The Education of Gifted Children

I will admit, my views have changed a bit since my child has entered Kindergarten.

What I've observed in Sarah's class is that kindy students arrive with a wide spectrum of knowledge. Some know what do to with circle time, they already know counting - others have never been in preschool and aren't sure of how the classroom routine works, otheres barely know their alphabet.

It seems that somewhere during second grade, the disparity starts to close.

On one of my boards, we ended up with a thread wondering what to do with the gifted Kindy student. I will admit I don't believe in jumping grades. I do believe in jumping subjects. I personally believe there is so much information to be learned that we fall into the rut of "forward motion" rather than learning all there is within the skill set we have.

For example, libraries are filled with a very large number of books for each age group. But once kids are comfortable with early readers, we automatically move them to reading chapter books. A better answer might be to have them start telling and writing stories using the site words they have mastered.

As a society, we seem to only know to challenge by horizontally challenging kids (moving to the next level). I feel we need to develop our vertical challenging of kids (creative learning within a skill set).

My child is definitely advanced for her classroom. She is one of the first to finish and really keeps her teacher on her toes. But, she has a teacher who is willing to work to challenge her rather than asking her to sit quietly while the rest of the class finishes their work. Sometimes it's extra work, sometimes it's something as simple as putting information into back packs.

I'm not sure I feel that the education system is saying that we shouldn't challenge our gifted children until 2nd grade. But, it will take a little bit for the group of gifted children to emerge. After all, how do they know if the child was just well prepared for kindergarten or recognize the truly gifted child who doesn't appear so because nobody nurtured natural curiosity in a child who barely knows his or her ABCs, we need to give the children a chance. Does that mean we don't encourage natural curiosity?

No, but maybe instead of teaching them what they will learn in 1st grade (perpetuating the cycle of the student knowing more than the rest of the class) teach the child who loves dinosaurs how to spell the names of the dinosaurs.

As parents, our job is to work with our children's teachers to make sure they are meeting the needs of our child. It is also our job to supplement the learning.

To me, this doesn't mean not teaching them something they ask to learn (like when Sarah wanted to learn to read), but not introducing the next level automatically before you expand what they have already learned.

I will tell you, the freshman I see in class really seem to be missing a natural curiosity beyond what is taught. It's much harder to convince an 18 y.o. they want to learn more than the assigned than it is to nurture that in a kindergarten student.