Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Mid-year updates, anyone?

I'm wondering how everyone's school year is going? Here in the northern hemisphere we are well into the second half of the academic year.

So far, I am cautiously optimistic that the move out of the gifted program and into a project-based learning school was a good one. DD11's teachers seem to "get" her and be differentiating appropriately for her. I think she was surprised and dismayed by the difficulty of making a whole new set of friends, but now she is making friends and settling into the program. DS7 is doing well in 2nd grade, and finally has the veteran teacher we were expecting for this year (she's been out for over a year of cancer treatment, but is back to teaching now after a long-term sub who was on her first teaching assignment). She's only been back for a couple of weeks, so we don't know yet how the rest of the year will go (and I have never met her and wouldn't recognize her on the street).

DD11 is having the best year ever 3rd year at the OOD spec Ed school and they get it. Wilson intervention kicked in and she is now decoding above grade level, AT is working well and she is loving math intervention. 1-1 HS literature curriculum now includes an actual HS student. DD came up with the science projects the class spent the month working on and is still enjoying history enrichment, Migraines and anxiety seem to be in the past (hoping I don't jinx it by even typing that...). A girl started last week so DD is no longer the only girl in her class. And there seems to be another girl in the application process. It's been a long time coming but we are finally in a really good place. Now just hoping speech kicks in and we will have everything firing on all cylinders. Doing a happy dance ...

Now homeschooling twins who are a 180 from what they were last semester when they were in school for part of it. Doc actually said she couldn't believe they were the same kids. I am so grateful for all the encouragement. Our success is directly related to the support of this group!

DS6 is doing great in K. We've had some frustrations, but keeping it in perspective it's been a great year and we're finding our way. Math is a problem to solve for next year and we're working on a plan for single subject acceleration. Fingers crossed! And we're always afterschooling somewhat in math. Immersion has been GREAT and has kept school interesting.

So glad to hear good news! We are finally making headway toward everyone being on the same page for DS17. His anxiety has an official diagnosis from his psychologist, and we are considering an expressive language disorder, and, thanks to HowlerKarma, I am looking seriously at Socially Prescribed Perfectionism. That seems to strike a chord here. Now, to see how we can get DS to use all the accommodations already available to him, and the ones the school will add. Meanwhile, the GPA is tanking.

DS7 has warmed up to his new (gifted private) school and loves it! We've seen amazing improvement on his handwriting skills, his willingness to guess the spelling for unknown words, and even his math fluency (though it's still an area of relative weakness). His teachers really seem to understand his learning style (slower but deeper) and are good at giving him space to think about his responses. He often surprises both his classmates and his teachers with the associations he makes on a regular basis.

After having worked quite hard on arithmetic this year, he gets a break with the current unit now being geometry.
He's super excited!

The school started DS7 with individual learning plan the beginning of February. So far he's doing OK. He doesn't seem to be overly excited about the arrangement but we are working through that right now.

The biggest improvement this year is that he's made many friends in his first grade class. He had trouble interacting with kids in the K year so it was our main concern in the beginning of this school year. Apparently he had no issues making friends this year and both the teach and we are thrilled. If he could just stop being too chatty in class....

It's been a pretty good year for us -- lots of ups and downs and changes, but ultimately, both kids currently enjoy going to school, and both are getting some challenging differentiation with good, experienced teachers. Both have had rave reviews in conferences. DS's midyear grade-skip is going well, though he's expressed disdain for spiraling of math, repetition, even though he gets some extension. He just wants to move on. Making new friends has been a slow, but he still sees his old grade-friends. It may not be ideal, but it's going well. I'm a little concerned about DD next fall, since the GT program won't kick in for another year, and the school is resistant to the idea of SSA into another grade. I am contemplating dual-enrollment for homeschooling math. She has really grown confident in her abilities this year, though, and responds very well to her teacher.

ds15, back to p.s. for the first time in several years is doing very well academically...less well health-wise (just a string of minor sinus and other infections, but snowballing into quite a few missed days). Teachers are being very cool about it, however, and we are more than optimistic that things will keep going well.

Dd9 is doing ok too. She was finally 'fully' admitted into the gifted program classroom after some weird state of quasi-admittance that lasted way too long - while they gathered in-class samples of her work. All classes are going pretty well, but she turned up with some lingering vision/convergence issues which have been negatively affecting her work on the computer (as far as we and the dr can tell). So back to computer-based therapy. she has been sick this week with the flu-like "flu" that you can't get anti-viral meds for (arg!!)...so is really missing being in school after so many days of being bed-bound. Me too!! really missing her being in school, lol.