Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Please share TIPS for meeting with K teacher

Hi everyone.

DS4 is starting K a year early August 21st at a private school. We have an individual meeting (all students get this, not requested) on August 17th and I am wondering about how to approach it. I was going to just lay back and not say anything to see if the teacher would recognize his abilities by herself. But now, with this meeting, I am thinking maybe I should talk to her a bit...

DS4 is PG and way out there academically. His WJ-III achievement test revealed his average academic age is 9yr 5mo with spelling being the highest at 11yr 4mo.
In math he is at 9yr 4mo.
Obviously we are going to need some serious accommodation here.

Do I bring in the WJ-III results for her to see at this point? I am thinking either I DO or I don't say a thing. We all know how the "my child is very advanced" argument usually goes...

This teacher is new at this school and seems (from her picture) to be in her late 20's. I am hoping she will be open minded to this situation and hopefully not too set in her ways.

Any tips on how to go about this, ideas of what to bring, language to use etc is greatly welcomed. I don't want to blow the relationship with this teacher right off the bat.

Thanks so much!

Annie

Depends a little bit on what kind of meeting it is - how long is it, and is it you and your son together, or just you? If it's a long meeting without your son, I think I'd assume they really want to know, and turn up prepared to discuss the lot. If not, I think I'd keep it very low key. Are you prepared to give the teacher a copy of the WJ-III results (or the front page/headline scores, or whatever), and will they be reasonably comprehensible, e.g. will she see that they say his spelling is at the level of an 11y4m-old child? If so, the easiest thing might be to hand over a copy and say something like, "I don't know how school's going to go for him, but these test results are saying that he's very unusual, so I thought I should share them with you. Maybe we could set up another meeting for a couple of weeks after term starts, once he's had a chance to start to settle in and you've started to get to know him."

I think you have two things to avoid, Scylla and Charybdis style: saying too much, since that amounts to having a conversation now that will be 1000 times easier once the teacher has got to know your child; and saying too little, since if you "drop the teacher in it" i.e. you have a chance to warn her that she's getting a wildly out there child and you don't take the chance, it may come across as having not helped her to have time to prepare when you could have done.

That said, he's entering early, so she must have been told something, I'd think. You may find she'll be asking lots of questions and it won't be an issue.

Does he still have noise sensitivities etc. that she'll need to know about? If so, that might be more important to spend time on, since she can hardly miss the academics but you'll want to ensure that he doesn't just get labelled "immature" if he finds something hard to deal with.

Overall, I suggest, err on the side of saying too little rather than too much, but go in with the assumption that you're meeting a good teacher who's going to get to know him and do great things and that you're going to be able to trust that he's in good hands... Here's hoping that's true!

Have you provided the school with a copy of his test to start an IEP?

What we did last year was alert them to the fact that he was very ahead, which put him on the top of the list for beginning of the year placement testing. We didn't give them copies of the test results we had until January or so, which was what spurred them into considering him for a grade skip for this year.

Great input everyone! Much appreciated!

The meeting is for 30 minutes WITH DS

Born2Learn, I have not shared with the school his results...yet. I am considering calling the admissions director whom has been extremely open and helpful so far. He is the one who called a meeting with the "head of lower school" back in January to go over materials DS had done. Seeing my son's work is what allowed for the early entrance.

I am considering asking him if the teacher has any info on DS's academic advancement. Possibly also telling him about the results, appearing "nervous" asking for his advice weather to share the information with the teacher in the meeting. I would say that I wasn't going to bring anything up to the teacher but since we have this meeting set up would it be a good idea to share a little bit with her.

Either way, when meeting with the teacher I will for sure say less rather than more and not bring out the results until well into the meeting and in a very casual way.

What do you think about approaching the admissions director since I have such a great report with him? Eventually the school will have to know anyway since they said they will be doing subject acceleration with him. (They SAID. Time will tell if it was just talk)

And yes, he still have issues with noise although he seems to react to it better now. He just puts his hands over his ears instead of screaming bloody murder like he used to.

I'd bring in some 'work samples' in the child's own handwriting if possible - a math worksheet, a 'book report' and an art project if he can make them. Maybe a video of your child reading aloud and talking about his favorite book. That will be much more meaningful for the teacher than Achievement test numbers.

Mostly listen. Ask which topics are taught 'to all' and which ones the kids are tested and then placed in groups to be taught. If reading is tested, will she have the ability to test 'all the way up' to where he is, or will she need to stop at grade level or a year or two above because of a lack of access to materials?

I would limit how much I would say with DS present (especially with Achievement test numbers) - making an appointment to meet individually with the teacher later might be better.

Asking the admissions director how much info the teacher has is a good idea. Also be ready to provide the teacher with resources, such as Davidson's http://www.davidsongifted.org/edguild/ and the book Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom: Strategies and Techniques Every Teacher Can Use to Meet the Academic Needs of the Gifted and Talented (Book & Cdrom) [Paperback]
Susan Winebrenner M.S. (Author)

and the ERIC digest



Good Luck,
Grinity

I just make the incredibly scary decision to apply to private school for my 7 year old. In conversation with the Assistant Head of School (admissions person), I mentioned her Woodcock-Johnson scores. She said that they'd be very helpful to have. I can't imagine it would hurt to share them. You could even give them to the director and mention off-handedly that to the teacher that they're in his file, for when she has a little bit of time to go over them.

The best kindergarten thing I ever came across was courtesy of a school in Wake County NC. One of the things they required was that parents of incoming kindergarteners write a letter to the kindergarten team about their child: just, y'know..."who is this kid". His strengths and weaknesses, certainly, but also the fact that he sometimes spells his name right to left instead of left to right (and then insists he did it because it looks better that way, because he has to save face at all costs) or that he absolutely loathes Superman for some reason you've never figured out.
If you have in hand both the letter and the scores (and maybe some examples if you're telling her he's got a naturally developed artistic perspective or can do four-column sums without breaking a sweat), it gives a far more complete picture than either alone.

If you're going that route I'd give them to the teacher, and let her go to administration with them. And if you haven't heard anything in a discreet amount of time, an email to administration saying "I left these with Mrs. Smith and figured I should give you a week or two to give them some thought, what with the beginnning of the year being so busy-- when can we meet to talk about this?"

I like the plan you already have, and I agree that contacting the admissions director and asking advice about what you should mention to the teacher sounds like a good idea. At that point, it might also be good to ask if setting up a meeting with the teacher and curriculum director and GT coordinator, if there is one, might be a good idea.

Because this is meeting with your kiddo, I'd keep it simple, and maybe mention that you might be setting up a meeting to discuss differentiation. Helpful if you can say "Mr AD said that we should set up a meeting with ___ and ____." This initial meeting is just Meet the Teacher time, but giving a little heads up is a good idea, IMO.

Our son's kindy teacher did not care about any of our kiddo's test scores, preferring to get to know him on her own. I think probably most test scores that are really high are going to mean little to a teacher who does not normally see them.

ETA - I remember my kiddo's meet the teacher day. She had an easy reader and asked my son to read it. (But because she knew a bit about our son from meetings we had with the GT coordinator, she also had a chapter book, bless her heart.) If there is something like that, maybe you can bring along a book at your kid's level, just in case.

I like the idea of work samples. If this is your first K child at this school it would be good to have some idea of how much your child's skills differ from the most enriched curriculum they provide at that grade. While I like tests like the WJ to some extent, I do think that the age and grade equivalencies aren't a full representation of what a child needs. I always use as an example my dd13, who as a newly 7 y/o 2nd grader had grade equivalencies of 18+ in the Language Arts parts of the WJ-III. While she really needed much more than could be provided by a typical 2nd grade class and did later grade skip and subject accelerate, she didn't need post high school instruction in that area.

What type of math instruction, for instance, do you think would be appropriate for your dc? Can he comfortably do long division, multiply, etc.? I am assuming that the basics of addition and subtraction are down with those types of scores and what I remember of K did involve a lot of pattern recognition and one to one correspondence in preparation for those skills. If you can bring in both the WJ scores and some examples of what he is so comfortable in that he does not need instruction in it anymore, that might help the teacher plan for what he does need to be taught.

Likewise in reading, I'd bring both the WJ scores and a book or two that he has read independently recently such that he doesn't wind up getting a bunch of phonics instruction, for instance. Like others, though, I wouldn't walk in with a pile of this type of stuff and start off the meeting with it ! Good luck. It sounds like you've got a lot of advocacy ahead of you!