Creativity and IQ

Did you know that it takes a fair amount of brains to be creative? Did you know that most conceptions of giftedness include a creativity component? Did you know that creatively gifted kids do not fit well in the rigid standards that we call public school? 


Creatively gifted students are our future! They think outside the box and they discover new ways to do things. Creatively gifted students can be the Bill Gates or the Steve Jobs of the future, so they deserve our attention and care.

 

Photo: Dr. E. Paul Torrance (coe.uga.edu)

Paul Torrance, an American psychologist developed what is know as the threshold hypothesis. This states that there is a correlation between IQ and creativity. This means, stated simply,"that it takes a fair amount of brains to be creative." It also means that a highly creative person probably has a fairly high IQ, BUT, a person with a high IQ many not necessarily be creative.


Wikipedia gives a more scholarly explanation:  
"An often cited model is what has come to be known as "the threshold hypothesis," proposed by Ellis Paul Torrance, which holds that a high degree of intelligence appears to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for high creativity. That is, while there is a positive correlation between creativity and intelligence, this correlation disappears for IQs above a threshold of around 120. Such a model has found acceptance by many researchers, although it has not gone unchallenged." 

Photo: Dr. Joseph Renzulli (gifted.uconn.edu)

Dr. Renzulli, of the University of Connecticut, is one of the foremost researchers in gifted education. His 3 Ring Conception of Gifted, includes a creativity component.

Each of the circles are shown the same size, but not all students have equal amounts of each component. Students who excel in creativity are considered creative-productive gifted. Dr. Renzulli describes his thoughts on creative-productive students...

(In Dr. Renzulli's own words),

"If scores on IQ tests and other measures of cognitive ability only account for a limited proportion of the common variance with school grades, we can be equally certain that these measures do not tell the whole story when it comes to making predictions about creative-productive giftedness. ...

Creative-productive giftedness. describes those aspects of human activity and involvement in which a premium is placed on the development of original material and products that are purposefully designed to have an impact on one or more target audiences. Learning situations that are designed to promote creative-productive giftedness emphasize the use and application of information (content) and thinking skills (process) in an integrated, inductive, and real-problem oriented manner. The role of the student is transformed from that of a learner of prescribed lessons to one in which she or he uses the modus operandi of a firsthand inquirer. This approach is quite different from the development of lesson-learning giftedness, which tends to emphasize deductive learning, structured training in the development of thinking processes, and the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of information. In other words, creative-productive giftedness is simply putting one's abilities to work on problems and areas of study that have personal relevance to the student and that can be escalated to appropriately challenging levels of investigative activity... such as constructivist theory, authentic learning, discovery learning, problem based learning, and performance assessment. " 

Creative-Productive Giftedness (click on the link to read Dr. Renzulli's entire article)

Photo: Dr. Bertie Kingore Ph. D (kingore.com)

Bertie Kingore, Ph.D has a fascinating article that compares high achievers, gifted learners, and creative thinkers. Pay special attention to the cartoons and the chart. Her chart, which compares how each type of learner thinks. is especially enlightening. You will notice, on the chart, that the words that describe creative students, are not necessarily the descriptors of compliant, model students:

sees exceptions

daydreams

overflows with ideas, many of which will never be developed

is in own group

shares bizzare, sometimes conflicting opinions

questions, "what if"

questions the need for mastery

relishes wild, off-the-wall humor

initiates more projects that will ever be completed

is unconventional

is idiosyncratic

So...you read the list, and you have a creatively gifted child...Now what?

 

Photo: Carol Fertig (resources.prufrock.com)

Carol Fertig, who writes a blog for Prufrock Press, gives some wonderful, practical suggestions!

Exquisite Minds: Gifted and Creative Children is a site dedicated to creative-productive children. It includes ideas, links to other sites, and a forum.

Visual Manna is another site that has some wonderful information and food for thought about teaching cre-ative children. She advocates the arts as a way to challenge creative-productive children. Her blog begins with the following...

This quote by Pearl S. Buck, master writer and sculptress is so good! Sometimes creatively gifted students are considered overly dramatic.
“To him…
a touch is a blow,
a sound is a noise,
a misfortune is a tragedy,
a joy is an ecstasy,
a friend is a love,
a lover is a god,
and failure is death.
Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create – - – so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.” 

Relish your wonderful, quirky, dramatic child and sit back and watch what he or she may become.  Advocate for him, push her, give challenge, follow his lead, and you will be well on your way to an adventure! Take it from the mom of several creative-productive students.

Debbie

Teaching Young gifted students

One of my great passions has been to teach young gifted students. Students as young as 4 or 5 can begin to show promise. This can be demonstrated in many ways,but the most noticeable ones are early ability to read, early ability to understand and compute math problems, unusually high vocabulary, early artistic ability, such as drawing, singing, playing an instrument, etc, and an ability to remember information that is not usual for their age.

Inderbir Kaur Sandhu, Ph.D

There are lists available that help parents to spot giftedness early, although I believe that most parents of gifted students already suspect that their children are advanced . Inderbir Kaur Sandhu, Ph.D.,(see her credentials here), has a very interesting list of traits for children from birth to 2, and from 2 to 4. Read the article here at Yahoo Voices. I have found it interesting that the checklists that I use with my Kindergarten students do not seem to work for pre-school students. I gave the check lists to several families who had other gifted children and asked them to mark them for their 4 year-olds. All of the checklists came back showing that the 4 year-old children were bright, but not necessarily gifted. Incidentally, all of the students did indeed have gifted qualities and were identified when they were a little bit older. I think that the checklist had too many items that a parent would not be able to observe, until their child was actually in school. Dr. Sandhu's lists, on the other hand, are designed to cover items observable in very young children.


The National Association for Gifted Children, (NAGC), has published an article entitled  Early Childhood Gifted Education. In their own words, "This position statement, initiated by the Early Childhood Division of NAGC, focuses on creating optimal environments for recognizing, developing, and nurturing the strengths and talents of young gifted children, age 3 through 8."
The paper contains a wealth of information from one of the most reputable sources in gifted education and is well worth the read.


There are educators that strongly oppose the identification of gifted students at an early age. They feel that this creates a "winner/loser" scenario where the losers are "Black,Hispanic, and low income students.

Julie Rasicot -Education Week March 12, 2012  

Julie Rasicot explains these concerns in an article for Education Week. Read the article here. 

I suppose I agree, to a point,  that it is unfair to minorities, IF identifying young gifted students means that they get an entirely different program , which no one else has access to. However, I don't see how allowing a young child to learn to read instead of sitting through lessons prescribed to teach him his ABC's, which he already knows, hurts anyone. Making a gifted child repeat and repeat,however, definitely hurts the gifted child.

An excellent article by Tokyo Children's Academy, (International school for the gifted), encourages the early identification of gifted students, and refutes some of the most common concerns about early identification. They state, "It is commonly held that giftedness cannot be ascertained until third grade; however, this belief is not supported by research. Evidence that it is possible to accurately identify the gifted in primary grades, preschool, and even younger has been available for over half a century."

According to the article, 

"There is also a widespread concern that early identification may find the wrong children. It is believed that IQ scores are unstable in the early years, and that children who look developmentally advanced when they enter school lose their advantage in subsequent years. The myth of the instability of IQ scores was refuted by both Hollingworth (Hollingworth & Kaunitz, 1934) and Terman (Terman & Oden, 1947; 1959) and, more recently, by Elizabeth Hagen, co-creator of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, Revision IV, and the Cognitive Abilities Test.

The correlations between scores obtained at ages four or five and later IQ scores are slightly lower than those obtained at age nine, but not that much lower. (Hagen, as quoted in Silverman, 1986a)

The article addresses another common assumption: "An equally tenacious and equally bizarre belief is that somehow, magically, all the other children will "catch up" to the gifted child. If two children have different capacities for obtaining information from the environment--for storing, organizing, remembering, retrieving, associating, and applying that information--how on earth could one "catch up" to the other? This would be like saying that a 1972 computer could "catch up" to a 1992 computer, when the former has less memory capacity and speed and less sophisticated organization than the latter. The only way this can appear to happen is when we use only a fraction of the abilities of the child."

And finally: "Another frequently expressed concern is that if we identify gifted children early, we may overlook some children who later turn out to be very capable. This may be true, but it is insufficient reason for ignoring the information we have that can positively identify a large portion of gifted children. There is no method of identification that finds all gifted children; all methods will miss some who are exceptionally bright. Therefore, multiple means must be employed at different stages of development."

The Earlychildhood NEWS puts yet another spin on the controversy:

"Young children with special needs have been the focus of increased attention since the passage of federal legislation, PL 99-457, in 1986. This law is a downward age extension of earlier legislation which guaranteed the provision of special education services in the public schools." They go on to state that young gifted students fall under this law and should therefore have early intervention services available to them. The article also includes another checklist for young gifted students.

I firmly believe that all students deserve an education and that they should learn something new every day. We do not seem to struggle with the idea that students who learn more slowly should receive intervention services, but for some reason we want to hold gifted students back. Most teachers do not see anything wrong with having gifted students repeat and repeat skills that they already know. It is essential that every student is taught on their own level as much as is possible. It is difficult as a parent, to get schools to provide these services, but parents must advocate for their young children. Keep trying! Keep pushing! Don't give up! It is possible to have a great education for your gifted child.

Debbie

Two more articles you might be interested in:

The Gifted Child Quarterly published an article by Steven Pfeiffer and Yaacov Petscher who give a wonderful overview of  The Gifted Rating Scales–Preschool/Kindergarten Form (GRS-P), which is a new test for identifying young gifted children. Click here for the article.

Identifying Gifted Children gives, "Examples of criteria often used to help identify gifted children and tips on how you can spot a gifted and talented kid."

2E

I just attended an IEP meeting for my twice exceptional 8th grade son, and I was struck again at how simple and yet how hard it is to advocate for him.The solutions to his school struggles seem so simple to me and yet getting the school to fall in line can sometimes be soooo hard. This IEP meeting was actually the most productive and the least frustrating I have ever attended, and I felt like we made good progress in planning for his transition to the high school next year.

I am going to digress for a moment and talk about what twice exceptional or 2E means and how 2E kids are different from the kinds of gifted students we have discussed in the past.

An article by Dawn Beckley in the NRC/GT 1998 Spring Newsletter, (re-posted on the UConn website), describes twice exceptional students this way: 


"Since Terman's time, a widespread belief about gifted children has been that they regularly score high on intelligence tests and perform well in school (Brody & Mills, 1997). Yet during the last decade, increasing attention has been being given to the confusing question of high ability students who also have learning disabilities. These learning disabled gifted and talented students, or "twice-exceptional students" (Nielsen, Hammond, & Higgins, n.d.), need remediation activities. At the same time, they also require opportunities to promote their own individual strengths and talents in one or more domains in which they have previously displayed their superior abilities."


The rest of this article is an excellent overview of the characteristics, identification, and educational needs of 2E children.


Twice exceptional students are gifted, but they also have some sort of disability. Often the gift masks the disability and the disability masks the gift, so the students are seen as being very average. Sometimes, as was the case with my son, the disability is noticed by teachers, or is severe enough that help is given. Ky has a writing disability, which became very apparent in the 2nd grade. Anything that requires thinking and then writing is very difficult.

Sometimes, twice exceptional students are seen as bright underachievers, and their disability is not diagnosed, and other students are just viewed as average students and their giftedness goes "undiagnosed."

The meeting that I attended was for Ky's three year evaluation, so we looked at psychological testing. It was very easy to see his giftedness, as his verbal score was in the 130's, (gifted). Several of his other scores were above 100, (in the average range), and the score that involved writing was 78, (below average). His composite score was just a little bit above average. In the past, the school has fought me tooth and nail to do anything but remediate the writing issue, but this year they were open to options and we came up with a program that is working well. My son is not in any special ed classes, but he does have accommodations which make it possible for him to keep up. Math is especially difficult because it is all "think-write," but finally they are allowing him to use a calculator, which has made all the difference. He knows how to do the problems, but thinking the calculations and then writing them is hard. With the calculator, he can quickly work through his homework and is successful. Incidentally, a test showing his ability to calculate math, (without a calculator), came out on a late 5th/early 6th grade level, while a test on mathematical reasoning or understanding the math concepts came out at a late 9th grade level. Times tables and remembering the algorithms are hard, but understanding the concepts is easy.

My friend Susan Baum is the guru of Twice Exceptional education.  I have taken numerous strands at conferences from her and talked to her at length about my son and my fight with the school to have his needs met. She is my hero, and she has a number of great articles and books that anyone with a twice exceptional child, should read.

Here is an article that gives a great overview of her thinking:

Gifted But Learning Disabled: A Puzzling Paradox

The Idaho State Twice Exceptional Manual, (printed with permission of Dr. Susan Baum), gives another good overview and some ideas for teaching 2E students:

TWICE-EXCEPTIONAL:students WIth Both GIfts andchaLLenGes or dIsaBILItIes

or read her book:

There is also a fabulous newsletter, available to parents and teachers: 2e Twice- ExceptionalNewsletter

 Here is another website I found, with some good information: Twice Gifted

Ky is my second Twice Exceptional child. My older daughter is a very talented RN, who also struggled with writing but was highly gifted in math, science, and hands-on learning. Do not despair! Keep advocating for your student! Susan Baum has told me repeatedly that I just need to get Ky through public school, so that he can go on and be brilliant.

Kids who don't know their times tables can still do math, kids who can't write can still be successful.We as parents CAN make the difference!

They will all catch up by third grade?

I am not sure if it was in my college classes or during my first teaching jobs that I heard the statement, "all students seem to catch up with each other around the third grade."  As a new, young teacher, I accepted this, without reservation.  I was aware of developmental differences in children and I knew that not every baby walked at 12 months on the dot. It was easy to spot differences in my first grade and kindergarten students--some did not speak in complete sentences, and some came in reading,  so when I was told that these developmental differences all seem to end around third grade, I believed it. Then my oldest daughter went to school...

Haylie is very bright and she is schoolhouse gifted.  I could teach her something once, and she had it. I found myself constantly frustrated with her school experience.   Her first grade teacher had her in a middle reading group, ("because she was comfortable there with her friends"), even though she read head and shoulders above the top group. She never pushed Haylie in any way. Second grade was more of the same. Haylie passed every spelling test with 100% without even studying, she used cute little bear manipulatives to add and subtract, even though she could do it in her head, nothing was new or challenging.  Any suggestion I made about advancing her skills was treated with the typical pat on the head and the insinuation that this was my first child and I just didn't understand. (Never mind that I had been a kindergarten and first grade teacher myself.) I was beginning to doubt that all students caught up developmentally at third grade. To me, it seemed to have more to do with making kids sit around and wait while everyone else caught up.

Then we moved to another state. My daughter had a teacher for third grade that had two gifted daughters of her own, and she had studied gifted strategies. She immediately recognized Haylie's giftedness and she pushed her--hard. Haylie thrived.  Her reading level increased dramatically, as well as her writing skills. When the students were asked to do a report on a famous person, after reading their biography, Haylie brought home a book that was written on a middle school level, not a third grade level and it was perfect for her. She learned a ton that year and was NOT on the same level as the other students.

It has been twenty years since Haylie was a first grader, but little has changed.  My sister is dealing with the exact same attitude toward her highly gifted Kindergartener. She is completing the first grade curriculum for reading, but will be expected to do it again next year. She can add and subtract in her head, but she is not allowed to go on to first grade math.  The teacher told my sister that by third grade, all students seem to catch up, so it will be ok.

So, which came first, the chicken or the egg?  Do students really catch up developmentally by third grade, OR is that idea so entrenched in the teaching philosophy that we make it a self-fulfilling prophesy?  Does not teaching bright kids on their level when they are in the primary grades, ensure that all students catch up? I decided to see if any research has been done on this wide held belief. I am still searching for actual research on the subject, but I did find the following articles that provide thought provoking information.

This is a great article by Carol Bainbridge   that looks at this question from several angles. It discusses "hothoused children,"  or children that are drilled on letters, numbers, sounds, etc. from an early age, and then come into school ahead of their peers. Some of these students have had three years of preschool and lots of one-on-one time, but when they enter school, and have to learn required skills at a faster pace, they slip, and they are no longer ahead of the rest of their class. I acknowledge that this happens, but the second half of the article gives good information about how to recognize a truly gifted student.

Here is another article with one mom's opinion about early education and giftedness. The comments are well worth reading.

And just so you don't feel alone in your struggles...here is a page of "real" situations that parents have encountered while trying to advocate for their gifted kids...laugh or cry, it's your choice!

What to do with gifted kids at home...

As a mom of many gifted children, we have struggled to keep everybody busy and happy!  My kids have lots of different interests, so we have tried to build on those.

Here is a quick list of some of our activities:
Piano lessons, voice lessons, violin lessons, roping lessons, horseback riding lessons, swimming lessons, trumpet lessons, and gymnastics lessons, and weight lifting.
Soccer, football, baseball, volleyball, wrestling, cheerleading, dance and swimming teams.
We have conducted research on: braiding cowboy gear, Australian cattle dogs, Egyptian mummies, dogs, dog training, Indians, Pioneers, stars, birds, rabbits, saddles, bridles, cows,  and famous people.
The kids have experimented with drawing, painting, cartooning, making cartoon movies, computer games that require kids to think (Spy Fox, Pajama Sam, Freddie the Fish for little kids), computer games that allow kids to create things, digital photography, scrapbooking, card making, legos, playmobil and other building sets.
We read to our kids, let them see us reading, read with our kids, and had them read alone.  We tried to make books available that peaked their interests.  Some of my children were gifted in math and science NOT in language arts, so I even paid them a dollar a book to read in the summer! 
We have also made crafts, sewing projects, wood projects, leather projects, cooking projects, games, movies on movie maker, and gifts for friends and family.
We have bred angora rabbits, bred dogs, broke ponies and horses, trained dogs, trained birds, had a saltwater and freshwater fish tank and more than our share of guniea pigs, hamsters and gerbils.

We have done lots of work together: painting the house and rooms, building things both in and out of the house, household repairs, working on cars, doing basic car repairs, yard work, gardening, harvesting, canning and drying food, remodeling bedrooms, daily animal chores, household chores etc.
We have gone to movies, zoos, museums, visited historical sites, hiked the trails around our home, taken multi-day family lightweight horse packing trips, talked about the mountains and other land marks near our home, took car trips and did anything else we could think of to stimulate our children to think.We also made sure that they had plenty of time to play, imagine, and build.

 So...where do YOU start?


There are tons of websites on the internet that parents can access--just google what you are looking for and you will be amazed at what is available.

There are also many people in most communities that are willing to share their knowledge. We have contacted people that we knew, or friends of friends, that had the same interests as our kids. They have been more than willing to share and the friendships developed through this contact has been a true blessing to our children.

We have made countless trips to the library, looking for information on projects and interests. When our small library was not helpful, a quick search of Amazon.com usually allowed us to buy the needed books very inexpensively.

We have utilized classes and programs offered very through the community: sports teams, scouts, classes from the local university, job shadowing opportunities, clinics, one-day seminars, etc.

We have never had a lot of disposable income, but nearly every resource we used was free or charged a nominal fee.  I believe that the most important part of challenging gifted children is being aware of who they are and what they are interested in.  Their forays into well loved interests can make all the difference in how they view themselves and how they view learning.

Here are a few professional websites for you to check out:

Prufrock Press has a list of books that address the interests of talented students. They include books on encouraging math, science, and writing talent.
Scholastic also gives some ideas for encouraging gifted children at home.
Fun and Challenging Activities for Gifted Children, is a website that addresses where to find stimulating
activities.
This is a great pdf for parents about activities and gifted children.

Holes!

I have a niece that is in kindergarten, who is gifted.  She is ahead in reading and in math.  The school has done a fair job of meeting her needs, by letting her work independently in math, BUT....the district has a new math program which uses new vocabulary and a new format.  The teachers are concerned that she is not learning these. Should my niece attend the regular math class with the rest of the kindergarteners so that she can learn the skills, format and vocabulary? The teachers seem to think so.  My sister called me with this question and both of us agreed that the solution was to grade level accelerate her into a first grade classroom where she could receive daily instruction on her level, AND learn the vocabulary and format.  This is not an option, however, so what to do?

Teachers are often bothered or worried about these issues;"holes" in a student's learning, if they are allowed to work ahead.  I hear this every time I want to accelerate a student to a higher level.  Personally, I think that when gifted kids run into a "hole," all the teacher has to do is explain the vocabulary term or the concept once, and the student has it.  Gifted students have a great ability to quickly learn information, especially in areas they are interested in.
 

According to http://www.greatpotentialpress.com/authors/karen-b-rogers-ph-d

Karen Rogers is Professor of Gifted Studies in the department of Special Education and Gifted Education in the college of Applied Professional Studies, at the University of St. Thomas, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dr. Rogers is a frequent keynote speaker for state, national, and international conferences on gifted education. She is the author of more than 150 articles, 18 book chapters and 4 books. More than 500,000 people worldwide have read her paper on ability grouping, written for the National Research Center on Gifted and Talented. She was the co-developer of a one-week television series on the nature of giftedness, called, "One Step Ahead," which is housed in the PBS Network Library, in Nebraska.

In the article Foundationsof Education and Instructional Assessment/Diversity/Gifted 

"...author Karen B. Rogers introduces five "lessons" about the needs of gifted students...
First, she explains that in order for gifted students' talents to flourish and grow, they need to be presented with a daily challenge that will enhance their particular strength. With progressively more difficult challenges, the students will grow intellectually in their areas of strength and will learn to connect old and new ideas.
Second, gifted students need opportunities for independent work pursuing their specific areas of interest.
Third, they need the opportunity to learn at their own levels; how can a fifth grader who is reading on an eleventh grade level be appropriately challenged in her fifth grade class?
Fourth, in addition to academic needs, Rogers explains that gifted students need opportunities to spend time with other students with abilities similar to theirs. This gives the students an opportunity to work with their peers and spend time with students who think how they do.
Lastly, gifted students need to learn at their own pace. Just like any other students, in order to be academically challenged, they need to work at a pace that matches their learning styles and abilities. Gifted children tend to learn and retain information at a much quicker rate. If they experience too much down time while the rest of the class is reviewing, they will become bored and lose focus. They too need to learn at their own rate in order to maximize their learning abilities.

All of these lessons teach us that students need challenge and appropriate curriculum in order to thrive.  I don't believe that having a student placed in a math class that is well below her level, follows these five lessons.

Another article that addresses this issue, was written by Carol Bainbridge. Carol has been providing advice to parents of gifted children for nearly fifteen years, including work as a gifted children expert on Allexperts.com.

 

Carol talks about academic problems for gifted children on the website:

 gifted kids about.com

She says, "Ideally, all children will be challenged appropriately. The work they get will be neither too hard nor too easy. If it is too hard, children will give up. If it is too easy, children will give up. In the first case, they will give up because of the stress; in the second, because of boredom." She goes on to say, "For most gifted kids, getting work that is too hard is not usually the problem, at least not initially in school. They may sail through school getting straight A's, but at some point either in high school, college, or life, they may encounter work that does not come easily to them and they may not be able to meet the challenge that work presents. It's not that the work is too difficult for them, but it may feel that way to them simply because they've never been challenged before and don't know how to approach the challenge.

Getting work that is too easy makes it very difficult for kids to concentrate on it. Younger children, who don't have the words to explain the problem, may say that the work is too hard. What they might mean, however, is that it is too hard to concentrate on the work and get it done. They don't mean that they are incapable of doing the work. Gifted children who are not given challenging work in school may end up being underachievers. It is simply easier to give up than to deal with the excruciating boredom day in and day out. These children, too, may find it difficult to meet the challenges later in life that lead to success." 

Next, Carol discusses the social aspects of challenging gifted students,"...gifted kids may be as advanced socially as they are academically. That is not always the case, but is possible. Even if they aren't much more advanced socially than their age mates, an inappropriate academic setting can make them appear to have social and behavioral problems.

Those problems can be caused by boredom, but they can also be caused by the lack of intellectual and social peers. Imagine how frustrating it would be to spend about six hours every day performing tasks to teach you what you already know and to have no one who shared your interests or could understand what you were talking about. Giving children appropriately challenging work and allowing him to interact with social and intellectual peers can prevent or solve many social problems."

Finally, Carol talks about emotional problems that mismatched curriculum can cause gifted students. "An inappropriate academic setting can also lead to emotional problems. When gifted children are not academically challenged and are not able to spend time with other children like them, they may begin to feel as though there is something wrong with them. Why is everyone else struggling with the those math problems? Why can't the other children read already? Why don't the other kids want to spend all day learning about planets and black holes? Why do those kids say such mean things? The answers to all those questions are quite obvious to adults, but not to the young gifted child.

It is even possible for a frustrated gifted child to become depressed, so if your child is not being challenged in school, you want to be on the lookout for signs of depression. Children can appear to be angry, but anger can be a sign of depression in young children."

I do not believe, given the situation, that keeping my niece in a grade-level math class is the best option. What do you think?

Debbie

 

Early Entry to Kindergarten

Many of us grew up with a friend or fellow student that skipped a grade.  Grade skipping or "acceleration" is a topic that is subject to much controversy.  The current research actually supports acceleration as a great way to meet the needs of gifted students, but the subject becomes even more convoluted when the question is whether or not to provide early entry into kindergarten.

I have been a kindergarten teacher for nearly 20 years and I have very mixed emotions on the subject.  On the one hand, if a child is reading and seems to be fluent in the subjects taught in kindergarten, it seems silly to make him or her sit out for another year. On the other hand, kindergarten has a lot to do with following directions and rules, getting along with peers, and learning how to follow a proscribed curriculum, instead of the child directing his learning.  Kindergarten success is based a lot on the child being developmentally ready to do all of the work. Remember, giftedness is asynchronous, meaning that a child may be reading at three, but may not be able to identify colors or be potty trained.  In an effort to help parents decide whether or not to push for early entry, I have done some reading and research to help guide the decision.

About.com has a good article that succinctly describes both the pros and cons of early entry into kindergarten.  I think that it is worth clicking on the "Readers Respond " area to read what other parents have to say.  Most of the readers had children who were gifted and missed the school deadline by just a few days.  I think that this situation certainly warrants parents inquiring about early entry.  Click here to read the article.

Now, just to play devil's advocate, I want to tell you about my experience with this situation.  My oldest son's birthday is Sept. 4th, just 3 days past our school deadline.  He is gifted and needed to be in an academic pre-school.  We were new to the area, so I stopped in the school office and asked the principal for a recommendation for an academic pre-school.  The principal informed me that the school had an early entry policy. If a child turned 5 by November 15, the parent could request that he be tested and enter kindergarten as a four year old. We opted to do this, and he was given an IQ test as well as the school's regular kindergarten screening.  He scored in the 98th percentile on the IQ-type test and the only Kindergarten skill he didn't do well on was cutting. (Hmmm, probably because he cut up our family pictures so the scissors had been hidden for some time.) After some discussion, we decided to put him into kindergarten.  He was able to do all the work, but he was more interested in the social aspect of school and he often had to bring unfinished work home. In short, he was just squirrelly!  The following year, we moved again, and in this district, the kindergarten deadline was August 15th.  We opted to have our son repeat kindergarten, even though he was fine academically.  It was kind of a boring year for him, but I have never regretted my decision.  He was an awesome, settled student all the way through high school and college.  He excelled in everything he touched.  I think that he would have been ok if we had not kept him with his age-level peers, but it would have been a lot more work both for him and for me!

The Davidson Institute for Talent Development has a more scholarly article about early entry into kindergarten. It was written by Nancy Robinson and Linda Weimert, and it describes several studies on this subject.  The authors suggest that students should be selected for early entry after "careful evaluation."  That, I believe, is the key.  Students need to be evaluated on several levels to determine their readiness.  My son, was ready for the curriculum, but he was not ready for the rigors of school, but this is not always the case.  Many gifted students have high social maturity as well, and this must be a consideration when making the decision.

The authors suggest the following areas of  assessment:
Cognitive Ability (IQ 125+ as a loose predictor using a test like the Wechsler. The authors suggest, "Individual administration allows the tester to observe the child's reaction to challenge and difficulty, enthusiasm for problem solving, or anxiety in a new situation. Such information is useful in predicting a child's response to early entrance and is also essential (especially for the young child) in estimating the degree to which test performance approximates the child's best effort."

Academic Abilities
The student is reading, writing, and doing math, or shows readiness to do so.

Classroom Learning Skills
"Although not strictly academic, there also exist a set of learning skills that most children acquire in the course of preschool. These include, for example, the ability to remain engaged in an interesting task for perhaps 15 minutes without adult redirection, the ability to be a member of a group (as, e.g., listening to a story), the ability to listen and remember oral instructions, the ability to translate from one visual stimulus (e.g., a blackboard) to another (e.g., a piece of paper), and a vocabulary that encompasses concepts of relationship and quantity basic to classroom communication. There is no easy measure for any of these behaviors.Perhaps the best source of information here is the preschool teacher, who generally has a good sense of how a child compares with age-mates in these learning skills. A child who has not attended preschool, and therefore has not had the previous experience of developing group social skills, adapting to structured routines, and sharing adult attention, is seldom a good candidate for early school entry." (Robinson and Weimert).

Motor Development
"The child's competence in motor skills, as well as health and physical stamina, is important in determining a comfortable fit within the peer group and the ability to participate in classroom and playground activities. Fine motor coordination and visual-motor integration are essential to the paper and pencil activities typically introduced in kindergarten, and delays in visual-motor integration are often associated with delays in acquiring reading skills. Well-standardized measures of visual-motor integration are exemplified by the tasks of copying designs that are included in subscales of the WPPSIR and the Stanford-Binet, Fourth Edition."
(Robinson and Weimert).

Additional areas to screen are:
Screening for Learning Problems
Adequate visual discrimination and orientation
Auditory discrimination
Auditory processing
Information from parent interview in assessing risk for learning problems.

One final website may be helpful.  Click here and choose the pdf called Kindergarten Readiness: is early entry to kindergarten right for my child? This is a less technical site that lists several areas to consider if you want your child to enter kindergarten early. The areas are:
1. Cognitive (academic) readiness.
2. Developmental readiness.
3. Physical readiness.

In conclusion, it is always a difficult decision when our little ones are involved, but parents know their children best...follow your instincts and do what you think is right!