Hello all,
I would appreciate any advice on my dd8.
Here's the background:
-She started K with age mates and hated it. After having had such issues with her older brother - needed to go to full time GT school, we decided to IQ test. She tested at 99%+. Tester suggested homeschooling for K and then sendng her to GT school the next year.
-During homeschool, daughter was uninterested in learning. It was near impossible to get her to do any school work or read. Preferred more creative pursuits and friends.
-Before the next school year, the GT school suggested we grade skip her to 2nd instead of 1st because she scored so much higher on IQ test than most other students her age. We agree because we knew she might need some real challenge to finally motivate her. She was excited to do the skip.
-Her first year of school (grade skipeed to 2nd) did 3rd grade work. She was unprepared and not interested. She did end up working hard and made huge leaps on her MAP test. However, she was near the bottom of the class all year.
-Next year, I met with teachers and suggested we move her back. They felt that she was gaining so quickly that she would be fine and it was best to leave her put. She finished 3rd this year (they did fourth grade work.) She made even bigger gains this year. She is reading very well but still doesn't like to read for pleasure at home. She isn't very mathy and is only about a year ahead in math. She was still in the bottom 1/3 of her class. She's 8, the other students were 9 going on 10.
-Our family just relocated to a new state. We have an opportunity to reverse this grade skip now and we do not know what to do. My daughter's previous teachers from the GT school, strongly suggest we do not pull her back. They think that the regular classroom (with the grade skip still in place) will be a perfect fit for her. I agree that she doesn't need the GT classroom right now. However, I'm not sure about keeping the grade skip in place.
Now is our chance to right this, since she'll be needing to make all new friends anyway. My husband and I go back and forth on this all the time. She knows cursive, division, multiplication, reading about 6th grade, etc. So is it right to send her back to 3rd and a regular classroom. The classrooms do not even cluster group and do not even start enrichment pull outs until January.
We are concerned about having a 16 yr old graduate HS. We are also concerned that she isn't motivated and she just doesn't like school or academics. I worry that she won't be able to compete as well as she could for HS scholarships, etc. if we keep the grade skip. However, if we reverse the grade skip and she suddenly does mature and catch fire, then what???
Socially she was perfectly happy with the older kids and always has preferred that. Even today, when we visted Sunday school it felt "wrong" to send her with the 3rd graders (age mates) because she seemed to be more like the 4th graders....so confusing.
Sorry for the long post, I'd love your advice.
Thanks
