Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School What would you do?

I would make the appointment immediately. It may take a while for them to put a plan in place. Ask if they will evaluate her for giftedness, or if you need to have her tested privately. Then ask what they will do to help her enjoy school and learn. Also, ask if she can be assigned to a teacher who is open to giving her differentiation. (some are not! Our K teacher was offended, and actually became quite hostile to us once we began asking questions about offering harder/different material.)

I have twins who just completed K. We asked for help in February, and didn't get anything in place until the end of May. Both are gifted, and both began to have problems in K, one before the end of the first semester and the other in Jan. Once we began seeing physical symptoms of anxiety, personality changes, etc. and realized that one was already "checking out" and making mistakes on worksheets because he was so bored, I tried to ask the teachers for help, but was told there wasn't anything they could do in K for differentiation and that the twins should just "enjoy K."

The teacher of the twin who had the most issues accused us of pushing him too hard, and just couldn't accept that he was only anxious at school and that it was due to the fact they were refusing to acknowledge his actual reading level and making him read level 1 books and making him do counting worksheets when he was reading high school level texts at home and teaching himself multiplication and square roots.

I did some research, found the gifted teacher at their school and asked for the twins to be evaluated. Officially our school doesn't offer differentiation until second grade, but in our state, the schools HAVE to assess the children if asked in writing. Once they are identified as gifted, the school has to do a Gifted IEP. I made the request in FEBRUARY, and their GIEP plans were not done until the end of MAY, so they really didn't receive any differentiation in K. But it took months to go through the "official" process. They do each have a plan in place for enrichment and differentiation for 1st grade, and I am keeping my fingers crossed, although I plan to check in with the gifted teacher often.