Hi, Just thought I would share my most recent positive experience. My 5 year old son began Kindergarten at the local public school a week ago. Prior to school starting we had attended several orientations and the school teacher personally interviewed each child during the summer. I was impressed with how proactive the public school was!
During the summer interview the teacher's objective was to gently assess my son's academic level as well as his ability to cut with scissors, apparently.
He's in the young scholar's program, so like other parents of profoundly gifted children, you basically know Kindergarten is not going to be a challenge academically. We sat through the first set of questions - "here is a swatch of colors, can you tell me what the colors are?" then "Which one is your favorite?" My son was cautious but wondering why she was asking these easy questions. Then she started with "I'm going to show you some uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet, can you tell me what.... " And I just interrupted and said "he can read..."
So, she had him read the Kindergarten word list. No problem.
She moved up to the 1st grade word list. No problem.
So, that is when I told her that rather than spend the day trying to assess his level, how about I provide her the assessment tests he had done (so that my son could enter the young scholar's program)? She was very receptive and wanted the information.
To my surprised she actually read through the report and called me before school began. She wanted to know how we were going to keep my son enriched. I told her I would contact the DIYS program advocate for advice. Before I even had a chance to get back to her with the potential options she called me again and explained that the principal had observed my son and knew about the report and wanted to move him to 1st grade the following week. Next week.
She explained that he may still be ahead of the fellow 1st graders but it would be a better fit than his current situation. The new teacher will have a smaller class size and she has experience teaching K through 5th graders as well as the G.A.T.E. program.
My son had made lemonade out of lemons being bored in Kindergarten by assuming the role of teacher's assistant, from what I could ascertain from asking him about school. He hadn't seemed excited about making any friends his age(that I knew of). So, we figure we probably should try 1st grade rather than continue with Kindergarten.
He begins 1st grade next week after a mere 1.5 weeks of Kindergarten.
I'm quite surprised at how quickly the public school has responded to this and how proactive they've been about moving him to 1st grade. We joke that they want him in 1st grade so he can help their API score go up even more this next year.
I'm just hoping for a positive school experience for my son - now that he has to transition yet again.
I wanted to post this because this was a really positive experience. I had a very negative experience when my son was in preschool and I was asking the director and teacher at a parent-teacher conference what could be done to encourage his precocious abilities. I provided them the assessment report so they wouldn't think i was being "one of those moms". Instead they got very angry and indirectly insulted me and my son. They were threatened by my questions and requests to challenge him a little bit or to allow him to do some PreK work because he was able to do it and wanting to do it but not allowed based on age rather than ability. It made me hesitant and cautious to bring it up to other educators. I am glad the public school was more willing to work with me to find a better fit for my son. I figured that they have an opportunity to offer a solution and thankfully they did. Now, my son hasn't moved to 1st grade yet, so we will see how it goes next week. Maybe he'll quit asking me "when are we going to do some worksheets?" and "why do I have to go to school to learn things I already know?"
I think the grade skip will be a positive experience although I was willing to let Kindergarten be his first public school experience and just enrich him with a stellar afterschool program. It was a big decision to move him to 1st grade as is, even though kindergarten seems like preschool repeated anyway.
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