meant to challenge gifted 7 and 8 year olds and as all word problems do, they require the integration of math skills with language art skills, as well as some real world knowledge. But we are not giving up, and one strategy that has been helping significantly has been to group the problems by type because, at least until much higher thinking skills are involved, this is a lot about pattern recognition. After we finish CML for this year, we will wrap up all 2nd grade math by reviewing any material that Joey masters less than perfectly, and we will be off to 3rd grade math for good by the time he is 4 years and a half.

Language Arts: this is a difficult one because I have been struggling trying to figure out where Joey is with reading comprehension (his reading fluency is probably 3-4th grade now). He understands most of the material presented in the Lakeshore Learning Read & Comprehend Science Activity Folders (Grade 2), so I know he is about four grades ahead in reading comprehension. However, I wanted to get some practice with grammar and writing, so on the advice of a wonderful lady whose child is also highly gifted, we have been doing the Kumon workbooks (Reading, writing, simple sentences, etc) and to be safe, we started at 1st grade. Joey is zooming through the material, and I think that once he gets through 2nd grade, we will switch to an actual language arts curriculum, and I believe we will choose the Michael Clay Thompson curriculum, which came highly recommended and starts at about the 3rd grade level.

Science: we are currently doing the Thames & Kosmos Little Labs Stepping into Science, but this is not Joey's only exposure to science. Since he showed some interest in chemistry (see November 2013 update), we also got him The Periodic Table: Elements with Style! and Basher Science: Chemistry: Getting a Big Reaction, which he loves. This is in addition to the 'Class of Their Own' books (Bacteria, Fungi, Archea, Protists - but no viruses, don't ask me why..). In the future, we are considering Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2 along with The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way (the whole series); other possibilities are Real Science for Kids, Inquiry in Action, Super-Charged science, or Science Fusion.

Languages: we have just started a more structured program in French (all the details are here) and Hebrew with Shalom alef bet!: A pre-primer for Shalom Uvrachah. I think we will stay with this series until Joey can read Hebrew fluently, then we will devise a program similar to what we are doing in French. I will have a separate post to teach Judaics for those who might be interested.

Geography/History: I think we will start history with A History of US: Eleven-Volume Set: Paperback Set, but in the meantime, we are sticking with simple geography (currently with Replogle 12" Intelliglobe ; the advantage of this toy is that there is a French option in addition to English).

Other: we are also continuing with the wonderful Building Thinking Skills® Level 1, which is good through 3rd Grade.