Pauline, you are SO sweet! Thank you very much... I have saved it and will pull it up "whilst" studying for my Exam on the plane for motivation! I know MAT loves hearing of new topics that he might not have encountered, and my agenda today gave me a chuckle with how some of the topics sound, so I made a list I found funny... Wake up, brush teeth, shower. Kiss and feed doggedties and kittoes and check the garden with a couple. Grab a coffee drink and check work e-mail and the forums. Use the encryption modulus: 14423118116103878456275736627220315029625755387443832298910751006678535354074654 042928147183738663805778840499199825925881487774161275939083 and the encrypting exponent: 65537 to encrypt a three-letter English word that names an animal. Use the Russian Peasant algorithm to calculate 849 x 3217. Reproduce all the lines of the calculation in the answer. Crank up Pink Floyd on the car stereo and head to Panera's with BeeBee and the laptop. Order lunch and a latte. Construct a Moore recogniser to process strings of zeros and ones. The recogniser should recognise those strings that have exactly three ones in them and reject all other strings. Write a URM program which adds the contents of register 3 to the contents of register 4 and places this sum in register zero. The program should not change what is already in registers 3 and 4. Close up laptop and head back to the garden. Film more of the neighbor's kids' Sonic the Hedgehog movie in B&W on the cell phone :) etc, etc. Oy I'm such a nerd but I love this stuff! Gotta run. Happy Day everyone!

"Gifted" in our school district (Capistrano Unified) is identified by placing at a 95th percentile or above on the Otis-Lennon test (an IQ-like test). Prior to that, in order to qualify to be nominated to take that test, he had to score at a 90th percentile or above on both reading and math on the CORE test (a standardized test the district gives to all students in addition to the SAT9). At the end of 5th grade, all of the students are given the Math Challenge Test (the placement test for 6th grade). Typically, about 80% are placed in 6th grade math, 20% are placed in pre-algebra (including ALL of the GATE students, such as my son), and 1% are placed in 7th grade algebra. The pre-algebra class is the 7th grade curriculum but the classes are all 6th graders so he will always be with his peers. I also want to say that he had 6th grade math LAST year and got an A on his report card in every trimester. He scored a B in two chapters and spaced on the test. He still mastered those chapters, technically. THIS CHILD does not belong in 6th grade math AGAIN next year. The tutor is there to make sure he knows those chapters up and down and inside and out. Bottom line, if it's beyond him, he won't pass. He has one of "those" minds. Last year, when they were working on three and four digit long division, he came to me with a completed homework assignment. Just answers, nothing written out. I said "hon, you can't use a calculator - please go write out all of the problems." He swore up and down that he did NOT use a calculator and challenged me to test him. So I flipped the paper over and wrote out a few new problems. He stared at each one for about two minutes, then gave me the answer. *I* then had to check them on a caculator, and he had each one correct. You know, everyone told me when he was in preschool that I should hold him back for kindergarten because he was born in the fall (cutoff in CA is Dec. 2, he was born Oct. 22) and he was a boy. I heard countless stories of their kids and their friends kids and the milkman's kids who were either held back and they were glad, or the child repeated kindergarten, or started on time as a 4 year old ("early" in their minds, on time actually) and they regretted it. But I knew my child. I also knew kindergarten - I was teaching it, after all. I knew that kindergarten is designed for the 5 year old, not for 6 year olds, and I also knew that I could not tell a difference between the kids that had started at 4 (and turned 5 by December) and the ones that had spring birthdays. Where I did see a difference was with the 6 year olds, who did exceptionally well in my class, but for good reason - because they were too old for the curriculum. They weren't being challenged. Thank goodness I knew my child and I knew kindergarten because I might have been tempted to listen to them. He was ready and wanted to go more than anything, and academically he was ready as well. He did start kindergarten at 4 1/2, did amazingly well, and has been ever since. I am glad I chose to challenge him rather than wait and put him with younger kids so I'd have a "guarantee" that he'd succeed. That's what I'd feel that having him repeat 6th grade math would be. It would be pointless at this point. Sure, they may be times when something might need to be repeated if he truly struggled. This isn't one of those times. And if it is, him not passing that test will make that known. Here is a link that might be useful: GATE/AAA program in Capistrano Unified

I agree with you Talley Sue. But if I was a parent, I would rather have the teacher explain to me WHY the particular area was important, and let it just be assumed that of course, because it is important, it will be on the test. Otherwise, it doesn't really appear that the teacher is in touch with why she is doing what she is doing. People make the point that we need standardized tests so we know that teachers are sticking with the curriculum. But a teacher who designs his or her own curriculum, really thinks it through and adapts it to the needs of the particular class, is probably a more capable teacher. That doesn't mean that the custom curriculum shouldn't have each element of the standardized curriculum on it. But a teacher who is only able to follow the standardized curriculum is probably a less competent, less creative, less committed teacher than the teacher who is capable of designing a custom curriculum. So even if two teachers are following the same curriculum, wouldn't you rather hear, "Johnny needs to work on counting by twos because that skill will help make the times tables more easy for him to learn," than "Johnny needs to work on times tables because it is going to be on the test." Does the teacher who tells you the latter understand why the things that are on the test are on there? Does she understand that there are probably things that are NOT on the test that still help children learn the things that ARE on the test? Does she even bother to explain anything that is not on the test? Is she capable of identifying things she could do that might help children who are struggling to understand the way the test works? Or is she just TEACHING THE TEST? We've all had teachers who taught the material and we learned the material and we passed the class and that was the end of it, and we were glad never to see that teacher again because the class was boring and difficult. And we have all had teachers who explained things in ways that made us suddenly understand them after years of confusion, and they challenged us to go the extra mile with our research and find out new facts, and we anxiously awaited that class because it was so lively and we never knew what our opinions might be afterward of topics we thought we had all figured out. A lot of the excitement of some of those great classes came from the teacher giving you the physical freedom to work at an appropriate pace and the intellectual freedom to explore mental tangents which could prove to be irrelevant. The wrong turns we make teach us how to reason; how to make better choices in the future. Maybe the problem that Momma Bird's friends are having is that the teachers their children have are not very good teachers - they teach the children to pass the test, but not to be creative, enthusiastic critical thinkers who pass the test.

I'm 45 and I also don't know what I want to be when I grow up .... Wanted to be an astronaut or vetrinarian when I was a kid. Went to college and switched majors 3 times and ended up with a marketing degree cuz I wanted to garduate and get a job. The only job I found was waitressing, then managing restaurants. Then my mother, who was working in real estate, told me to apply for a position in the mortgage company her real estate company was forming. Worked there for 16 years, am now with a major bank/lender, and have spent the last 10 years trying to find a way OUT of the mortgage business. So I bought a farm... found out a long time ago that I can grow anything, and love gardens. So I now have a daylily farm where I sell plants in the spring/summer while still working my normal job .... can't figure out a way to make enough money from the farm to support the lifestyle/benefits, etc. I want. I also took care of my animal fix, I have 2 dogs, 3 indoor cats, 1 barn cat, and 3 miniature donkeys. SO I work my "normal" job to support the farm I love ... a comprise I guess. Pam