Teaching a kid who is smart can be quite the blessing. There is a lot less hand holding and a lot more independence. It can be hard, though, too.
My son has never been tested for gifted and talented...I'm not sure I would want to test him. Seems pointless to me. But, he is very smart and school comes very easy for him...and for me, too. He has always been really smart and blows all of our minds. When presented with a challenge, it takes little to no time to get him to resolve it and, many times, he figures out the solution on his own without guidance. But, when he is faced with a problem that he is having problems figuring out on his own, it can cause a level of frustration that can cause a deep emotional reaction to him.
Here is an example of a thing he is faced with this year that he knows nothing about and requires instruction from me. Though I was advised against it, we are starting to learn grammar. I picked out a particular program that I liked a lot because it was challenging and I believe he needs to be challenged, Shurley Grammar. This program has been great for him because he loves writing (a 7 year old boy who loves to write? you question...why yes, he does..he has been writing stories for a couple years now as well as poetry). It encourages journal time each day. He never writes about his life, but writes stories or poems. It has also been good to get him focused on the mechanics in grammar. We have already learned the first four parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
For a while there, he would get frustrated because there is a process Shurley wants the kids to go through in order to discover the parts of a sentence (what is the subject noun, the verb, etc). His inclination is to just jump right in and do it, but I make him slow down and go through the process (his sentences will get harder and harder as he goes along and I am creating a habit). He might get tears at times because it just goes against him to analyze why the answer is a. He knows the answer is a and gets bogged down in the reasoning of why a is a. Today, we had a "ding" moment where he looked at a list of words and correctly labeled them. I asked him how he figured it out and he said...I just asked the questions, in my head, that I was supposed to ask and I got the answers. Ding, Ding, Ding!!
Math, however, is a WHOLE OTHER matter. You see, he has always been fascinated with numbers. He gets them. They make sense to him. When he was four, he sat in his car seat..thinking to himself...and than said to me "Mommy...if I had 2 quarters and you gave me 3 quarters, I'd have 5 quarters." Yes, I said to him...that is right. Soon, he began just fitting numbers together figuring out the different combinations...all on his own. He loves numbers. It was an easy choice for us to choose Singapore Math for his curriculum...it appears it was the choice for anyone who was good at math. Daniel instantly took to it and rarely, if ever, did he need instruction from me. He just naturally figured out how it worked on his own. Even the word problems. He is a gifted reader and I suppose that played a lot into it because he would just do them and get them right.
There have been moments where we need to work together on something. Singapore has a program you use while using the regular book called Intensive Practice and the problems in this book are FAR more challenging than regular (there was one problem we struggled with last year...1st grade level...that I ended up taking a picture of and challenging Matt's engineering degreed coworkers a crack at and only 1 got it right).
Multiplication was introduced last year and I spent about 5 or 10 minutes going over the concept of multiplication and within minutes, he could figure out just about any multiplication problem I sent his way. My role as teacher was mainly in name only.
Last week, he began adding triple digits and when I would check on him, I found that he was getting every answer right.........oh and he was doing it all in his head. It was astonishing to watch. I had to ask him to please start showing his work. Even word problems...he just put them together in his head and came up with an answer....the space they provide for you to work through the problems would be completely blank.
Today, we faced new challenges though...challenges that caused him to pause. He did not know what to do. I was SO HAPPY to be able to go to the whiteboard and explain to him this new concept...but being such a strong math fella, it brought tears to his eyes that he had not worked it out in his great mind. I think it was good for him to have this moment where a concept alluded him. It allowed me to catch a glimpse into how he works these things out and it allowed me to show him some tricks to make it even easier.
It can be hard on the pride to be the teacher to your child and to not feel needed. It can be hard on the kid's pride when he has handled things just fine in his own way only to hit a roadblock.
It is interesting teaching a smart kid.
My son has never been tested for gifted and talented...I'm not sure I would want to test him. Seems pointless to me. But, he is very smart and school comes very easy for him...and for me, too. He has always been really smart and blows all of our minds. When presented with a challenge, it takes little to no time to get him to resolve it and, many times, he figures out the solution on his own without guidance. But, when he is faced with a problem that he is having problems figuring out on his own, it can cause a level of frustration that can cause a deep emotional reaction to him.
Here is an example of a thing he is faced with this year that he knows nothing about and requires instruction from me. Though I was advised against it, we are starting to learn grammar. I picked out a particular program that I liked a lot because it was challenging and I believe he needs to be challenged, Shurley Grammar. This program has been great for him because he loves writing (a 7 year old boy who loves to write? you question...why yes, he does..he has been writing stories for a couple years now as well as poetry). It encourages journal time each day. He never writes about his life, but writes stories or poems. It has also been good to get him focused on the mechanics in grammar. We have already learned the first four parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
For a while there, he would get frustrated because there is a process Shurley wants the kids to go through in order to discover the parts of a sentence (what is the subject noun, the verb, etc). His inclination is to just jump right in and do it, but I make him slow down and go through the process (his sentences will get harder and harder as he goes along and I am creating a habit). He might get tears at times because it just goes against him to analyze why the answer is a. He knows the answer is a and gets bogged down in the reasoning of why a is a. Today, we had a "ding" moment where he looked at a list of words and correctly labeled them. I asked him how he figured it out and he said...I just asked the questions, in my head, that I was supposed to ask and I got the answers. Ding, Ding, Ding!!
Math, however, is a WHOLE OTHER matter. You see, he has always been fascinated with numbers. He gets them. They make sense to him. When he was four, he sat in his car seat..thinking to himself...and than said to me "Mommy...if I had 2 quarters and you gave me 3 quarters, I'd have 5 quarters." Yes, I said to him...that is right. Soon, he began just fitting numbers together figuring out the different combinations...all on his own. He loves numbers. It was an easy choice for us to choose Singapore Math for his curriculum...it appears it was the choice for anyone who was good at math. Daniel instantly took to it and rarely, if ever, did he need instruction from me. He just naturally figured out how it worked on his own. Even the word problems. He is a gifted reader and I suppose that played a lot into it because he would just do them and get them right.
There have been moments where we need to work together on something. Singapore has a program you use while using the regular book called Intensive Practice and the problems in this book are FAR more challenging than regular (there was one problem we struggled with last year...1st grade level...that I ended up taking a picture of and challenging Matt's engineering degreed coworkers a crack at and only 1 got it right).
Multiplication was introduced last year and I spent about 5 or 10 minutes going over the concept of multiplication and within minutes, he could figure out just about any multiplication problem I sent his way. My role as teacher was mainly in name only.
Last week, he began adding triple digits and when I would check on him, I found that he was getting every answer right.........oh and he was doing it all in his head. It was astonishing to watch. I had to ask him to please start showing his work. Even word problems...he just put them together in his head and came up with an answer....the space they provide for you to work through the problems would be completely blank.
Today, we faced new challenges though...challenges that caused him to pause. He did not know what to do. I was SO HAPPY to be able to go to the whiteboard and explain to him this new concept...but being such a strong math fella, it brought tears to his eyes that he had not worked it out in his great mind. I think it was good for him to have this moment where a concept alluded him. It allowed me to catch a glimpse into how he works these things out and it allowed me to show him some tricks to make it even easier.
It can be hard on the pride to be the teacher to your child and to not feel needed. It can be hard on the kid's pride when he has handled things just fine in his own way only to hit a roadblock.
It is interesting teaching a smart kid.
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