FWIW, our ds went to a gifted pull-out class once a week when he was in elementary. It was the same type of situation, he was not supposed to be required to make up any work he missed. His teachers didn't require that he made up any work, but the reality was he missed what happened while he was not in his home classroom. It sounds like your ds has a worksheet-oriented teacher, so if it's material that builds on previous assignments, I can see that the teacher might feel it's important to make up the work. I'd consider - is the making up of work pushing your ds over the edge, or is he generally ok with it?
He only gets overwhelmed with the worksheets when he tries to complete all of them as well on Tuesday in class. We have drilled into him that he is to bring all of the worksheets home to do, which has helped. And in all honesty, the entire first quarter grading period was review from second grade, so the worksheets were simply more of the same repetition for him. For instance, over the first five weeks there were 16 worksheets on the same topic -- telling time and calculating elapsed time. DS missed 4 questions out of 154 on those worksheets, I don't think missing a few would have hurt him! :-)
Re. writing, can you tell us more about what the actual challenges are? Where is writing an issue - in his regular class or in the class he's been accelerated into? Is he having more difficulty with generating his thoughts than the teacher expects the average child at his *current* grade level has? If he is, I'd really focus on looking into what's up with him. It's possible that the challenge isn't that your ds is not "ready" for the next grade up writing.. it sounds like he might have difficulty with expressive language. If that's the case, two things to keep in mind: 1) if he has a challenge, he'll have it no matter what grade level he is in. Chances are good, though, that if you make sure he's accelerated appropriately, it will make it easier to work on any challenges he may have. 2) If he *does* have an expressive language (or other) disability you want to know - the sooner the better, so that he can have meaningful remediation while young.
That is exactly what I am concerned about. Both his third grade teacher and his gifted pullout teacher have the same issue. I am not sure if the issue is idea generation or if it's more of a "from the brain to the paper" issue. DS did indicate yesterday that when he tries to write for very long his hand starts to hurt. That's the first I heard of that so we are keeping an eye on it. His gifted pullout teacher welcomes collaboration with the home school teacher, but there seems to be a firewall between the home school and the pullout program (which is run by the county). The home school engenders a feeling of anti - gifted sentiment, considering all of the issues we have had in getting him identified, recognized and served.
