Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Need Help with Educational Plan

My DD8 is in 4th grade after grade skipping from 1st to 3rd. This was a huge deal as it was first time ever done at our school and very rarely within large school district. 3rd grade went well for her, teacher was amazing, there were indeed new things to learn, etc. 4th grade doesn't seem to be off to such a great start. I requested a meeting to go over and set a new educational plan. Meeting will be in 2 weeks, but now I'm trying to formulate thoughts on what she needs, what to ask for etc.

When I say 4th doesn't seem to be off to such a great start, on the other hand there isn't anything terrible about it either. Our school district has adopted new math program and it really stinks. I know the beginning of school is review usually, but I don't see any new material being introduced in this math book for a long time and even then a lot of it is stuff DD can already do. I'm sure many parents are unhappy with the math curriculeum for their children too but I don't know of anyone who is really making an issue of it. My DD's class is a full time gifted class, but only 1/4 of it is actually "gifted" children, the rest are high achievers based on last years state standardized testing. In addition, the teacher has not tested for reading levels yet so the kids are just randomly thrown into groups with all the groups reading the same reading level books. The children are allowed to each chose 5 vocabulary words for the week, whatever they want, define them, write a sentence about them and then share one of the words with the class at the end of the week so the class can learn them. With allowing the children to chose whatever words they want, you can imagine the range of words that come up. Once the kids share a word, the week is over and next week the cycle repeats. When the teacher does do spelling which is only about every 3 weeks, all the spelling words are the same for each child and so far have not presented much of a challenge.

The classroom just really seems to be run loosely. While my DD isn't complaining yet. I can't really see her learning much this year, except for writing skills. Writing is being pushed daily because the state standardized testing has a writing component this year. I can't even begin to get thoughts for knowing what to ask for for DD and how to suggest the teacher accomodate her. Any help would be appreciated.

Sounds like you have your hands full.

Maybe you could start off by asking what the teachers expectations are for the year? Where does she see DD8 ending off the year in math and reading? If you don't know what your end goal is, it's hard to get there.

On the vocabulary, I love the idea of kids making choices with in limits. It sounds though that the words are to easy. Does your district have a list of vocabulary they consider to be at a certain level? Maybe go up a level? Ours uses Wordly Wise for vocabulary supplementation and it seems to work well.

Spelling seems to be an area we haven't mastered communicating our needs with yet either. We tried to get them to change them last year and it was a joke. Mine knows the entire years words already and we just let it go. We pick our battles and this year spelling just isn't at the top of the list.

One last thought. I've recently asked for quarterly updates on the scope and sequence being taught. Each district has specific items that are taught at each level. I've asked for documentation each quarter of where we've gotten to. That way I can see if mine is being challenged appropriately or if they are just following the regular education format with no acceleration or compacting.

Good luck with the meeting!!!

I like the part of DS's plan that includes pretesting out of certain units (or even subjects), with the possibility to either join a higher grade level class or getting differentiated work for the units he tests out of. E.g., for math, he takes a pretest, and if there's anything he missed, he stays in the classroom for that part, then he goes to the gifted teacher for the rest of his math.

For spelling, maybe you can suggest that if your child (any child really) gets 90% of them right, they get moved up to a higher level (next year's spelling lists?). Spelling lists should be easy for them to adjust.

Davidson's advocacy booklet is helpful: http://print.ditd.org/young_scholars/Guidebooks/Davidson_Guidebook_Advocating.pdf

Good luck!

Thanks for the tips on the meeting. I also studied all the recent advocacy threads hoping it would help me with my meeting. Unfortunately, I did not come away with any new information. So the below is really just a vent.

No matter how I tried to explain that she wasn't being exposed to any new material in math and was asking when she would learn something new, the teacher replied she is learning new ways of doing the problems. True, but is it really necessary to learn so many ways to multiple. The one math goal they devised for her was, child will use numeric operations and concepts to analyze numeric data to solve complex, grade appropriate math problems with 90% accuracy. As my husband asked, isn't that the goal for all the kids? Plus she gets two years to do this. Oh my. This is a child who consistently scores in the 99% on state standardized testing and took SCAT last year and scored in the 98%. I could just cry that they didn't offer any more to her and I'm not even sure what I would suggest.

Her reading level in May 09 was assessed at a 4.1, with a comprehension level in the mid 90's, which is where the teacher stopped the test as she was only in 1st grade. The teacher today said her reading level was 5.1 which she based on her last year reading level report from teacher and state standardized test scores. I'm not even sure how those would determine reading level. Then the teacher also added I use age to determine appropriate reading level. Why even bother to assign a level if you aren't really going to check it? It makes my head spin to think about the rest of the school year and what is still in store. Teacher did say she would meet with us again to have a real conference and this meeting was just the gifted meeting to deal with educational plan. Maybe I can get better thoughts together for that meeting.

Thanks CFK for your reply. You encouraged me to call the gifted group at our district for input. When I talked with them I learned several things. The school told me they are limited in what can be a goal on the IP because there is a "pull down menu with choices". There weren't options for anything else except for these choices. When I called the district I was told these were examples for the school to see how to write goals and formulate them properly. However,they were not goals to use, but rather the goals should be customized for each child. I wonder why no one told our gifted representative that information? She has been there for at least 6 years and writing IP's for all the children.

I have another meeting set up with teacher for next week. We won't specifically address the IP again at this meeting as the gifted representative will not be in attendance. I will however share the information that the district lady explained to me was possible when creating IP for children. Giving a child an assessment to see where they currently are at so that they can move ahead to that point in the curriculum, using novels versus basal reading level books, etc. Hopefully this meeting will be a little more enlightening. I think it is important to get the teacher on board as she will be the one who will ultimately be implementing whatever plan is in the IP.

Hi Dorothy

In math can she test out of 4th and be subject accelerated to 5th? Our school public school has allowed this for our DS8.

Met with her teacher again today. I must say it didn't go any better than the last meeting. First we talked a lot about math curriculum. The teacher said the children were offered enrichment worksheets to accompany their math. When I asked to see the math enrichment worksheets. The problems were draw a diagram so you can explain how 9 x 30 = 270. The only difference between this and the real math book was having to draw the diagram which just sounded like a lot of busy work to me. The lady from our district advised that all gifted classes should be following the PEP calendar for math. The teacher was not familiar with what this was and neither were we so that didn't go anywhere either.

While she seemed to imply that she did do some small simple assessments, no mention of having kids move ahead to the point in the curriculum where they are at was available either.

Many times the teacher emphasized her having 22 kids in the class and not being able to do anymore than she is doing. She talked about this being a public school and that is all that is possible to be done for a child. It would be different it was a smaller private school. Even when she mentioned the little enriching she would provide, which would not be differentiated for each child, but rather the whole class would be enriched in the same way at the same time, that would not take place until after the standardized testing was completed in the spring.

The director from the district gifted department offered to come with us to the school and help set up an EP for DD. However, I wonder if the teacher is not really on board to implement it, what it will accomplish. I'm feeling really discouraged with the school being able to keep her challenged and learning. Sometimes I wonder if I should just cave in and let her only learn whatever it is they want to teach her at the time they want to teach her.

So we have another meeting set up for Friday. It will be attended by the gifted teacher (the class is a mix of gifted/high achiever children who are with her all day), the gifted specialist at our school and the director of the gifted program for the school district. Apparently there is a special schedule the teacher should be following for a faster pace math class, but she has not been following as she didn't know about it and even now doesn't think the class can move at such a fast pace. We will also discuss the teacher's use of language art material that is geared at the 4th grade level (which is the class that my DD8 is in), rather than using an advanced curriculum for 4th. This leads me and my husband to believe that basically all 4th grade classes are doing very similar work so there isn't much differentiation in this gifted class from a regular 4th grade class. We are hoping for good things to come out of this meeting, but are a bit worried about alienating the teacher as she is all we have for the rest of the school year.

Our school doesn't have any staff that would be able to pull a group of children together for advanced math, reading or any other subject. I wonder though if like at kcab school, our person who works with the lower performing students could also work with the higher performing students? The teacher did suggest to me that I could come in and work "math type" puzzles with a group of children, such as sudoko, but that would just be an enrichment activity not really teaching new math concepts or moving along at a faster pace.

The gifted director seemed to feel like it was basic to give her an assessment, see where she was at, and then teach to her on that level. If only it was that simple. Fingers crossed for Friday. Any words of wisdom to help our meeting go smoother are appreciated.

Thanks!

So - just ask for a time frame for this to be carried out?

Also - be glad that there is the social needs perhaps from being in the gifted/HA classroom.

Also - be glad that the teacher is getting a needed repetition of the expectations for her classroom HINT: Offer to come in and work closely with the kids who are falling behind so that the teacher can work at the expected pace with the other children.

Also - a single skip just doesn't do the trick for every kid - you may need to skip again, in which case, this skip is a great foundation to keep asking for the main thing - For your daughters time in school to not be a waste of time.

Peace,
Grinity

Thanks Grinity for the encouragement. It is so easy for me to get bogged down in what I think the school will do rather than just waiting to see what will happen. I was pleasantly surprised today. My DD had been out sick for two days and came back today to start on her math assessment. 2 1/2 hours today and they will continue in the morning. I wish I had received a heads up to know it was going to take place and coming off a couple days of being really sick and little rest probably wasn't the greatest, but I guess I should be thankful they are doing it. With this information in hand, it should make for a smoother meeting on Friday.