Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Anyone *not* skipping K?

Hi All,

I've been busy at work for a while, but have a more flexible schedule now that summer has arrived. I've been following along when I can, though, and am particularly happy for this thread.

Our DS4 (almost 5) is going into K in the fall. He has been in a mixed Pre-K/K class this year, and most of his closest friends from the class are going into 1st. (That's to say, his closest friends were in the K part of the class.) We thought a lot about the issue, but in the end were persuaded by some considerations that several people introduced on this board.

For background, DS has been doing multiplication, division, and fractions in varying degrees of detail since he turned 4. His reading is now at about a third grade level, having advanced very rapidly in the last year. He attends a French immersion school, and we just learned from the teacher that he reads French rather fluently as well, although not quite as well as the two most advanced Kindergartners in his mixed class. His behavior has gone through some rocky periods, but has been sterling for the last six months. It seems clear he would do fine in first grade.

So why not make the move? The main reason is that Kindergarten is probably the most flexible, most child-centered, grade in the entire school. If there's any grade in which DS can do most what he wants, it's Kindergarten. At our school - but from what I can tell this is true more generally as well - first grade has a rather rigid curriculum, involves a lot of "seat time", and will probably be pretty boring for him. If he has to skip a grade, then, we decided in our case it should be one of the more academic grades rather than one of the less.

There are other considerations, too. Some are purely practical: the class size in kindergarten will be smaller next year, for example, so it will just be a better situation overall. But also, we haven't done any testing yet, and we'd like to do some to see exactly where he falls. We're hoping both that that will give us a better sense for the situation, and also that it will give us some focus for discussions with the school. Finally, there's the extra issue of the second language. We are not native speakers of French at home, unlike many of the other families at the school, so although his French is very good for his age, and is probably at the level of normal native speakers a grade up, it is just a bit safer to give him another year in the French language environment.

Well, I don't know if those considerations are relevant to anyone else, but maybe it's interesting to hear what we were thinking in making the decision. Looking forward to hear what others are thinking too.

BB