Hi all,
I've made a few posts but I don't think I've really introduced myself. Now I'm wondering how to approach our first meeting with DS-just-turned-5's teacher, and could do with bouncing ideas off people who have BTDT, so probably I'd better.
We've done no testing so far, and I'd rather not unless there's a clear reason for it, but DS taught himself to read aged 2 and showed most of the cognitive classic early GT signs, from everyone saying "ooh, isn't he alert!" onwards. However, as regards motor development he's always been pretty average, and he was very late to start talking (but since he started, he's hardly stopped :-)
He started school in September. He's in P1, the normal year for his chronological age, but because of his birth date is one of the youngest. I estimate his reading age is now around 10y. His teacher, who seems lovely, picked this up immediately and e.g. exempted him from the early reading homework the others were doing. He's been bringing home books with a reading age of 8/9; they are very easy for him, but most hold some interest and he is happy to read and discuss them. I would like reassurance that his teacher *knows* they are easy for him to read, but provided she does, I'm happy with that side of things. Maths I'm more concerned about, even though he's less far ahead. He has once said "maths is boring, I have to do the same thing every day"; it seems that most of what they've done in the first half-term is about recognising and ordering numbers 1-20. (I am a bit concerned that in half a term with a small class, it was not found out that this was something he had mastered long ago.) DS had homework involving number cards to order the other day, and having done the specified task once, opined that playing a division sum game with the cards would be more fun. So we did that instead, and I seized the opportunity to write a note saying so in his homework book. He reported the next day that his teacher had asked him to do lots of sums on the whiteboard for her (good!) but that he'd got most of them wrong (not so good!) I may be borrowing trouble - maybe his teacher deliberately went above where he can get them right just to see what he can do - but he does have a "just guess a number" mode, and if he went into that, there may be a danger that she didn't see at all what he can do and that I'm labelled a pushy parent to boot... Which makes it quite hard to know how to approach them. The upcoming meeting will be an informal social thing, so not an opportunity for a real talk, but it will be a general opportunity to say that things are/are not going fine and hopefully to set up an individual meeting if necessary. I am really torn about what to say.
In favour of nodding, smiling and doing nothing: DS says he loves school. One of the reasons we picked this school is precisely that it doesn't push them hard academically in the early years, but has a wide variety of activities. He doesn't have a lot of homework, typically just reading (which is fine) and practising writing letters (which he needs). He does loads of mathematical and sciencey things at home, reads lots, etc. Although his writing is much improved - this is his major challenge area at school, and he's engaging with it well - I think it makes a grade-skip (even if we thought it would help) out of the question.
In favour of pushing, e.g., to be told exactly what differentiation they will do: DS's learning pattern is not typical. E.g. in maths, he took on board a huge number of concepts in a gulp a few weeks ago (he started school doing basic addition and subtraction, and has now gone through multiplication, division, place value, fractions and decimals, with a lot of geometry on the way) and is still digesting them. At this point, I think he doesn't look like a typical 5yo, because he obviously has concepts that a typical 5yo wouldn't be getting at all, but neither does he look like a child of the age where you would expect them to be doing those things [I realise I don't actually know what that age is] because by the time a child is interested in fractions etc. you wouldn't expect them ever to make errors in basic addition, would you? I'm not worried about this pattern as I've seen DS do it before, take a lot of things in all at once, be inaccurate for a while, and gradually sort it out. However, I'm concerned that his teacher, who may not have seen this before, may just take his inaccuracy as a sign that he's not ready to do those things and bore him to tears with 1 + 1.
Any thoughts?
(PS does everyone have that flashing envelope next to the My Stuff menu, even when there don't seem to be any unread messages or anything? Can one get rid of it?)
