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AmyZ
Administrator
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Posted: Sat Aug 23rd, 2008 02:21 am |
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Our son was supposed to have a differentiated curriculum for science and language arts in third grade based on his scores in various tests at the end of second grade. What ended up happening was a set of differentiations based on reading that it seems we were supposed to implement at home in addition to son's regular work.
At one point, he rebelled against doing classwork with our blessing by following the plan the teacher sent us. We received a letter home that our son was not cooperating with classwork and how would we suggest getting him to put his book away and participate in a class discussion. Only the class “discussion” was not so much discussion as it was quizzing on SOL data for the upcoming test...
Unfortunately, no other attempt was made to actually have our son work to the plan. More effort was made with regard to cursive handwriting, but nothing more than a plan for in class TAG enrichment.
Has anyone had success with an in-class differentiated curriculum? Are there places where it really works?
Thanks!
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Shay
Afterschooler
| Joined: | Wed Mar 14th, 2007 |
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Posted: Sat Aug 23rd, 2008 09:01 pm |
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Beginning this year, my dd will have differentiation outside of the classroom once per week, so I don't have any experience with in-class differentiation. I can just get a sense, though, that the success of what you're dealing with will depend heavily on the primary teacher first, and the TAG teacher second. And lapse in that command would result in a less than desired situation.
Is this the way TAG is implemented in your school, in class only?
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AmyZ
Administrator
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Posted: Sun Aug 24th, 2008 12:19 am |
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Our school district has TAG pullouts for fourth and fifth grade, but the lower grades are supposed to have in-class differentiation for those students identified as gifted. The parent rumor mill indicates that different schools handle the lower grades differently, with some aggressively seeking TAG candidates and others (such as ours) doing very little testing for the lower grades.
Our son was tested because I asked he be tested. In retrospect, I should have asked that he be tested in first grade, but that teacher recognized that he did well in many things and I thought her style and insight were indicative of the whole shool. In second grade, our son's writing challenges started to weigh on his performance and his teacher didn't think he was especially hard charging. I wanted him tested to see if I was completely off mark with his abilities--and to make sure that if I wasn't he would be challenged. After the test scores came back he did receive some challenging assignments in second grade, but it was near the end of the year and there wasn't much chance for changes in the classroom.
In third grade, I believe the teacher at first didn't have the information about his test scores judging from the feedback we received midway of the first quarter. We straightened that out, and after the first parent/teacher conference we received a differentiated education plan (it wasn't ready in time for the conference). It sounded great, with son reading books and doing projects, but we never saw any evidence of it being put in place. See above for his experiences when he decided to read as outlined in the plan... At some point during the year he did get pulled out a bit to work with the TAG teacher, but that seems to have only been at the beginning of the year.
In fourth grade he should be pulled out for TAG, but I don't know what that means--will he have to make up the other work he misses during TAG or will the TAG pullout occur during the subject he is pulled out for? And what goes on when he is in the classroom? Is he still supposed to have more challenging work or is he supposed to do the same work as the rest of the class?
I'm trying to find ideas to get our son interesting work for the year--he is not particularly happy with school after third grade and we want to have this year be much better. One of the concerns I can work with is challenging work...but how exactly to get that challenge in place is a question.
Thanks for your insights, Shay--I look forward to hearing more as the year progresses!
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Shay
Afterschooler
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Posted: Mon Aug 25th, 2008 08:36 pm |
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Okay, that sounds very similar to our set-up. Fourth grade is the first "real" year of TAG (we have a diff. title, but I'll go with yours). My dc are pulled out one afternoon per week and they go to TAG. There, they do whatever the teacher has planned, and it's usually mentally challenging , fun, and enriching activities. It is at this point in school that my dc start to really like school. (This is my second go-around with the TAG stuff).
As far as making up work missed, they aren't supposed to have to, but a lot of the times it is up to the regular classroom teacher. We've had different scenarios with different teachers. One year it was obvious that there was '"friction" betwen the TAG teacher and my ds's class teacher who seemed to delight in telling me that ds didn't know the new (EM) division algorithim because he was "at TAG when she taught it." I mentioned (to the TAG teacher) this as being a potential problem and she got visibly upset , saying they aren't supposed to introduce new material while the kids are pulled for TAG. Yeah, right, I don't know how that can be helped every week??? Thankfully, my dd will not miss math for TAG! I was sweating that, b/c I know you can miss an explanation and really feel out of it.
Now, for classwork, there is no differentiation at all for us. I think I do prefer it this way, too. My dd would get stressed if everything was super challenging. Since I afterschool, I get to add that stuff with no pressure.
I'll be so interested to see how it goes for you and ds.
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AmyZ
Administrator
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Posted: Sun Aug 31st, 2008 08:46 pm |
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My husband got the impression that the teachers were approaching son's TAG involvement in fourth grade as him having different teachers for different subjects, so I'm hopeful that there won't be the "makeup" issues you describe, Shay.
What frustrates me is that son was supposed to receive a differentiated in-class curriculum for third grade, which he did after we asked the teacher about it, but which doesn't seem to have influenced the teacher's assignments to him one bit. In fact, it would seem that she was not aware of his assessment scores one iota at the beginning of the year based on her first mid-quarter "notice" she sent home regarding his "difficulty" with reading comprehension. He read no more challenging works as part of school and the one and only book report he was assigned was a very short "who are the characters and what was your favorite part" affair--his first grade teacher had more book report requirements.
I've heard great things from parents in other schools about how their kids have worked on different books or different levels of topics within the classroom for younger years, but that has not been the case for our son. I was hoping perhaps someone had some good experiences!
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