Re: better confidence builder: be smartest in slower class or median in smarter class?

On Jan 28, 5:25 pm, pete <ptgall...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Our 10 year old son is in the 4th grade at a private shool.  We
suspect that our 10-year old's specific class is substantially less
acedemically gifted/oriented then is our son; our third-grade
daughter's class is doing math problems much more advanced than that
of our 4th grade boy's class.  Our sone typically gets all his math
and reading work none in the first 25% of the class time and reads for
pleasure for the balance of the time.  He is not being pushed to work
hard and still gets top grades.  

Your son may be much higher than average in intelligence ("gifted"). I
suggest looking at the resources at Hoagies Gifted
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org and at the Johns Hopkins Talent Search
http://cty.jhu.edu/ts/grades26.html

Our son and his friends are the
athletes in the class and as he cares to be connected with them, will
do most anything to avoid circumstances that might, in his perception,
cause him embarrassment in their eyes - this mostly pertains to his
wanting to hide his many books to disguise his voracious reading
habits because his school friends do not think learning is 'cool'.
Left in this environment, we fear our son might possibly succumb to
additional pressures and cease to care about obtaining good grades in
school.  1.) should we move him to a more acedemically challenging
school?  

Maybe, and you should also think about his skipping a grade at the
current school.

2.) will doing so burn him out on learning altogether?

Being bored in school because he is not learning much is more likely
to cause burn-out.

3.) when is a child better off being the be smartest in slower class vesus
being average or less in class of smarter children?  4.) at what age
does this stuff matter...can one wait until high school and what are
the risks of leaving him in current environment?

The Johns Hopkins Talent Search for grades 7-8 uses SAT or ACT test
scores as an admissions criterion. If he gets a good score one of
these tests, that is one sign of being on track. By 11th and 12th
grade I think a student who wants to study at a good university ought
to get a 4 or 5 on Advanced Placment exams in a few subjects.
.

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