-> I just got a phone call last night from a fellow parent of fifth math
-> bright fifth graders.  We're apparently into the flip side of this
-> problem.  That child was in tears over the problem that math was too
-> boring.  All they were doing was repeating the stuff they had already
-> done in previous grades.  When he asked for more challenging work he
-> was given another of series of logic problems where you have to
-> figure out the names in the picture from clues like "Sam is next to a
-> bearded man."  The first dozen or so were fun, but the kids are bored
-> with these, now, too.  My kid was giggling over the silliness of
-> being asked to "guess and check" for "The girls won four more ribbons
-> than the boys; together they won 32 ribbons; How many ribbons did the
-> boys earn?"  It was obvious to him that you subtract four to even it
-> out, then divide by 2 to get 14 ribbons.
Are those the logic problems with the pictures of the characters
mentioned in the story? Those are just AWFUL! My daughter had some like
that in first and second grade, and by second grade they were just too
easy and boring. (I'm sure the ones your child is being given in fifth
grade are somewhat more challenging than the ones my daughter did at
that time, but the point is well taken). I complained to that teacher
that the problems were not challenging her at all, and I thought it
would be better to either : (a) not assign those problems any more, as
she was accomplishing nothing by it, or (b) find something more
challenging (I did give her a copy of a catalog with more challenging
logic problems in it and told her I'd be happy to pay for a copy of one
or two of the books in the catalog...she never took me up on that
though).
I don't know what else to say in response to your problem, than to
comiserate. I've had some similar experiences myself.
It does make me entertain the notion of the multi-age classroom,
however. I've seen that suggested many times in k12.chat.teacher
newsgroup on the Internet. The idea is that the students progress at
their own pace. Instead of having kids in fifth grade based on their
age, there would be a certain curriculum for fifth grade, and kids who
were ready for that curriculum would be in that class, kids who were not
yet ready for it would be in a lower classroom, and those who had
already mastered it would be in a higher level classroom. It is what we
do at our high school: We have kids anywhere from 9th through 12th grade
in Geometry. Some 9th graders enter our school ready for geometry. So we
place them in that class. Some kids don't master the pre-requisite
material until 12th grade (I use the term 'master' loosely here), so
they don't take the course until that time.
-> I've had some negative experiences with this year's teaching team.
-> My chronic lack of tack has become categorized as accusations in
-> their mind. We have a parent conference coming this week.  Maybe I
-> can get my tackful wife to lead the discussion about sufficiently
-> challenging math.
Well, I'm replying to this message over a month late. How did it go? Do
you manage to get anything resolved?
Sheila
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