Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Kindergarten registration question--how to answer?

This reminds me to add... parents may wish to keep a copy of any information they supply to the school. School related papers can be arranged in a ring binder, tabbed by year, so there is a record ready if/when needed.

Reading ability has been discussed on other recent threads including stages of reading here and phey's booklist here. The point of sharing these threads in this discussion is twofold:

1) to help parents who are new to this to understand that a child may be at one level (or range of levels) in books they self-select at home... and assigned to a different level at school for a particular skill acquisition (such as fluency, vocabulary, comprehension). Knowing this information may prevent a parent from crying foul if their child may be assigned a "lower" reading level in school. A parent may wish to explore the reading skill being practiced/mastered at the "lower" reading level in school. In some cases, such as F&P, a teacher may be able to share a comprehension rubric, the results of which are separate from the reading level letter score. Further conversation may lead to the Continuum of Literacy Learning, a book which the teacher may have received included in the professional framework, part of the benchmark assessment system. Learn how your child is assessed. Ask for examples. Become familiar with their evaluation process(es).

2) to help parents remain undaunted if a teacher/school/district may state that an advanced reader "will run out of age-appropriate reading material", therefore needs to be "slowed down". There are many books in higher lexile levels which contain mild content appropriate for many children.

Here's my first draft:

DS loves math and enjoys counting, adding and creating patterns. He knows his upper and lowercase alphabet and their corresponding sounds and has memorized many sight words. He enjoys exploring (especially outside) and doing arts & crafts projects.

Too much? Too little? Should I add anything else or take something out?

that sounds good!

If there are no known allergies, learning disabilities, etc, then it seems lovely and complete.

Follow your gut instinct. Know what your priority is and what you have to achieve. It is different planning for your child rather than for yourself. I was very street smart and felt confident that I could handle bullies. As it seems to happen, I try to give my child a less stressful experience with bullies, building off of my lessons learned from managing them literally my whole life. For my child, I did not 'out' my child. Every time, it became evident and had to be addressed, but it was helpful to me to see how schools handle it and, consistently, the schools (parochial, public, cyber) were not up to speed.