First, Hello! I have been reading these boards for several months, and finally feel I have enough information to post myself.

We have been struggling with my DS11s adjustment into middle school and 6th grade this year. Since 1st grade he has been in gifted/advanced clustered classes with daily math pull-outs for math. This has worked reasonably well for DS. While he has not seemed particularly challenged, he was not unhappy, so we rocked along with the status quo. We really did not have much to compare him with! We felt he was probably the smartest in his class, but he was not the one getting all the awards and, while he always had high As, he wasn't always the top grade earner for his class either. He is a good kid who does not disrupt when he is bored, he is much more likely to be thinking about something far more interesting in his own head than talking or causing trouble.


Once the exciting newness of 6th grade wore off, the trouble began. He now has gifted classes for math and English/language arts. The gifted kids are spread out among all the classes for social studies and math. He began complaining of frequent headaches and stomachaches, noise, chaos, and frustration. This led to crying meltdowns at the smallest things at school, which resulted in teasing from the other kids, even those in the gifted classes.

The social studies class results in the worst problems but has the sweetest teacher. She has been very concerned about DS. She has a son with AS and is especially sensitive to those kinds of issues. She encouraged us to pursue testing. We have been working to obtain private testing since December. At this point, I only have what the psychologist has verbally told me as far as IQ due to some other issues going on. We will get the full report hopefully by the end of this month. She was able to get me his WJ-III achievement scores, and feels that those will be enough to meet with the school and find out what they can and will be able to do to educate DS next year. I have a meeting scheduled this coming Monday with them.

We are dealing with a WISC-IV GAI of 153, I believe. His WJ-III achievement scores are as follows:
Grade-normed:
Brief Achievement 159 >99.9
Total Achievement 163 >99.9
Broad Reading 139 >99.9
Broad Math 156 >99.9
Broad Written Language 169 >99.9

Age-normed:
Brief Achievement 161 >99.9
Total Achievement 163 >99.9
Broad Reading 143 >99.9
Broad Math 160 >99.9
Broad Written Language 161 >99.9

DS is already one of the youngest kids in his grade and his emotional and social maturity is lagging behind. The psychologist is not recommending a full grade skip for these reasons, but she also says that DS's skills are to advanced for successful differentiation in a regular classroom. From what I understand at this point, all-day gifted begins in 8th grade. I have heard that there is a possibility of all-day in 7th grade next year, but no more than a rumor. We are hoping that the school will be willing to allow some sort of independent study for and social studies with possible placement in 8th grade gifted classes for math and science. We've been also working on a plan for what he could then do in 8th grade if they worry about that.

DS is in both band and chorus this year and is doing well with them. He has some real musical talent and needs to pursue that as well as being involved in group efforts and actually doing something he has to practice at to learn. His gifted English/language arts class is also sufficient, in my opinion.

I guess at the end of this really long introduction, I am asking for any further suggestions for what information I may want to take into the meeting with me. I honestly have no idea how this is going to go. The DYS application is already filled out and just waiting for the final psych report to send it in. We REALLY hope that we can find some other kids like DS for him. We live in a rural area...

Thanks in advance for any insight or suggestions you might have!