Mmmm. Turkey. Yum!
Wow -- I find it amazing that they'd skip him, not not identify him as gifted! Very odd.
They didn't skip him because they identified him. We had him tested and his mental age was above 7, the prerequisite for early entry into first. The school admin that handles gifted kids didn't initially recommend skipping (mentioning the social issues), but ultimately agreed to support our request after our tests were done.
I don't think "not demonstrating what he knows" is a nice way of saying he's not gifted. Is it possible they know he *is*, but don't want to provide services beyond the grade skip? He hasn't been tested yet, has he? Do you think he'd cooperate?
We've had him tested and we know that based on his IQ he's in the right range. We took the SB5 test, which wasn't a great test for him, but it illustrated the point. The school has a copy.
Have you sought more differentiation -- and would he do it? Is he enjoying school?
He has some level of differentiation right now, but it's probably not going to be enough. I think his teacher is trying to do the best that she can within her parameters. We'll make a case for it more once he's officially id'ed as gifted in PA. That's not a silver bullet, but it's a start. He does like school, but largely the social aspects of it (recess, etc). He is learning some new things, but that's probably because what DW and I do is not structured.
From what I remember, you're afterschooling informally. How's he doing there -- does he still have that "spark"?
Yes, and he has been really getting into it. Some of it may be a little bit of showing off for family, but as an example he was just doing binary math problems, then base 3 math, and then he wanted to do hexidecimal, and then back to base 10, and finally some geometry. The boy will do a non 10 base borrowing or carry over math problem yet at school he's still working on number pairs for 10. He's back to doing things that make us say "oh gosh!". And then "now what do we do?" because we could continue to feed his thirst to learn but then there is a huge disconnect between what he does in school (and what he demonstrates in school) and what he does at home. I know that his teacher has seen some glimpses into his ability... And maybe that's enough to get us that all important gifted identification.
But to Dottie's point (which my wife also makes), part of this is his personality.
I feel for your ds! It's an awkward spot, adjusting to a grade skip that's probably inadequate anyway. Yikes!
Yeah. Grandma is here, and she's a third grade teacher... apparently DS has a lot of 3rd grade mastered at this point.
JB
