That's great news! Yep, I think a skip brings in all kinds of staff to your meetings.
That is wonderful that they are planning to do something right away. I think the trial is a pretty good idea. It will give an idea if your DS will fit in with next year's group. One thing to remember, though, that even if your child gets paired with a kid who has similar MAP scores and even similar LOG, that's no guarantee that they'll get along. It's possible, of course! Hopefully, though, that will be an improvement to be in a group of kids working at a similar level. When my DS skipped into second, he was grouped for math with another kid with similar MAP scores, and it worked well for the academic piece, even though they were unlikely to ever be friends.
Thanks a lot! Yep, you're right. DS5 seems to fit in really well wherever he goes, but he's never been in a situation like this. A lot will depend on the other kids.
For now, since they're offering something that sounds pretty good and they're starting to see that your DS has special needs, I'd try to overlook some of the stuff about what you'll do in the future. Principals tend to want to do long-term planning, and with some of the HG+ kids, it really makes no sense to do anything than plan for what works in the short-term.
Thank you for the validation. I am feeling relieved that we will at least get
some improvement. I have a feeling that he will still be doing work a bit below his level at first, but he hopefully won't feel so sad and insulted by it.
As for math, we had difficulties getting appropriate math for our kiddo after the skip. They seemed to think that skipping to 2nd would be enough. Some ideas: pretests, and if your kiddo tests out, then he can either join the 3rd grade class or do Aleks or EPGY online in the classroom.
That's one of my main worries. I really don't think they are going to easily go for a pull-out, but of course I will bring it up as an option. Computer work in the classroom is more likely to be a go. They seem to consistently worry about putting him in a situation with noticeably much older kids.
Very good news that there's someone with GT experience. While you're waiting on your DYS application, you can let the school staff know that there is a free site for educators, with e-lists and lots of other information about teaching GT kids:
http://www.davidsongifted.org/edguild/Thank you. I will forward that one. Our wonderful tester put a lot of links in her report, including to ditd.org, but not that specific one.
I think all in all this is great news. Congratulations on your advocacy!
Thanks a lot. We feel like we haven't done much advocacy yet. Before, we couldn't fault them for their position, and think the kindergarten teacher did her best according to the information she had; follow-up testing was the only thing we could think of to do. After those results came back, we didn't want to be disrespectful or come off even more as pushy parents, and wanted to see what they proposed, which has turned out to be pretty reasonable so far. We certainly can't take credit for anything. But thank you very much for all of your support.
