As usual, I've been swamped during the spring and fall, so I haven't posted in a while. Apologies. But now I really need some help. Here's what's happening.
DS5 is completing kindergarten now and preparing to enter first grade. We are trying to set up accommodations for next year. We are frustrated.
The situation has some unique aspects. Probably the most prominent of them is that the language of the school is French, even though we are English speakers ourselves. DS has been attending since he was 3, and speaks at the level of a native French 5 year old, but his French is not as good as his English. He reads well in English (Harry Potter is his level, except he stopped reading it because it was too scary). He reads in French, though less well. Math is a strength. Probably not as strong as some of those here, but a strength. He has known how to multiply since he was 4, though nobody has ever shown him how to multiply multi-digit numbers; he has a good sense for division though no formal instruction; yesterday he figured out 2^8 in his head. A strength.
Here's the problem. There is a new gifted school opening up next year that we thought about enrolling him in. It was very appealing. They planned to start him with an individualized 4th grade math curriculum and go from there. Accommodations in all the other subjects as well. It was a risk, though. It's a new school and there was no telling how things would shake out. We talked with the director of the French school during the winter, and she promised accommodations if appropriate. In the end we decided to stay with the French school because the exposure to the language is so valuable and because the director seemed open to lots of differentiation schemes.
I brought him in for assessment last week, and he seemed to do great. They assessed his reading in English and his math in French. He has never done any math in French, but he still managed to do addition and subtraction problems with carrying and borrowing, multiplication problems, and some others. ("They have some word in French that means times," he told me afterwards. "It sounded something like "fois".") It all looked like it would be a success. We met with the director today, though, and the judgment was: "His English reading skills are advanced, and we will have a pull-out reading group for him. He has a high math aptitude as well. But in math we feel he will be sufficiently challenged by the French first grade curriculum. We'll certainly keep an eye on it, but that's where he belongs for now."
DW and I were stunned. What was so crazy was that they seemed to recognize his aptitude in math, but somehow seemed to think nevertheless that no accommodations were necessary. We really want to work with the school because he has been happy there and because we do feel the language exposure is invaluable. But this felt like deception at best.
So a question to the wise among you: What is our next move?
BB
