Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Contact public school now for fall kindergarten?

Hi all,
I'm looking for advice regarding steps I might take now to "prepare" my local public school for my DD4.5's entrance into kindergarten next fall. As with many, I don't know how gifted, just that she's reading now at ~3rd grade level. I've followed with sorrow many of the posts detailing all the struggles parents have had with public schools not providing adequate gifted services, dragging their feet, etc. I'm not expecting much from my DD's school, but whatever services they wll eventually agree to provide, I'd like to get that settled as early as possible in the school year. Any ideas? I was going to email the district's elementary school gifted coordinator asking her advice. Of course, I don't want to be "that parent" six months before school even begins...

Thank you!
Early bird

Hi ej2

We're in a similar situation with DS. I am planning on contacting the school. I've been compiling some work samples, and we have some basic testing (KBIT-2 and KTEA-II brief form) that show some of his strengths.

With us, we need to decide whether to keep him at his current Montessori school that includes the kindergarten year or move him to the public school. (We won't move him without some assurances that his needs will be met.)

You might start the conversation by saying that you would like to share some information about DD that will help the principal as she is making placements for next year and see what happens! (Ideally this would lead the principal to put DD with a teacher who is willing to differentiate.) You might also visit the district's website to find out about gifted services.

Our district doesn't start a "pull out" until 2nd grade, but says they do "student based services" before then.

My feeling is that if a start the conversation early, and in a friendly "FYI" kind of manner, then if I have to be the "squeaky wheel" later on, I've started on a positive note.

Good luck!
Kathie

I'm right there with you. DS will be 5 in mid August and will be one of the youngest if not THE youngest in class. He's now in special ed pre-school due to his other problems and is thriving socially but as he says he learns "nothing" though I know he's been learning a lot of the important things like sitting on his spot, following directions, etc. Our K is only half day and now that he has learned the basic school rules and we see he can actually follow them (not following was our big concern for years!) we're getting to the point of him not being able to learn much in K. I went through the K curriculum a few times and on that extensive list he's got all down except for some sight words reading and writing (I'm guessing this will be an ongoing issue with him). K is not mandatory here so I am actually considering either homeschooling or skipping K all together and just having him be home for another year. I doubt anyone will make any accommodations here and gifted pull out doesn't start till the kids are in 2nd grade. He's already dumbing himself down coming home telling me he "learned" something new (stuff he's known for 2 years) and suddenly pretends it's a new concept and acts like he knows nothing beyond that point.

Be that parent.

You can find out earlier what types of attitudes you're dealing with. I started in the spring prior to K with my DD and the very first conversation I had with the principal was indicative of the entire experience we had with him. Dismissive, negative, throwing out at me the experience he'd had two years prior with the parents of some other random gifted kid (and you know all of our kids are exactly the same, with the same profiles, needs, and experiences - NOT) and we continued to hear about this child and parents for months at every meeting and how he wasn't grade skipped like the parents requested and it turned out to be the best thing ever....

Just get your ducks in order and follow a nice protocol, see what happens.

I'd go ahead & do it- we met briefly with DD's school the spring prior to K and similar to bzylzy's experience, that meeting was indicative of the experience we've had so far this year.

I had luck starting the the GT coordinator and asking for her advice the spring before kindergarten started. We also had a psychologist's report with IQ scores, though, so that helped show that they were dealing with something a little out of the ordinary. (We had been thinking we might send our kiddo to kindy early, and that is why we got the testing. The psychologist recommended going to kindy and skipping first, as first is more a learn to read and do basic math year.)

The GT coordinator was extremely helpful, acting as a liaison between us and the principal. The ended up having the school psychologist visit DS at his preschool to see what he was like, and they also did other testing so they would know what they were dealing with (WJ-III and some other social skills inventories). They paid for it too, which was nice. They selected a teacher who was good at differentiation at who wanted to have him (both nice things to request). It took awhile to get more appropriate work, as the teacher wanted to get to know DS herself, which is reasonable enough except that to a 5yo, not getting appropriate work for several months is kinda rough.

What finally convinced the school to do some more differentiation is when they tested DS with the 2nd graders using NWEA MAP. If this test is available at your school, I'd ask about it. Teachers can see how your kiddo compares with the rest of the students.

What do you think your goals for kindergarten are? Get those in mind before you start your advocacy. If you have a kid who learns in a style that is quite unusual, teachers may not have experience with that type of kid. We decided when it was clear early on that advocacy would take awhile for an out-there kid, that our goals would be "learn to write" and "learn to do school" -- both things kindergarten teachers are experts at. When we finally got the MAP results back, the GT coordinator offered to compact 2nd grade math curriculum for DS.

So, after that long-winded background, the things I recommend include asking for advice from the GT teacher about what you should do, since your DD is doing X, which seems a bit unusual (list everything you think is advanced, giving specific examples of books). Ask if they have programs for acceleration or differentiation or clustering. Ask if they've taught kids like this before. Mention that you know it's likely that you can't select teachers, but it would be great if they could pick a teacher who is good at differentiation. Ask what sorts of GT programming there is for kinders (or omit the "GT" and just say programming for kids who are reading at 3rd grade level when entering kindy if you don't want to say GT"

Have you looked on the district's website to see what sorts of GT programming they have? That type of information is useful to know in advance. And don't be afraid if the official programming doesn't start until 3rd, or whatever. That was the case in our situation, and they still tried to do their best to give our DS appropriate instruction.

Good luck!

ETA: the best reason IMO to contact in the spring is to catch the principal before they assign teachers.

Find out what's possible first. There may be restrictions on what a teacher or principal is allowed to do. In our last district the rules were different for math and LA. In principal, accommodating advanced reading in the classroom is much easier than advanced math, but it depends on the teacher. It's not uncommon to start K reading chapter books, you could approach it very simply - say you're asking if he can be in a class with the other kids who are already reading.

That's your aim and it also establishes that you don't think you have a little genius special snowflake, just a kid in the range of normal who needs a cluster.

Thank you all so much for your good advice. I especially think it is a good point about contacting the school now before teachers are selected, although unfortunately in my case there will be only one kindy teacher (teaching an am and pm section). Our district doesn't provide any GT pullouts, but claims to provide differentiation in clusters and possibly some acceleration, although through the grapevine I've heard the latter doesn't really happen...

St Pauli Girl, thanks for all those interesting details. Especially intriguing the advice to skip 1st grade, rather than K. That makes a lot of sense to me, given DD's social development not keeping pace with academics.

Thank you all for psyching me up to be that parent (politely!), despite my inclinations. I'll come back and let you know what I learn--crossing fingers that we won't get the dismissive, negative run around some of you have encountered.

I just wanted to add my thanks to everyone!

I also had a bit of an "ah-ha" moment this morning as, once again, my mind went to "I don't want to be 'that parent.'" If we were talking about a child with a learning disability who needed accommodations, would be so worried?

At least for me, the answer was "no." (It helped put things into perspective.)

DS skipped K and is loving gr 1. We met with the principal and GT co-ordinator 6 months or so before starting and thankfully there was no pushing on our part. DS hasn't done as much writing as the others but he is by no means the worst writer either. I don't know how we would have got him to K - when he has been able to do the curriculum for a few years. It all depends on the child and the school.