It sounds like the meeting went well ABQMom! I'm glad his social studies teacher recommended him for the gifted social studies class
Re the math - my ds does the same thing (but with writing) where when he doesn't understand something he gets stuck and just sits there and won't move on. Now that I think about it, he does that with anything when he doesn't know how to work the problem or proceed, we just don't see it much with math because that's one of his areas of strength. Anyway, he's been through speech/language therapy for written expression, and the first thing his SLP did with him was to work on strategies for what to do when he gets "stuck". I realize it's not the same type of academic challenge, but I wonder if it would help your ds to have some kind of strategy to help him move out of the just sitting there thinking through the problem over and over again? The SLP tried a bunch of different things with my ds and they picked a few that worked for him - talking to a classmate or talking to himself, chewing on a granola bar (something about just moving his jaws seems to help him get his mind going again), or getting up and walking around, going to the bathroom if he needs that as an excuse for getting up and walking around during class - not walking around indefinitely, but taking a brief purposeful walk to get him up out of his chair. At home we play board games together that get his brain mildly engaged before he has to tackle a writing assignment.
On testing - is your ds required to fill in bubbles? That's one of my ds' testing accommodations - he's allowed to write his answers in the test booklet and on bubbles is only required to mark them with an X and then a proctor goes through and fills them in after the test is completed. These are both really typical and widely used accommodations for kids with dysgraphia - if your ds doesn't have them on his IEP I'd make a written request to add them.
polarbear
