Posted by Rebecca in VA on 5:18 Sep 14
In Reply to: Acceleration and gifted kids... do they really "forget" the basics, (continued from thread below) posted by Kay in Cal
That's why I tend not to skip over material. Rod & Staff Math repeats concepts from year to year; however, each year the material becomes more difficult and the problems are more challenging. Even within a grade, each problem is different in subtle ways, and it's beneficial to work all of them just for the practice.
I'm a big fan of fluency -- knowing how to do something so well that you can do it without thinking about it -- and that comes not from mindless repetition, but from thoughtful practice of varied and increasingly more difficult problems. This applies to all kinds of situations in life, not just math or grammar.