Schooling Central

Hi, I have a 9 year old son who has just been offered a place in a gifted program. This is all new to us, and we are learning alot every day, one worry I have is how to have the balance between allowing him to do extension work after school and sport and not overloading him. He has always been very bright and we have tried to do things to help him learn at his pace.
Problem we are having is he is just soo bored at school, and when he's finished the work the teacher just puts him on the computer.
Not sure that is the right thing, but what else can the teacher do?? He gets in a bit of trouble as he questions the teachers..
any advice would be just wonderful
Thanks, Leanne

Hi Leanne,

Do you mean a gifted program at your son's current school, or a gifted program at a different school?

Would you son's teacher be open to you providing extra work for him to do when he has finished his work? For example perhaps he could have a research project that he works on or similar.

With regard to extra curricular activities we really look to our son for guidance on how much is too much, and we find that this can change depending on the season and what else is going on in his life. For example he was quite happy to go to chess lessons during summer when the days were long and the footy season hadn't yet started! Once winter has hit though, he just wants to get home ASAP to kick the footy before it gets dark. It's always hard to know when we should just push him along and when we should pull back, but if he's not enjoying something then at his age it's very hard to justify it.

Annabel.

Hi Annabel, the gifted program is run after school, it's run independently from our school, there is five subjects he wants to do, we've said he may only do one at a time, as he also does basketball, karate and music. My school isn't all that keen to allow him to do much extension work. They tell me is causes too much interuption for other students. The teacher has taken it upon himself to give him extension work. We have now begun looking at different schools. The woman from the gifted program has suggested he should skip a grade. He's grade 3 now and is in a comp class of 3/4. He does mainly gr 4 work now anyway. He is also about to turn 10 so I am not sure how he would settle into grade 5. I would love your ideas on skipping a class. It's very difficult to know what is the right thing to do.
Thanks Annabel,
Cheers,
Leanne

I think your son is doing great with all that extra activities in basketball, karate and music. As he is about to turn 10 and still in grade 3, that's a problem. He is too old for his grade. I think jumping to grade 5 is ok for his age but you will need to monitor carefully. If he cannot perform well enough to consistently get over 60% on all tasks, he should go back to grade 4. The problem with jumping grade is that they may miss out on the basics. Kids may be ahead good in 1 or 2 subjects. they will miss out the basics of other subjects where they are not ahead. It's also a good idea to enter kids into the UNSW school competition. Generally a score at in the top 11% of the state is an indication that the child is moderately gifted in an area. Gifted kids should score in the top 5% of the state.