So, it is official. DS8 will be accelerated from 3rd to 5th in math. This is what had originally been proposed by the district, but we had a last minute conversation about whether he should just go up to 4th. DH and I argued in favor of the 2 years, and in the end we all agreed on the 2 years(well, the Principal isn't happy about any of it, I don't think, but she is going along with it and making it happen, and to be honest, she is just worried about DS socially, which isn't a bad thing).

But now I am panicked - what if it is too much for DS, what if he terrible handwriting (and failure to keep straight columns of numbers) messes him up, what if he feels terrible because he is just "in the middle" of the class instead of the top, what if it is too hard, or too much homework? Or the worst scenario - what if he starts to dislike math!

Now, the objective testing all showed that he knew the 4th grade material well. But it also showed he didn't really have a grasp of that much of the 5th grade material - so this year should be challenging, which is good. But I had him do the 4th grade assessment on Aleks and he only scored 82% (he missed several questions where he had to remember cumulative, associative, etc. properties, and he couldn't remember the terms - we haven't really done math for most of the summer except practicing times tables, but he also missed some fraction questions that surprised me). That 82% has me worried- what if he just isn't ready for 5th grade - he probably could use the last 2-3 months of 4th. I try to remind myself that many of the kids in 5th grade are not going to remember more than 80% of the 4th grade material - that is why they review in the beginning of the year. And I stared at his SCAT scores from January, trying to remind myself that he was in very high percentile compared to 4th graders in that test.

So, we have left it that we will evaluate in 6 weeks, and if we feel like it is in DS's best interests, will shift him down to 4th. The specialist and DH are confident he will be fine in 5th - I am a bit worried, although not dramatically so. We told DS that we were confident he would do the work, but that 5th grade was a 6 week experiment and he seemed okay with that.

Thanks for letting me vent. I am obviously not talking about my concerns around my DS! And if you had a successful 2 year acceleration, please post and tell me how it went and how long it took for your child to settle in.

Cat