What is Acceleration?

So, you're a gifted kid and you're in the 4th grade. You learn things more quickly than the other kids your age. Your teachers and your parents might think of accelerating you. That means they might have you take classes with older kids because your learning fits what the older kids are doing better than the kids of your own age group.

Acceleration can happen in two ways. Your teachers and parents may decide that you should skip a whole grade. That will put you with older kids who will learn more like you learn. These kids will be older, though, so they may not be interested in the same things out of school that you are. They may already be interested in the opposite sex, when you're still interested in cartoons. A decision must be made. Should you be matched with kids that learn more like you or kids who have the same outside interests that you do. It's a difficult decision. Another thing might happen if you skip a grade. You miss some of the content. That means that if you skip from 4th to 6th grade and in 5th grade they study World History, you will miss that content. This happened to me in college. I took what are called AP tests and did well enough to skip a class called Freshman English during my first year in college. Because I skipped Freshman English, I never really learned how to write a research paper correctly and I've had to learn that on my own. I missed the content of that class, although I'm not sorry I accelerated. When research is done about kids that have accelerated, it says they don't have any more problems because of the acceleration than they would have had if they had stayed with their assigned grade.

Another way to have acceleration is to accelerate in one area. Let's say you are a great writer and you already understand about grammar. You may take all other classes with your grade, but move up just for English. If you're in elementary school, you might go to the junior high or middle school to take a class. If you're in junior high or middle school, you might go to the high school. If you're in high school, you might come to the university. You stay with your class for most things, but you accelerate for the subject you really need to have presented in a more challenging way.