Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Need advice on acceleration meeting

We have our second acceleration committee meeting on Thursday. Where we live, a committee decides whether acceleration is warranted, and if so the acceleration is put into place on a trial basis. After 6 weeks or so the committee convenes again to determine if the acceleration should be permanent. Our committee consists of the Principal, Assistant Principal, School Psychologist, 3rd Grade Teacher, 4th Grade Reading Teacher, DH and me.

DS was accelerated from 3rd to 4th grade in reading, but not in math. They are supposed to be working with him to get him ready for acceleration in math at a later date.

DS also takes part in a one day per week pull out enrichment class for the gifted. The pull out program is supposed to be an "instead of" not a "pile on" program and therefore they are supposed to be excused from the classwork on the day they are in the pullout, and they have two days to complete the homework.

DS attends the pull out program every Monday, but since the pullout ends earlier than his home school class, he goes back to his home school building for the last 30-40 minutes of the day. Every Monday his 3rd grade teacher gives him every handout that was passed out that day for him to complete. There is also a writing assignment that the rest of the class does every Monday that she has DS work on during "free time" on Tuesdays ("free time" being any time left over after he does his classroom assignments), problem is DS is having difficulty with idea generation and getting the words from his head to the paper so when he hasn't written enough for her, which is just about every week, he has to stay in at recess to complete it. His teacher is usually very responsive to email, so we emailed to ask her if he could bring the writing journal home and complete the writing assignment at home, but she has not responded. And he missed recess again today.

Would you bring this up during the discussion on the acceleration committee meeting? She did bring up his lack of writing when the committee met the last time. I am just unsure whether this committee is the proper venue to discuss the homework waiver and the proper application of it.

Thank you for your input.

Do you think the teacher is trying to be helpful in her way or do you think she is trying to prove he can't handle the pace one grade up? I would bring it up either way but the approach would be different.

I often have very poor luck getting responses via email so I would try to have an actual conversation with her.
I can never figure out if teachers are deliberately stonewalling, or they just space out and forget to reply, or what is going on. It's frustrating.

I'm not clear from your post if the problem with the teacher and the writing assignments are resulting from his acceleration. If so, then it might be appropriate to bring it up (if you can do it diplomatically). If there is any possibility that the problems with writing could impact how successful he is with the plan, then I would bring it up as well, so no one can accuse you of hiding anything later on. If everyone knows and is still on board, they can't complain about his writing later.

I depend on email a lot for communication.. and one thing that I always try to keep in mind... not receiving a reply to an email *many times* means the email has not been read, possibly not been received. It can also mean a whole host of other very innocent things, including a teacher simply being very busy. So I would follow up with a brief personal conversation if you can - do you either drop off or pick up your ds from school? If you aren't going to be able to talk to her in person, I'd follow up on the email with either a phone call or another email checking in to see if she'd had a chance to read the first email

FWIW, our ds went to a gifted pull-out class once a week when he was in elementary. It was the same type of situation, he was not supposed to be required to make up any work he missed. His teachers didn't require that he made up any work, but the reality was he missed what happened while he was not in his home classroom. It sounds like your ds has a worksheet-oriented teacher, so if it's material that builds on previous assignments, I can see that the teacher might feel it's important to make up the work. I'd consider - is the making up of work pushing your ds over the edge, or is he generally ok with it?

Re. writing, can you tell us more about what the actual challenges are? Where is writing an issue - in his regular class or in the class he's been accelerated into? Is he having more difficulty with generating his thoughts than the teacher expects the average child at his *current* grade level has? If he is, I'd really focus on looking into what's up with him. It's possible that the challenge isn't that your ds is not "ready" for the next grade up writing.. it sounds like he might have difficulty with expressive language. If that's the case, two things to keep in mind: 1) if he has a challenge, he'll have it no matter what grade level he is in. Chances are good, though, that if you make sure he's accelerated appropriately, it will make it easier to work on any challenges he may have. 2) If he *does* have an expressive language (or other) disability you want to know - the sooner the better, so that he can have meaningful remediation while young.

Best wishes,

polarbear

I am honestly not sure. My gut tells me it is more her being unfamiliar with gifted kids and how they function. He gets straight A's except for writing, and in that subject he has a C. I think that means he needs help. She tends to believe he is just being defiant, or fooling around and not doing the writing.

The issue comes up because of the pullout, not because of the acceleration. The rest of the class has a dedicated 30 minutes to do the assignment every Monday. DS has to do it during little snippets of time when he has finished the current worksheet on Tuesday. If it isn't complete by mid-day when they have scheduled recess he has to stay in from recess to complete it.

Part of the acceleration discussion was whether he could handle the more advanced curriculum and his maturity. During the first meeting her point on maturity was that he doesn't do his writing assignments. The day before the first meeting he hadn't done his writing...I had asked him about it the day before and he said that she wanted them to write about something interesting from the book she had just read to the class. He said there was nothing interesting (the book was a couple grade levels below his level...) We are working with him on parsing words...told him if there's nothing interesting, just write about something he liked or thought was funny.

He only gets overwhelmed with the worksheets when he tries to complete all of them as well on Tuesday in class. We have drilled into him that he is to bring all of the worksheets home to do, which has helped. And in all honesty, the entire first quarter grading period was review from second grade, so the worksheets were simply more of the same repetition for him. For instance, over the first five weeks there were 16 worksheets on the same topic -- telling time and calculating elapsed time. DS missed 4 questions out of 154 on those worksheets, I don't think missing a few would have hurt him! :-)


That is exactly what I am concerned about. Both his third grade teacher and his gifted pullout teacher have the same issue. I am not sure if the issue is idea generation or if it's more of a "from the brain to the paper" issue. DS did indicate yesterday that when he tries to write for very long his hand starts to hurt. That's the first I heard of that so we are keeping an eye on it. His gifted pullout teacher welcomes collaboration with the home school teacher, but there seems to be a firewall between the home school and the pullout program (which is run by the county). The home school engenders a feeling of anti - gifted sentiment, considering all of the issues we have had in getting him identified, recognized and served.

That sounds really frustrating for your ds! Who on earth would want to do so many worksheets, especially when it's repetitive and he knows the material? I'd recommend he be allowed to do a reduced # of problems if it's work he understands how to do. I'd also look to see if there is any school district policy in writing re not being required to make up the work missed in a student's home class while in the gifted pullout. I would also make sure they aren't keeping him from recess or other class activities on Tuesday in order to complete the worksheets - that is, in effect, punishing him for having different educational needs.


Pain while handwriting can be cause by an unusual grip - one thing you might want to do is google a picture of a correct pencil grip and compare to the grip your ds is using. Also watch to see if he's using good posture. Pain can be a sign of dysgraphia, but you would also be seeing other symptoms too if it's dysgraphia (uneven spacing, poor spelling while writing, uneven pencil pressure, not forming letters consistently the same way, slow handwriting speed, etc - you can google lists of dysgraphia symptoms).

Your ds is 8? One thing that was tremendously helpful for us with each of our children was getting to the ages of 8/9 years old, because they hit some type of maturity gain where they were able to verbalize what was going on with their work in a way that helped me as a parent understand their challenges much better, so definitely ask your ds about what is challenging about writing assignments - both specific assignments and writing in general. I would also pay attention and perhaps purposely contrive a few conversations to see if you think your ds has the same type of issues with verbal communication. Our ds has an expressive language disorder which impacts his ability to get started on writing assignments (it also impacts him in conversation, but that wasn't obvious *at all* until he was around 9 years old and started telling us he couldn't figure out what to say.. because he was very talkative under many different circumstances, and the times that he did struggle with getting language out were almost always with teachers or adults outside our family, so we thought it was shyness... when really it was different type of expressive language being required due to the situation).

If the question of writing comes up in the acceleration meeting, I'd ask the school to do further assessment to determine what the issue is - since there is an issue noted by both of his teachers (gifted and home class). For our ds, the TOWL (Test of Written Language) and the CELF (speech language eval) were both very useful in helping to understand what his challenges with expressive language were.


The home school may simply have an anti-pullout program sentiment - not something that is just due to your family's pursuit of the program. Our elementary school was definitely not happy about letting students attend our district's gifted pull-out program - to the point that by the time our ds was in school, there were *no* students attending it. Our ds had test scores to qualify, but we had to push to get the school to let him attend... however... once ds had attended for half a year, the school relaxed the attitude about the program and allowed a few more students to attend. I hope your school will continue to let your ds attend, and also relax the requirements for making up busy work.

Good luck with your meeting!

polarbear