Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy conference: what to request?

We have a parent-teacher conference next week regarding DD5 in first grade. As I've detailed in another thread, the teacher seems to be trying to accommodate DD as best she can within the system.

However, the only things being done so far are in Reading. DD has 5th grade level reading homework. She also works individually with a para-pro (not sure how often, maybe several days a week) where she reads aloud from a chapter book and the para-pro asks questions to see if DD understands what she's reading. So far they've only read "Magic Tree House" books, which are fairly easy for DD, so I'm not sure how much benefit this is. I've talked to the para-pro directly and it sounds like she's not really sure what to do with DD. She said DD's comprehension is fabulous, and that if I think they should be working with harder books, to let her know.

The teacher mentioned that DD took one Accelerated Reader test so far, and she wants to have her do more with AR.

She also said she wants to get DD started on Accelerated Math but that hasn't happened yet. Note that all of this is "extra" stuff, when time allows, in addition to having DD do the regular 1st grade curriculum.

My question is this: since reading is already such a strong area for DD, and we do a ton of reading at home should I be asking for her to do something different during her time with the para-pro? If so, what?

I'm thinking Math or Writing might be good. I do not have a good idea of her exact Math capabilities right now; I'm guessing around 2nd grade level. As for writing, she writes like the typical first grader. I'm thinking it might be good for her to have more practice (both for the handwriting/fine motor aspect and the composition/grammar skills) in case we want to ask for further acceleration down the road. I don't want "poor writing skills" to be used as a reason not to accelerate her, as it was in the past.

Any suggestions? If we had to pick one, Math or Writing, for her to do during her time with the para-pro, which is better?

Hi GG!

let me quote you from a previous post, because I think it's exactly what I want to say to you:
snip -
I do wish you luck, Mary, and pray that the teacher will be receptive and understanding and wise.

What is DS saying about school? Does he hate it, or not want to go? We switched schools for our DD recently because she clearly expressed that she was unhappy there and "wished she could go to another school." Do you have any back-up options for your son if this school is not willing to work with you?

Keep us posted.
-snip

Also -
-snip
It's not the *ideal* situation for DD. I know this school and this district will never do a grade skip and probably will never let DD do subject acceleration in another teacher's room at a higher grade level. I know this teacher doesn't really truly "get it" and that DD will have to sit through some boring material she's already mastered. In most subjects she still will have to do the same curriculum as the rest of her class, even though she could be working ahead in every subject. I know that a lot of her potential will not be realized, and that saddens me.

HOWEVER--it is a better situation than what we had! And DD seems much happier, so I am grateful for anything positive. In Reading, at least, she is able to do accelerated and independent work. The teacher started her out at a Grade 4 level in Reading homework and said she won't have to do "reading group" with the rest of the class. I am hopeful that as the year goes on, this teacher will be willing to make some other accommodations for DD.-snip

OK - Here's my take on this. Your DD as a 1st grader is a bit of theatre. She's like ready to do 4th grade-ish material with maybe 2nd grade-ish skills, yes? I know that in the past you though that the district would never go for SSA or GS, but I think it's time to ask again. You can tell them that in-class enrichment only works when the child is within a year or two of the "best fit" academics. So, you choices are

1) homeschooling
2) another year of private school "just for the gradeskip(s)"
3) In-class Acceleration (not enrichment) That means to give up entirely the first grade curriculum unless it's already differentiated, such as in the reading, and let her work independently in every subject at her own level. Math can be with a book in the back of the class or online with ALEK. The Para can work with her on presentations in Math and Social Studies the are tangentailly related to the topics the other kids are studying (Check out School Wide enrichment model - renzulli for lots of details) Basically you want the Para to Homeschool DD while she's in the classroom, working at her own currricula, because anything less than that is a dangerous joke.


How is your daughter on touch typing? This is what made the difference for DS10, when he finally started being able to stop "learning the tool" of keyboarding, and was able to use the tool to do other work. Remember children are in school learning skills (neat handwriting, keyboarding, math facts), learning content, and learning critical thinking skills. For every area, figure out what the learning goals are, ask yourself if it's a skill, knowledge or thinking that is being mastered, and see where she is. The skills are tough, because sometimes they just won't be mastered until the body is ready. The trick is to try to meet your daughter's needs on each of the three tracks - and they will vary! This is why schools hate GS. Until the touch typing is in place, it's very difficult for a child to keep up with homework, written product at their intellectual level.

I liked the look of the website you mentioned for writing: http://mentisonline.com/index.html Perhaps your daughter could actually do that during the day at school?

Bottom line: Get the para to work on touch typing. Design a homeschooler's curricula that can be done online during school time and get the teacher's agreement to let ignore the regular 1st grade curricula.

this all depends on how DD sees it. What does She want to do with the Para?

Love and More Love and great big hugs -
Trinity
P.S. How's the Young Scholar Program Application comming?

Trinity,
Wow! We should be paying you for this advice! Great work! I love how you distinguished the difference between skills and academic subject readiness.

To all with gifted K and 1st graders: Please accept my encouragement and respect. This may be the most difficult period of time you will face in regards to advocating for your child.

To teachers and administrators: Please consider that most K and 1st grade curriculums are excruciatingly easy for any gifted child. Please consider early entrance and grade acceleration for these children. Over all, it is easier for everyone if the child is instructed at their level at the start of their education even if their skills are not as well developed as their intellect.

Thanks for the Compliment, Deblows, It went right to my head. I sooo need an agent. Any brave souls want to step forward?
Actually, I've been refining my ideas since 9:28am, someone's time, and am going to start a new thread under excellence in education. Gifted Movement Friends, grab your keyboards and meet me there!

Trinity, your advice is great (as always) and gives me much to think about, so thank you.

Here's the catch about doing a grade skip or homeschooling or going to a private school: DD *loves* this class, this teacher. For switching schools 3 weeks into the year, she has adjusted beautifully. She has established some wonderful friendships within her own classroom and socially seems absolutely in her element. She is in Girl Scouts (Brownies) with most of the girls in her class, and the other first grade classes, and loves that too. (After the first Brownie meeting she said, "This is the best day of my life! I have waited my whole life for this!")

She tells me constantly how much she loves this teacher and wishes she could have this teacher forever. At recess she will play with kids her own age and with older kids. She gets along well with everyone. Socially she seems very comfortable and happy and confident. She does not complain about school at all, and really wants to be there.

We've talked about it and she does not want to be homeschooled, for social reasons. She wants to be with other kids. Sometimes she talks about the private school she attended last year for K, and says she misses some people there, but is clear that she does not want to go there this year because she loves her new school.

The teacher said she did not have to do "reading groups" with the rest of the class, but could work independently. However, after a week of that, DD said she wanted to be in a reading group. I assume purely for the social reasons.

Oops, time to go pick her up from school. I will have to write more later.

GG - Sounds so wonderful! And even if it doesn't last more than another month or two, that doesn't take away how wonderful it is right now.

The great thing is that she has choices! I would still push for DD to be able to "pick and choose" from a menu of "personal work" and "whole class" work.

Having thought through all the options means that you will be ready for whatever comes.

I'm having a brain-wave. OK, Perhaps while she works with the Para, the Para can demonstrate who to take a "whole class" assignment and make it more "personal." That way your DD can grow up to be one of the lucky ones who takes responsibility for making classroom work, work FOR her.

I think you're doing very well. handpicking the teachers is a wonderful stratagy. I would encourage you to try to get in there and observe, if possible.

This reminds me of a little conversation I had with a friend about my DS10.

Me (defensivly): Every child deserves a proper challenge!
My wise friend (gently): Every child deserves to be thought about well.

I still get tears when I think of this.
You are the one who get's to "think well about dd." What a treat!

Love and More Love,
Trinity

My experience to date has been less successful, so take my advice with a shaker of salt. You appear to have a good working relationship with your child's teacher. That alone is worth its weight in gold. Such a relationship with a principle would be priceless, as it might minimize the need to start afresh every year.

Most teachers we've had experience with are able to differentiate instruction plus or minus 2 grade levels from the current grade level. Differentiation beyond that requires a serious time investment on the part of the teacher. Most teachers don't have the time or resources. Most don't have any training in special and/or gifted education.

Consider checking out or purchase a copy of the following book:
http://www.amazon.com/Social-Emotional-Development-Gifted-Children/dp/1882664779

It will give you a good idea of the options available and some hard numbers on what works both academically and with regard to emotional self-image and well being of children. You may be surprised by the degree to which current research and ingrained beliefs differ.

It is excellent that you've found a teacher so early who is both motivated and willing to work to meet your child's need. Exceptional girls are a difficult problem because by 9-10 years of age, they tend to transform from academic achievers to social conformists.

I think a key goal should be to establish a pattern of assessment and pretesting to avoid making DD do a whole bunch of work on material she's already mastered. What DD does in the free time that creates is a hard question to answer. But I could almost argue that anything is better than being forced to work on stuff you already know.

Check with the teacher and see if the standard curriculum has pre/assessment tests. But be wary. In 2nd grade, our teacher suggested that our daughter take unit tests before the material was covered, and move on to the next unit so long as she continued to demonstrate mastery. I tried using the results of standardized achievement testing and current progress reports in EPGY math to explain that she could do unit pretests every day till the end of the school year without finding unmastered material. In the end, the teacher provided a couple pretests, which were passed with flying colors and then stopped.

Eventually, toward the end of the year, I have to credit her with getting us involved in ALEKS (http://www.aleks.com/). EPGY which we'd previously used is very good and rigorous on concepts. But it is very expensive and the presentation is dry and dated. Through our school we were able to get a one year license for ALEKS for something like $35. ALEKS isn't as rigorous conceptually. It is more prescriptive. But it has a crisp clean user interface which our daughter likes, and unlike EPGY, the local school district stands behind it.

If your daughter is an independent learner, then self-paced mathematics instruction through EPGY or ALEKS would be an excellent solution. At home, you might pick up a copy of the book "The Number Devil". It covers some advanced mathematical concepts in language that children find entertaining. I don't believe our daughter understood everything that she heard, but she did find it inspirational. If the book is well received, there is a computer game of the same name by Viva Media which she'll absolutely love.

You may also wish to read a book on mathematical cognitive development:
http://www.amazon.com/Young-Children-Reinvent-Arithmetic-Implications/dp/0807739049

I have found the above book to be instrumental in figuring out where my children are at, so as to determine appropriate games and learning activities.

The reading plan sounds okay. The main goal being to let her develop a love of reading by letting her read what she wants. She'll run out of Magic Tree House books eventually. And don't be dismayed if she re-reads her favorite books several times. That's just something some younger kids do.

I think the important thing here is to gently nudge her toward a lot of the classics: The Boxcar Children series, anything by E. Nesbit, The Little Princess, The Secret Garden, Little House on the Prairie, Pollyanna, Heidi, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, etc. Our daughter also greatly enjoyed the American Girl books, Series of Unfortunate Events, and Harry Potter. But there's just so much being published these days that it is hard to spot good ones.

You may eventually want to do nationally normed standardized intelligence testing. A WISC IV would give you an idea of what kind of learner your child is and the degree to which her achievement deviates from same aged peers. Most school testing stops when they've identified a child as being in the 99th percentile. But it is important to identify if your child's performance is significantly more than 2 standard deviations from the norm. I.e. does your child's testing results indicate a level of achievement that may be shared by as many as 1 in a 100 children or 1 in 10,000? The types of services that may need to be provided will vary accordingly.

Trinity--again, thanks for your thoughts on this. "Every child deserves to be thought about well." Very wise indeed.

I like the touch typing/keyboarding idea! DD would enjoy that. Sometimes after she reads her Reading homework page to me, we sit together at the computer and take turns making up sentences using the vocabulary words. Our "rule" is to use at least two vocabulary words in a sentence. I make up one sentence and type it, then she makes up the next one and types it herself. She loves this, and it reinforces comprehension of the words. She likes typing on the keyboard and I know she'd love to be able to type faster (currently it's the hunt-and-peck method).

I need to ask DD what she would like to do with the Para-pro. I have not done that yet. I also need to find out how much time she spends with this parapro. I don't think it's much; maybe ten minutes at a time, several times a week is the impression I've gotten.

The teacher did start her on Accelerated Math this week! DD is excited about it. She saw that it said "Grade 2" at the top of the page. She said, "It's kind of like I'm in a lot of different grades now--5th grade for reading, and 2nd grade for math, and 1st grade for everything else." It's interesting to see/hear how she is processing her "uniqueness."

The teacher said DD seemed to like the Accelerated Math. She said there were concepts/symbols DD didn't know, such as the "greater than" and "less than" symbols, but she just asked what they meant and the teacher explained and DD got it right away. Teacher said she told DD she didn't have to do the whole thing (looked like there were at least 5 pages of work), but DD said she wanted to do all of it--and she did. I don't know yet how she scored on it.

I think the main thing I want to ask about at the conference is the option of ignoring the first grade curriculum, at least in some subjects. If she's capable of doing 2nd grade math, it seems silly to have her doing 1st grade math too. But I don't know if the teacher will agree with that.

I will also ask the teacher for her ideas on what else DD could do with the parapro. I have already mentioned to her that I think having DD simply read to the parapro isn't of huge benefit, so I know she (teacher) is aware of my concerns.

Ggoebel, thanks for your thoughts and ideas. I will check out all the books you mention.

You're right, we do have a good working relationship with this teacher and that is worth its weight in gold! I am so grateful for this. As for the principal, he has been welcoming and generally supportive but in a "hands off" kind of way. I get the impression he is happy to have another warm body in the school to boost his enrollment, but doesn't want to be directly involved in the process of what we're doing with DD. He has already said he can't promise me anything for next year (in terms of finding another teacher who is willing to let DD work ahead). I feel that I am better off just working out arrangements with the teacher and leaving the principal out of it. I have also found from experience with another school (the one we pulled DD from after the first three weeks of this year), that having a supportive principal is worth nothing if the teacher isn't willing to accommodate the plan. That is a miserable situation with resentments all around, and not good for the child.

Thanks for the suggestions on the classics. I will definitely start steering DD towards those types of books. Recently for "family reading time" (me reading aloud to all three kids, ages 5, 7 and 11) we have been reading through Roald Dahl's books. We have all thoroughly enjoyed Dahl's creativity and his inventive use of language! So far we've read: James and the Giant Peach; Matilda; The BFG; Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator... and have some other of Dahl's more obscure books lined up next.

Oh, thanks also for the feedback on ALEKS. I am very interested in this program. Do you (or anyone reading this) have any idea how ALEKS compares to the Accelerated Math program?

Yippee!
Sounds like GG is integrating into her picture of herself that she can be herself in school - heaven!

Are you a touch typist? If not, you have an opportunity to learn together. I started DS10 with a dozen different programs at age 7.5, but we found Mavis Beacon, with the verbal encouragement turned off, to be the best. It's so much better to start them off correctly than to reteach after they have devised their own method. So it may take years before she can use touch-typing, but when it finally sinks in, it's like they sprout wings on their minds. You might also try "read-write-type" which is very repetitive, but good for little ones - that one is really better for a kid who needs some help with phonics.

I think that if the teacher is giving the Math and the Reading, then the only things left to do are to try to get her permission to do less of the first grade "seat-work" perhaps 25% if you can't get a complete pass. If the Para can help her "dig deeper" into the topics that she covers in Science and Social Studies or sit with her while she touch types on the classroom computer, or maybe works on the next big "skill hurdle" - Math facts. What ever you decide on, it should sound like fun to DD - that's key!

Best of luck on the conference,
Trinity