Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Tips for successful acceleration- Updated!!!!

I have a meeting for DS9 (soon to be DS10) next week. I'll be meeting with his teacher, math teacher and principal. The purpose of the meeting is just to see how things are going here at the mid-year point. This is his first year with an IEP for gifted, dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD.

We spent the first semester building back his confidence after a disaster of a 3rd grade year (where his teacher counted everything wrong if it was mispelled or not written in a complete sentence....you can imagined what this did to my poor child with undiagnosed dyslexia and dysgraphia).

Anyway, with appropriate accomodiations, he has 98s and 99s across the board, with the exception of language arts (where he has a low B). He is already in the gifted pull-outs and in a special math class for the top 10 students in his grade.

Although first semester went well, he is growing more and more bored with school. He appears to have very little internal motivation. He obviously needs more challenge. I'm wondering if any of you have any ideas for acceleration that I can suggest to his teachers/principal. The school has a crazy schedule, so it won't be possible for him to go to the grade up for part of the day. Also, enrichment at home isn't an option...he is already in therapy or tutoring for his dyslexia/dysgraphia most afternoons. I hate to add anything else to his schedule in the evenings.

Anybody?????

Hmmm. Could your DS do any sort of online classes in the areas he needs some more challenge? It's tough when he's in all the pullouts and the class schedules don't match up for other classes. Can he do any online advanced coursework? Or is it possible to get creative with the class schedules? For example, find out when a higher grade class is meeting that he would benefit from, even if it's not at the same time as his current class is being held. (E.g., he'll go to upper level math during science time, then make up science by doing individual project during his class's math time).

Hopefully others will pipe up. Sorry we missed your post!

Thanks st pauli girl! Those are definitely some things to think about. I wonder if anyone has some good recommendations for online coursework?

Hi perplexed,

Sorry I didn't see this and respond sooner. Re online coursework, I'd look at the talent search sites (CTY, Northwestern, Stanford EPGY etc). For math, we used www.aleks.com when ds was in elementary and wasn't allowed to accelerate. Once he got to middle school (different school) we were able to show the record of what he'd done in aleks (it's all tied to state standards) and he was placed where he needed to be with no questions and he's doing great

I also have a thought re the "looks like he has no motivation" - that would have described our ds very well at 9 - he's also dysgraphic, and at 9 years old we were in the middle of trying to get him accommodations including keyboarding at school, trying to learn for ourselves which accommodations he would/wouldn't need etc, all that. There was definitely a component of being underchallenged in the areas of his strengths that led to what appeared to be lack of motivation going on big time with our ds, but there was also another thing going on related to being 2e and his dysgraphia - he was keenly aware that he was different than the other kids and like many high IQ kids he is extremely sensitive to those differences - and that also *looked* like a lack of motivation. So just something to consider and keep in mind, it might not all be related to lack of challenge.

We also never were able to get our ds placed at the grade level he needed to be in for challenges in the areas of his strengths in elementary school. I don't mention that to be discouraging, but instead to let you know that life got sooooo much better in middle school! Once we were in the world of changing classes plus at a different school we found it was much easier to advocate for appropriately challenging placement

Best wishes,

polarbear

Polarbear- I'm so glad to hear that there is hope in middle school. I asked DS last night if there is anything he wanted me to bring up to his teachers/principal in next weeks meeting. I asked if he wanted more challenging work. He said, "not more challenging, just more interesting". I think he equates challenging with his weak areas (writing, writing and writing!)Have you seen the motivation issue improve in middle school? I'm currently trying to decide what to do about middle school...he'll be in 5th grade in the Fall. My choices are to stay in our public school system, go to the "fancy" college prep school (which isn't a gifted school, but has a more rigorous academic program with higher expectations for performance), or homeschool. I'd love to hear more about how things have change for you with the transition from elementary to middle.

I've been thinking this one over, as there don't seem to be any easy ideas...but...well

Can you get the tutors and therapists onboard to engage his strong reasoning powers while doing what they do? I remember teaching my son to touch type. In the begining he learned the positions, but there was a point where only practice would do the trick to get the speed and automatisity going. Luckily I found a game that was just like tetris, except that one had to type letter combinations go steer the shapes into position. He loved the Tetris like aspect of the challenge, and it lulled him through the boarding rote practice.

BTW the game was an add-on to Mavis Becon teaches typing designed for Palm, and I happened to have a working Palm device and keyboard at the time - ancient history, yes? I've never seen that game again, as I've itched to post a link here.

Hugs and Congrats on the strides he has made so far!
Grinity

Our local fancy cp independent school was very 'writing output' orriented. If you go that way, be sure that the work is 'interesting' as well as a blizzard of paper. Go and observe a typical day.

That sounds so very much like something my ds would say! Yes, his motivation did improve tremendously in middle school, as did my understanding of what he was really thinking and feeling about school (both the tough parts and the areas he is interested in). The best things for my ds about middle school are that he does finally have *some* classes that are semi-challenging intellectually and that he has a higher percentage of his day spent in classes that are subjects he's interested in. He's also benefited tremendously by a change in schools.

On the other hand, he is still grappling with not liking having a disability - clearly it wasn't his choice, never would be for anyone. When most typical kids are going through puberty just dealing with hormones and opposite sex awareness and all that he's also got that extra "thing" that defines him that looms large in his head - so while other parents of gifted kids are worrying about challenging coursework, we're also as parents of a 2e kid having to be extra careful to work at keeping life balanced, and give ds the support he needs to become comfortable in his own skin.


We had the same set of choices, but as always, ultimately everything depends upon the individual school district and schools, as well as school staff, so what played out for us may be entirely different in your area. In our case, we chose to "drop out" of the public school system for now. DS was in an optional public school which in theory let kids work at their individual ability pace, but that never worked out for ds, and the school was abysmal when it came to getting help for special needs kids. At the end of 5th grade, we had an adequate IEP and a good list of accommodations, but ds wasn't getting the instruction outline in his IEP and his teachers continued to either ignore or fight the very simple accommodations. We don't live in a huge city, so we didn't have many choices for private school, but ...

oops, got interrupted, will come back later to finish!

pb

I am thrilled to report that the meeting yesterday went really well. It is so nice to know that his teacher sees how smart he is despite his inability to spell correctly or write with proper grammar (2e-dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD-I). She said his thought process is years ahead of his peers and he learns new concepts exceptionally fast in comparison to his peers. She is going to do 2 things to address this....curriculum compact (give a pre-test and if he has mastered the material, move him on to 5th grade curriculum OR if he gets the new concept quickly, even without doing well on the pretest, move him on to 5th grade curriculum). The second thing is that she is going to give him some self-directed independent study projects to work on. She set specific goals for him to meet, but he will get to choose the subject area.

I'm thrilled. Crossing my fingers it works!