Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What grade level of writing is this, very roughly?

It may well be that he is in a K/1 split anyway, in which case he could do something like start off the year doing K writing and then switch into the gr 1 writing. The kids are not likely to be advanced for the most part. However, we are told that the school is very open to full skips and he is otherwise a very solid candidate.

I guess the question is whether to take the writing weakness as a sign that K/1 is the better choice or to not worry about it and go ahead and try for 1. He is VERY dissatisfied with preschool right now, though his behavior is excellent. We are on the verge of school refusal. We will have some other tricksy issues if he goes to 1, though.

AFAIK he will be IQ-tested in K, so we will get that info.

You know, my daughter sounds kind of similar. She read anything, and still does, and could write letters but didn't really want to write much, until she started K this year at nearly 5.5. She's really blossomed as a writer, though her hand gets tired. She's learned how to really do punctuation, dialogue, a lot of spelling, etc. but going into K, eh. So I think it's not necessarily a sign of a potentially lingering weakness. The split sounds ideal, especially because then he'll have friends moving to second.

This is exactly how I would describe my DS5's reading ability. It is as if he has read each sentence in its entirety before saying it aloud so that his intonation and expression are spot on. My DS's writing is far behind his reading ability as well. He is currently in K at a Montessori school and answers reading comprehension questions aloud during class. His focus in writing for school at the moment is on correct letter formation, word spacing, and punctuation. His writing is legible, but has to focus very intently and writes slowly. He finds it challenging and doesn't like writing at school a bit. He writes on his own at home, but mostly writes short phrases or makes signs to post around the house. It sounds from many of the replies here that we may need to do some supplementary writing work at home before we switch to our local public school next year for 1st grade.

I think different schools and districts emphasize different skills. However, it would be solid mid to late K level for our school. The issue is really how much your DS can improve by August and where you are comfortable for him to fall within his class. For our school, tracking starts in 1st grade so he would not be at the level of the top performing kids if placed in the pre-GT 1st grade. While reading comprehension is important, the students in our school are judged on their written output so lagging writing skills could jeopardize GT placement. That's not meant to imply that your DS would not thrive in 1st grade because chances are that he will make a substantial leap between now and August.

GT placement has nothing to do with writing skills here--it's done via a group screening test followed by an individual IQ test (this is given if the child scores high enough on the screening test).

He is definitely nowhere near the writing proficiency level that my DD was at when entering first grade. (She was using semicolons correctly at 6.)

I could suggest asking him about the double l's. IME, gifted kids usually do things that don't make sense to us but make sense to them...i.e. they spot a pattern that others don't see

Or maybe he just likes it that way.

I have a friend whose name is Lloyd. Never occurred to me to find out why there are two L's at the beginning of his name...

Beyond that, a language arts specialist can tell you why and also tell you what to do about it. Can you find someone nearby? Probably need a couple hours of evaluation and ask them to write up the recommendations for the next step.

That being said, he is certainly developing much more rapidly than the average kid his age and I think you are right to question whether or not to go to kindergarten.

Oh, well...I'm not concerned, per se. That is, I assume he'll be fine, at this point. If he is still spelling like that at 7, I'll be worried. But he has very little experience writing or spelling words. Interestingly, after just a few more episodes of practicing writing, he has started asking me "How do you spell..." much more often. I believe the schools often discourage this, preferring the children to rely on their own spelling concepts, but my DD could never cope with this ("Just tell me how to spell it!!") and DS seems to be moving in this direction. I don't see a problem with this habit myself as long as the child is producing written work easily, which he is.

I just asked him to spell "like," and he spelled it correctly (orally). Who knows??

Without using the power of the Internet, I'm going with the theory that he has two L's for the same reason that Llewellyns have two L's.

DS skipped K into gr 1 with not a lot of writing experience (knew letters but preferred using capitals. Within a few weeks he was writing sentences, in lowercase with mostly accurate spelling. His spelling is coming along quickly because I suspect he has a photographic (or close to it) memory. His writing is about the same as 70% of the class. He likes to spell correctly too - he has read so much he knows once he has written something phonetically when it is wrong.