Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How to deal with unresponsive teacher?

Every kid is individual, and so is every school and every bunch of kids in each grade....so it's too soon to know what the final answer will be, and if the tradeoff are worth it until you monitor each step of the way. Some kids are happy with a single skip and some subject accelerations in particular subjects or outside mentoring in a single subject. This idea is to get started in the nescessary direction and keep flexible.

Even though Math and Science is what he is complaining about, having classmates who can get his jokes or play games at his level might go a long way towards soothing his will to complain. Or not. But the older his classmates are, the more likelyhood that the teacher or a specialist can create a flexible group to do special projects from time to time. Rule of thumb is that differentiation works when the child's level is within 3 grade levels of the classroom average.

My son just liked being treated the way it's natural for teachers to treat older kids.

smiles,
Grinity

We have a meeting scheduled with the principal for this Tuesday afternoon!!!!

Good Luck.
Think about all the things you would like to be seen done for your DS in terms of differentiation and discuss with principal how his need can be met even with a 1 grade skip.
As an example for DS, he is in an accelerated/gifted 2nd grade class. The class works out of 3rd grade reading and language arts books. DS can pick books out of the school library at his own reading level. For math, they were not able to coordinate schedules for him to go to 3rd grade for math, so he is working out of the 3rd grade book in his class. His teacher has agreed to pretest him each unit and move on if he has mastery of it. There are about 9 gifted kids in the class and they get pulled out for science enrichment 2x a week. This has helped in the science area being able to explore at a much higher level. Math is still not prefect and we will see how it goes this year. He learns math at such a fast pace that one grade of math a year will not satisfy him, but we found a class locally (well 40 min away) that has approaches math through logics and he is really enjoying it. He gets to use negative numbers and multiplication. The teachers at the math enrichment have had other DYS and during the initial assesment for placement saw him abilities immediately. So for now he is enjoying learning again.
The other thing is that there are still a lot of basics that he is learning especially with grammer and writing, even though he could be going ahead he is learning that he needs to pay attention in class more so that he picks up on some of the basics. He realized on Friday that he missed a question on his reading/language arts test because he was not paying attention when his teacher was going over what a fragment is compared to a sentence. That in itself was a learning experience for him, it is the first time he realized that he missed something he needed to know because he was not paying attention.

For now it is good enough and we will see as he goes forward when changes will need to be made again. The school was also honest enough to let us know that they may not be able to meet his needs through 5 grade. Another skip or homeschooling may be needed in a few years. We will see.

For now it is important that you think about what you can ask of the school to meet his needs. Further assesment of his math level may be needed and how can his school accomodate it.

The one good thing is that your school seems to have acknowledged that he has special needs and it will be a matter of working with them to see that those needs are met.

Upadte: Meeticng rescheduled to next Monday becuase principal has to go to a funeral.

Thanks, Whattodo, for the advice. I have a list of goals for our meeting:

Math: placement test; work at his own pace in math on the computer in the classroom (EPGY/Destination Math/something similar).

Science: More in-depth instruction, which may be in the form of reading 4th grade level chapter books from the school library on the same topics the school is covering in class, followed by some sort of project in lieu of homework sheets. Another option might be pull-out -- I didn't know until this weekend that the older grades have a separate science teacher.

Reading: Reading group at his reading level, by the teacher, reading specialist, or pull-out to another grade. He already gets books from the library at his reading level.

Psych: ADHD assessment, achievement testing.

More and more, I'm not convinced that a skip is the best plan for him. He's immature, has attention problems, and can barely write a sentence, despite his rich vocabulary and general well-spokenness. Also, if he's doing 3rd grade math, 4th grade reading, and 6th grade science, I'm not sure 2nd grade will make him happier anyway.

Any suggestions for math testing?