Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy When do you take it to the Principal?

I have an idea for tommorow. How about letting DS do "K" in the first grade classroom for two hours a day, sort of as an independent study, and then rejoin the other "K"s with the expectation that he do 1st grade again next year?

My son had a Gem of a 3rd grade teacher - she found differentiating no problem - and I seriously entertianed the idea of holding him back a year so that he could have her again! If the school would have let that happen, I think he would have been really well served.

Remember to avoid looking down the road as much as possible when it comes to planning school situations. You aren't commintting to any gradeskip by having DS in 1st grade for a few hours. And if the 1st grade teacher isn't as good a fit as you thought, then at least you know sooner not to wait through a bad situation to get her. Honestly, no one can predict the future. The farther ahead you look the worse it gets. For all you know, DS may be able to move along with his classmates for years as long as he gets 2.5 hours a day of 'independent study' in the first grade room.

What I think is the most key thing, is do give the child a chance to
a) develop good work ethic by working at their readiness level, (polite way of saying that it really is a big problem to let a child be in school 2.5 hours a day bored out of his goard.) and
b) keeping enough social peers around so that the child doesn't have to mask themselves too totally all the time.

As for your DH, he is reminding me of me back when my DS12 was first starting to be noticibly 'different.' At that time I soundly believed that almost every difference between people was due to environment. I blamed myself for not fitting in, and thought that my choices and actions could lead my son down a path where he also might not fit in.

((Remember Rodney Dangerfield's joke about his parent's attaching meat to his neck so that the dogs would play with him? My DH and I used all of our bainpower to do the same for our DS. DS is a 'people person' and it seems to have worked to some degree - he stands out at Gatherings as one of the most 'social' but 'Oh' the cost!

Over the years I've learned that it's wasn't my fault, and there wasn't much I could have done to 'make' my DS like everyone else AND the things I tried to do to make him fit in usually did him harm.

It isn't the money you are wasting, it's your son's oppertunity to have a 'right relationship' with learning, both the romance and the hard work!

Alternativly, can you 'partial homeschool' him and bring him to school after the 2 hours of academics?

My prayers will be with you -
Grinity

Good luck at your meeting on Monday! I hope you are able to get some accommodations. We actually got a k/1st grade split placement for our DS5 this year and for the most part it is working out well. I think no matter what placement a child gets it's the teacher that matters the most. Even with a 1st grade placement some in-class differentiation is going to need to occur.

*Update*

We met with the principal today and surprisingly, the school learning specialist. Evidently the principal had her observe DS in the classroom today and then she decided to attend our meeting. We had no idea that would happen!

Essentially, the learning specialist is thrilled to work with DS, seems in just one day to already have a real understanding of him. She said she was a gifted child herself and felt like she got screwed and is determined to make sure that "all" kids being taught at their level means ALL kids, not just those that are easy.

They told us that they've had trouble with this teacher in the past and that they assured us that they knew how to work with her to make sure that DS will be challenged within the classroom and gave many specific examples how they'll do that. She even suggested that in 1st grade he be allowed to use a keyboard in class since obviously his ideas are not able to get on paper due to his slower-developing fine motor skills!

So we'll see... He won't be subject accelerated out of the class but they were on a mission to make sure that he is being well challenged in his own classroom. They're going to do a reading assessment and allow him to check out books at the library at his level, change up the "station" time to make sure that if they're patterning- Ds is doing complex patterns not ABAB patterns.

After a few weeks of feeling really down on our decision, I think that maybe we're in the right place. If all the talk turns into action, I'll have a huge sigh of relief.

Wow, CAMom, that's *awesome*! It sounds like they already knew there was a potential problem there, and were really proactive about it. What great observation and action on the part of the faculty!

I'm so glad to hear they've got a plan. One question -- are they open to subject acceleration if it seems necessary at some point this year? Is subject acceleration a common practice at his school among first-grade+ kids, that your ds could just slide into early?

They just don't do subject acceleration until 6th grade, then come 6th grade, some kids are taking math at the high school (which is on the same campus) They talked a lot about going very far in depth, as far as a student wants to go but not going fast. So they'll a ton of patterning at as complex a level as DS can handle, but not move into fractions. But they might use fractions in the patterns... I'm not sure I fully understand it but they sounded very confident in their explanation of how they work it in 1st thru 5th grade.

I also learned that it's a little bit more "montessori-ish". Each kid has a math bin and a language arts bin come 1st grade. The work that they have been assigned is in that bin and it may be completely different than the kid sitting next to them. It sounds from that that our assessment that the 1st grade teachers are really good at differentiating might be right on. They're used to doing a lot of prep work to make it easy to teach each kid at a separate level.