- The principal at his school is firmly of the belief that he'll get greater depth and breadth in the English program because there's little to no time spent on learning the vocabulary and they can get onto the subject matter itself.
How much depth and breadth is needed? What subject areas are his strength? If you are looking for depth and breadth in math and science then I suspect you will be hugely disappointed by majority of the teacher's abilities to actually deliver on that at the elementary level. A few years ago when we were starting this adventure I was talking to our VP who was trying to convince me that they could differentiate for my math/science obsessed DS. "While the other kids are learning that plants need sun, water and soil he can learn that they use a process called PHOTOSYNTHESIS" - she said it nice and slow because it was a big word. I was pretty proud that I contained my laughter until I was in my car.
- We feel like it might help DS6's frustration in school because his grade 1 teacher indicated that he often didn't have the vocabulary in French to communicate his big ideas. He was constantly asking her how to translate very sophisticated ideas.
DS had this problem as well but to be fair he has the same issue in English.
- I also happen to know that he would be in a very small class this year if he were in the English program, which would be great.
Class size is meaningless if the needs of the class are so wide that the teacher can't address them all and teaches to the majority. Then there is the added fun of teachers that don't think that gifted kids need differentiation. In our experience the French classes are much larger but there are more high needs kids in the English side. Majority of the kids with IEPs were out of FI.
- On the other hand, it has also been suggested to me that it's the same curriculum with the added distraction of a new language, which slightly softens the blow of the ridiculously too-easy content. It would at least be something new to learn and probably the only new thing to learn in the earlier grades.
Yes, this didn't work great for us because his strengths were in subjects that were taught in English while the ones were his LD was more an issue were in French. Your board has a higher percentage of subjects in French in early elementary so YMMV.
- It was also suggested that an English class might not be more challenging. Because bilingualism is so valued in our area, most parents would probably prefer to place their kids in French immersion. As a result, the English program would likely tend to have more kids with learning challenges and this means the classrooms would tend to be far, far more diverse than French immersion, and dealing with a much wider range of needs and learning readiness. As a result, the curriculum in most English classes might move even more slowly and in less breadth and depth.
This is definitely the case in DS's previous school. They did things slightly different (you choose FI after grade 3 so parents have more of an idea if their kid is struggling or not). 80% do FI while 20% don't. All of the kids that participate in the gifted pull out are in FI.
I know the both boards in the city really, really push differentiation and say that they do an amazing job doing it. Our personal experience with it was disappointing at best. In the French stream at least there is some hope of new vocabulary and better odds of him finding gifted peers (peers was key for my DS, however some kids are much better at making friends, have a wider variety of interests and this isn't as much of an issue for everyone). In the older grades kids drop out of FI for a wider variety of reasons and the dynamic is different so my comments above are aimed at the elementary years. In our city where FI is the default the ones that opt out in elementary are more often the ones that are struggling to keep up with the FI. I would be surprised if the English teacher will have the bandwidth to be able to differentiate and the need for differentiation would be even higher.
Note - when you say switch out of FI I assume you are not talking about the Congregated Gifted Program. If you're talking about giving up FI for English CGP either now or at grade 5+ then I have a completely different answer.
