Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How do/did you advocate for grade acceleration?

try
appliedgifteded.com/appliedgifteded-preparing_for_your_childs.ppt

and

www.hoagiesgifted.org/unofficial_guide.htm

and

http://www.penngifted.org/pubs/PageBulletinPDEGuidelines.pdf

I'd also reccomed looking around at hoagiesgifted.org, and sending an email to the webmistress if you are looking for particular information that you can't find.

Here in CT there is not gifted mandate, but I know of one PG boy, with significant disabilities who got grade skipping as part of his mandated IEP.

Best Wishes,
Trinity

UPDATE:

I went to the meeting today at my son's school, all prepared with my speech, a stack of books with highlighted references to grade skipping, and test results - but funny enough, the whole meeting was pretty short, and all I had to do was sit back and listen to them.

The principal took charge and it seems they already had a mini-meeting last week to discuss my son's progress. They all agreed that grade acceleration to 3rd grade next school year would be in my son's best interest. So from 1st grade, he'll go to 3rd next school year, and he'll be doing 5th grade reading (his report card will have 3rd grade marks for the subjects). And since right now, he's already grouped in with the 3rd grade GATE students, they will put him with the 4th graders next year, starting off with one block at first as opposed to two blocks of GATE like he's getting right now.

They talked to me about things I can do this summer to get Lyle ready -- ie, introduce him to cursive, master shoe-tying, help him become more responsible with his work/things, get supplemental reading to read up on things he'll miss (knowledge gaps). They're also aware that he might not make much improvement on his handwriting, so they are open to providing him a laptop to use in the classroom for word processing use in case he gets too frustrated at taking too long to write out his thoughts. The Highly Gifted office said they can provide one for my son if the school's laptop supply is limited, but the principal said they want to have him try first at handwriting like everyone else and have the laptop option as backup if he gets really frustrated.

I have to give Clark County's Highly Gifted program much kudos for all their help and guidance, and also my son's school principal and teachers. As a single mom, I've been unable to afford a private school for my son, and to have the public school system that my son's currently in right now work around his needs -- it's simply a blessing!

Yippee!
Well Done all around!
Big round of applause.
Here's the Handwriting Without Tears website - for really good materials for handwriting and printing - very cheap. Hint - order the 500 notebook paper, there is just something magical about those blue lines. We tried the "printing power", as we've all given up on cursive at this point.

I would reccomend working on touch typing over the summer even if he doesn't use it at school. One of the drawbacks of acceleration is that the expected homework amounts can be high compared to the age of the student, and ease of touch typing really levels the playing field.

I'm so glad for you and your son!
Trinity

I think my son's scores helped with the decision to accelerate him.

His Stanford-Binet composite score was a 153, and last week the Highly Gifted program administered the KTEA-II on him so we can submit it along with our application to the Davidson YS program, and the achievement results were:

READING
Raw score: 53
Standard score: 159
Percentile rank: >99.9
Descriptive category: Upper Extreme
Grade equivalent: 8.2

MATH
Raw score: 31
Standard score: 135
Percentile rank: 99
Descriptive category: Upper Extreme
Grade equivalent: 3.5

WRITING
Raw score: 50
Standard score: 118
Percentile rank: 88
Descriptive category: Average
Grade equivalent: 2.9

Also, a lot of positive feedback from the GATE teacher helped. My son had trouble finishing up work in his 1st grade class, but not in GATE. Also, he was able to handle himself pretty well with the older kids in GATE, and his GATE teacher saw no problem in accelerating him up a grade.

Thank you so much Trinity! This forum's support, encouragement, and recounting of personal experiences have helped my son and I tremendously in our journey thus far.

I'm so glad that your school is being flexible with your son. Isn't it interesting that for our kids, hard is easy and easy is hard? But, yes, it doesn't suprise me at all that he has no problems finishing up his work for the GATE program. I might have trouble finishing up 1st grade work if I had to do it day after day after day, and my coping skills are preety well developed - wink!

I'm so glad our support helped you through. Pat yourself on the back. For me, the challenge has been at this stage to step back from the advocacy role and back into the parental role. I've had to say to myself: "ok, I've given him the opportunity to learn and grow, I've given him a fair shot at being successful at school. Now it's up to him and "the unknown" to see what he will do with it."

I do occasionally step back into the advocacy role, when needed, but I have tried to spend most of our time together teaching values, having fun, and introducing him bit by bit to the rest of the world. Currently that means teaching him folk guitar, and doing impersonations of classic rockers he may want to look into. Also trying to figure out together what the meaning of Neil Young's song, "Pochahontas." Cooking, Gardening, Reading fiction and a little woodworking. I'm so glad that school is doing it's job so that I can do mine. Wheew!

Love and More Love,
Trinity