Hi PAmom,
Welcome!
Are you in Pennsylvania? Excellent news if you are - there are actually laws and systems in place to meet the needs of gifted children.
Here are my questions -
Do you have any idea of LOG (level of giftedness)? If you feel comfortable, post the subtest scores here, if not perhaps run them by Dottie in a PM (private message)
The basic question is this: 'Is she 'one of a handful' of 2nd graders, or is she like 'Thomas Jefferson dining alone?'
If she is one of a handful, then it's reasonable to ask that the handful be gotten together for various reading and math groups throughout the day for instruction that is faster and deeper than the other kids, but with differentiation there is often the built in hope that the kids who get the differentiation will somehow not learn anything that is planned to be presented to the next grade up, and yet their need to learn in their readiness level will somehow be satisfied. So that's why it's important to have an idea of what the readiness to learn level is in the first place.
Why differentiated instruction and not subject accelerations or whole grade skips? Differentiated instruction should be given to every student at every level in every grade, in fact the school probably think that they are already providing differentiated instruction because they appeal to various learning styles, or have extra homework sheets to do during math time if they 'finish their seatwork early' - parents call this the 'MOTS' approach, (More of the Same) - if the child can do two digit addition - that what about a page full of 3 digit addition problems? How about doing that for 8 weeks? Ug!
At some level the underlying problem often come down to this - gifted children often think abstractly at a younger than expected age. Teachers are trained to see children as only capable of learning concretely. I haven't figured out a way around this.
Love and More Love,
Grinity
