Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Help for a Kindergarten Mom

On the fourth day of Kindergarten my son said he didn't learn anything new and the math worksheet would have been more fun if it had been challenging. We moved to this public school because of the gifted program, but now I'm not sure what my next step should be. Do I wait until the teacher identifies that he needs more support? If so, how long? Do I demand IQ testing and get a GIEP right away? How do I advocate for my son's needs without being "that mom". Any suggestions from folks who have been through this would be great.

I would start by talking to the teacher. What is her impression of you dc? She may have started to notice your child advanced abilities. Then the you could work together with her.

From experience, go with your gut. Don't wait. Kindergarten was very damaging for my ds.

One thing someone told me to say was school is easy right on purpose, so you can learn school- routines, school environment, etc. it is the beginning and the teacher is trying to assess the kids right now.

I'm sure others will give more advice. Keep us posted how things are going!

Give it a month. Give the teacher a chance to know who she has in the classroom. Going in early could put her offside and that will make life more difficult than it needs to be. We went early entry and the school met with us after a month to see how he was fitting in (not to see if he was ahead of his peers in maths etc). If you do decide to wait, make sure he knows that you are waiting to talk to the teacher, it will give him some perspective and he knows mom is going to do something about the boredom. Our little guy used to say he didn't learn anything new and I used to tell him he must have, because unless he had lived that day already, most everything he did would have been new.

I agree with Melessa 100% that Kinder can be very damaging!

My DS6 HATED kindergarten for same reasons. DS complained he wasn't learning anything new. I tried saying just give it some time, but weeks turned to months and DS was miserable.

The teacher was no help, stating just b/c DS memorized "sight words" or simple math facts, didn't mean he could read & comprehend etc and so on... I asked if she had ever actually HAD him read to her, and then retell the story or answer other questions to show comprehension? (she hadn't)

I pulled DS from kinder after nearly 3mos. He was pretty much shutting down @ that point. I was angry at myself for not taking real action sooner.

I enrolled him in the public independent study program, where they assessed him and gave him 1st grade work. Even though the work was still fairly easy for DS, esp with 1:1 teaching-- I got my happy, eager to learn new things, kid back!!

DS is now in 2nd- in the same program for now.

*If this is a real issue with your child and you aren't getting the help you need- I would definitely be Proactive, you are your kiddos best advocate. I don't know what options are available to you, but start looking in to them...
best of luck!!

While I think you need to give it more than four days, I also would not expect a K program to be challenging. Sometime I will start another thread about K programs and ask why folks expect them to have real academic value (so people can rip me apart), but even in the best of districts, K typically is not a challenge.

While I don't want you to reveal your exact location in PA, can you give us a general idea of where you are? There are a lot of PA folks on this forum and if this is your first kid going through the system, they might be able to give you some insight. For example, most of the districts around me would not let you demand IQ testing and get a GIEP right away. There are various steps to the GIEP and time limits for each - and most districts will take it to the last day in the time limit for each step. So even if you started now, you might not get the GIEP until the second half of the school year.

Can you tell us a bit about the gifted program? In this district and the two adjacent ones, the gifted programs are weak even though the average PSSA and SAT scores place the three districts in the top one percent in the state.

I think you need to wait. Maybe not a couple of months, but the first few weeks of K is more about getting used to the routine, the teacher's figuring out how to manage the class, she's trying to not only figure out your child but all the others too. There will be children in the class who never went to preschool, and even for those that did, it's still all new. It takes a loooong time to do all the placement tests. And I'd put money on the early work being super easy to build confidence.

I waited six weeks and then fought them for years, but I think I was right to wait six weeks. It was respectful of the teacher's many challenges, and gave her a chance to figure it out for herself.

Notsogifted, I'll take you up on that.

My first thought in reading your post is: Do you have any data to show your child is gifted or needs anything moderately beyond the regular K curriculum? I ask because without data school likely will see you as yet another parent who thinks their child is SO advanced which is probably what you were referring to as "that parent". Many parents at my son's school "thought" their children were gifted but testing doesn't always bear that out. Data is also important because it is difficult to know what to ask for without it.

Four days in is boring even at a school that gets the academic level right. It does take several weeks for teachers to "place" the children in appropriate groups so they can differentiate. It always takes a toll those first weeks. I remind my child that if he does his best work and shows what he knows then it lets the teacher see that he can already do the "too easy" work. He has to prove what he knows first... every year. THEN If he still doesn't get what he needs... then you contact the teacher and schedule a meeting. Bring work samples from school and home and talk about what he is saying about school.

Best wishes for a good school fit!

I would wait a few more weeks - and while I was waiting, I'd do a bit of research to find out what the gifted ID and gifted ed policies are in your school district, as well as collect samples at home showing what type of work your ds is capable of, and look for a listing of grade level curriculum benchmarks for your district to compare to your ds' current academic levels. Collect the data/etc so that when you've given the teacher a few weeks to assess all the children and come up with a game plan - if things still aren't working out then you'll have data to back up any requests you make.

The other bit of advice I'd offer up is you don't need to start by *demanding* anything - explain how your ds feels, show examples of his abilities, ask if the teacher can give him appropriately leveled work. If that doesn't work out - then turn in a written request for gifted program evaluation.

Best wishes,

polarbear

My kids go to a fabulous school which does gifted the best in our state ( it is said!) and NO WAY would the kids learn anything 4 days in. It's all lining up and going to the toilet and putting your hand up.
I would definitely not approach the teacher yet.
Is this your first child at school?

The internet is tricky, cos things come across as blunt that I mean in a nice way. But what I mean to say, nicely, is that i think your expectations are too high. I would not do anything for a month. If he is reading, don't wait for the stupid readers, readers are a waste of time, take him to the library. The most I would do in terms of advocacy would be to unsubtly send in a book he has read himself for show and share time or something like that. Or innocently ask, oh (son) was asking when we are going to get readers, he's reading XYZ at home and he really enjoys them, there are a couple of words he stumbled on ( you get the idea...)

To offer a different persective, we are two weeks in and my kindergarten child has been placed in reading and math groups by ability and his teacher is trying to give him some differentiated work. He has been assessed, albeit not in a really in-depth way.

Don't wait too long. Things get entrenched. I would say, another week or two. Six weeks is too much, IMO.


This is also good advice, but a lot for a K kid to remember and follow. Is your child obvious with his abilities? Does he talk a lot? Does he read? It is definitely not impossible for a good K teacher to notice a gifted kid by a week or so in.

I would give it a few weeks, and then talk to the teacher. Then give it a few more weeks, and see if anything changes. If not, contact the gifted coordinator and start the ball rolling. Don't wait too long. I contacted ours in mid-Februrary, and the GIEP was done the last week of school (in June.)

I just noticed you are in PA. They are required to test your son if you request it, and if he meets the criteria, they are REQUIRED to give him an GIEP. Google the state law.

We waited until November to talk to the teacher, at the first teacher conference. At that time, she said that she would try to give him some differentiated material, and she did, but it wasn't enough. (I know it was different because he has a twin, and it was much harder than what his brother was doing.) However, his attidue about school, especially reading, became worse and worse, as he was not put in a reading level anywhere close to his real level, and he was being forced to read 4 of those level 1 books each night. (He was bringing home books he had read at age 3. It would have been funny, if it wasn't so sad.)

By February, I set up a meeting with the reading teacher and the regular teacher, and discovered that they weren't going to do anything because "he was already exceeding the required reading level for the end of kindergarten." They were literally going to allow him to stay at the same reading level (group) all year. He was really upset by that point, as he saw the other kids moving up 2-3 levels over the course of the year, and he couldn't understand why his level never changed. I literally went home from that meeting, cried, and then got on the computer and found the contact information for the gifted teacher at the school and requested IQ testing. (My state requires schools to provide an IEP for gifted students, but the K teacher had said "there was nothing they could do in K." ) The teacher was not happy with me, to say the least, but they did the testing and he was found to be EG and at a very high level of achievement. The gifted coordinator and school psych agreed that he needed "more."

Oh, how I wish I had done something the first semester. K was very damaging to my son, and it never really became "better." Once they saw the reading achievement test scores they did move him up a level in reading, and stopped claiming he wasn't comprehending, only decoding, but the damage was already done. He was incredibly anxious when tested for reading by the end of the year because he couldn't understand how he kept failing the tests. They never told him what was expected or worked with him, and he was already comprehending at such a high level that he didn't know they expected him to retell every page to be able to pass, and neither did I, until February. Once they told me, I told him, we practiced a few times at home, and then they retested him earlier than they had told me they would, and he passed. They tried to retest him again at the end of the year to move him up a level, and he was unable to finish the test, twice. I am hoping that having a summer off will allow him to take a reading test without becoming physically ill.

We do have a GIEP in place now, and I have been instructed to discuss any concerns with the gifted teacher, not the regular teacher, LOL. The K teacher absolutely hated me by the end of the year, as it made her look bad when I set up the testing because K was having such a terrible effect on my son. I was always very polite to her, but she thought we were "pushing him" by trying to get harder work. She thought he should just "enjoy K" and "go with the flow" but when it came out in the GIEP meetings and discussions with the gifted teacher that he only showed anxiety symptoms at school, it really made her look bad (unintentionally).

Thank you everyone for the great advice. I decided to give it a few more weeks, but at the same time e-mail the teacher to better understand the timeline of assessments and grouping.

NoSoGifted, we are in Central PA and purposely moved to our current school district because of the Gifted Program. In preschool, I became acutely aware that DS was ahead of the curve and did a lot of research into the area's gifted programs last year. I'm excited about the gifted program at this school, but am still not sure how to get from the first day of school to placement in the gifted program.

No, we haven't had DS tested, but both his father and I were in gifted programming in school and he is performing 2-3 grade levels above K. I like the advice to send in/bring along examples of DS work at home to demonstrate his capabilities to the teacher. We meet with her tomorrow, so I'm gathering together some examples.

The teacher indicated that the class will be separated into reading groups this week, but they do not separate out for math. She plans to give him extra 2nd grade math worksheets. Not sure how I feel about extra work. I know when I was in gifted, I thought the extra work was more a punishment for being smart than an advantage.

Trying to be patient and support him as best we can. Last week he asked if he could see cells with an "electronic" microscope. My sister is a biology teacher at a local school so we are planning a family field trip to look at cheek cells under the microscope.

Thank you for sharing your story. This is exactly what I am hoping to avoid. I'm afraid of the negative outcomes of ignoring and not challenging my DS on his level. I can only hope to learn from experiences like yours and know that, though many have warned me to wait, I also should not wait too long.