I’ve been attempting to advocate for my advanced reader in the classroom. At this point I think he’s probably more than 2 grade levels ahead… 99th percentile. In addition to being skilled, he reads a lot.
I don’t have any evidence that he’s learning anything at his ability level regarding reading at school. He often runs into ceilings. His classroom library has books that are mostly on grade level, some above, some below. He’s read a lot of the books already & can’t find more that interest him. Last school year, he was required to use AR starting at grade level and move up one notch with each book (2.0, 2.1, etc). He wasn’t reading at his ability until the end of the school year.
I’ve been asking his classroom teacher for opportunities to “stretch” his reading interest and ability. I also asked the teacher in his gifted pull out program. The regular classroom teacher says that she’s teaching a range of abilities, some as low as 1st grade level, so it’s hard to address him as an outlier. The gifted teacher tells me that some of the gifted kids are gifted in math and are grade level or below in reading, so it’s hard to have gifted reading projects for the group.
Maybe I’m not communicating clearly enough. Or maybe I need to ask for things more specifically. I thought it was standard to ask for differentiation, but I’m not getting much response.
Any advice or ideas?
