Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Update on my dd and more advice

Hello everyone. Just wanted to share how things have been going for my dd6 since they began to provide more enrichment. I know she feels a little better, but overall she "thinks it makes school less boring, but is still too easy". Our feeling is still that she will benefit the most from an environment where she spends the majority of her day learning new things rather than just working on little activities that are just a little more challenging. Overall the activities are done by herself or with a small group so it is just giving her material that is one or two grades higher, but in the realm of what she knows. The classroom teacher has been sending weekly updates(except for once she forgot). Here is what she has sent me in her updates of activities they have added for dd:

A reading book and assignment for homework and the exemplar thinking activity During centers.

Working with a few peers that are also reading really well. This group gets more challenging activities to work on individually or as a group.

An extra reading assignment on insects. She had to fill in a graph comparing a spider to an insect.

Journal writing, write 2-3 sentences using more "fancy" words. I am encouraging her to add more details to her pictures.

During phonemic awareness, I have her continue to sit with class. When we come to a word the class does not recognize, I then will call her, or anybody else that might know, to use it in a sentence or tell the class what it is.

During math, after she completes the group activities and workbook page, I have a bunch of critical thinking worksheets "brainwork" to challenge her.


This week she worked with her small group on word building. I received a reading center from the gifted teacher. Her group worked on building more challenging words and word families. We will work with this center again this week, but use some of the words in sentences, or maybe even a short story or poem.


She is also working on reading small passages and answering comprehension questions.

We also started a word journal in class. I am putting her in charge of looking up the words that we don't know during phonemic awareness or in a story and read the class the definition. Our word last week was frumpy! We will use our dictionary or the internet to find word definitions.




So I want to approach the coordinator about the meeting for grade advancement as that is the route we would like to go. Here is what I have so far in my email to her, but would love opinions on additions or things to delete. Thanks for all the help!!

I just wanted to touch base with you about all of the different things that have been implemented in our daughter's classroom. We again want to thank you for taking the time to provide those resources for Mrs. We think that these are a great tool in helping dd feel less frustrated while she is in school the rest of the year. However, we still feel the greatest benefit to dd will be grade advancement for the following school year. We would like to go ahead and set up a meeting with the Superintendent. We just want dd to be in an environment where she spends the majority of her day feeling academically challenged.


That is all I have so far LOL

They certianly seem to be making an effort - and I'm glad your daugher is feeling a bit better.

I think instead of an email, better to send a paper letter along these lines -

Dear Principal -
I want to publicly praise Ms. Classroom for her efforts toward helping the classroom be a better place for DD. Ms. Classroom has provided a reading group with advanced material, science lessons about spiders and insects, enriched language arts, and critical thinking extension in Math. I applaud her efforts, and I hope you will recognize the superlative effort Ms. Classroom has made.
Unfortunately, DD is still reporting that she is yearns for more academic challenge throughout the school day. For this reason, we formally request a gradeskip. Is this something that you can facilitate, or do we need to have a meeting with the Superintendent at this time?

Very Sincerely Yours,
The Lostland Family

I love the sample letters in From Emotions to Advocacy by Pete Wright. Well worth getting the books. Grinity's is great though--maybe she should write a book!

It sounds like the teacher is doing a lot of work to make things better for your DD. Just a warning to try to make your communication very thankful to this teacher, with attempts not to take away from what she's doing. We made the mistake of having a meeting with our DS's previous school team where we told them that he needed more, and the classroom teacher told us he was very offended, because he'd been working his butt off to differentiate for our DS (and this was after the grade skip). It is always difficult to walk this line. For us, it was more a miscommunication issue, but what it came do for us was an understanding that what our DS really needed was 1) faster pace and 2) intellectual peers.

Perhaps you can say something like, "We are so grateful for everything Mrs. T is doing. Our DD is much happier to have some work that is closer to her level. We feel that things will be even better next year if we have a grade skip into x grade, where more of the base level materials will be closer to her level and there won't have to be as much differentiation work for the teacher. Also, there will be a greater chance of having other kids working at DD's level."

Lots to think about! I do think you are very lucky to have a teacher willing to do so much for your DD now. In contrast to Grinity, I'm a fan of email versus paper letter - you can cc emails to many people. We've never had to write a formal letter, and if things are going well with the school, I would say start with an email. Formal letter if you get no response. Emails can also be forwarded along quite easily, when necessary...

Thank you all for the advice. I really appreciate it.

We have been giving the classroom teacher a lot of positive feedback. I do respond to all of her emails with thank yous and how much we appreciate her work. I also called her a week into all the additions and thanked her for all that she is doing and told her how much we appreciate it and wanted to let her know that if she needed any extra materials I would be happy to buy them. I do not want her to think that in any way we feel she isn't doing what she is supposed to so I will include more positive notes about the teacher in my letter to the coordinator.

I just feel as a whole this method is great for now b/c the grade skip isn't an option no matter what this late in the year. For next year I still feel she will benefit more when the teacher doesn't have to provide as much differentiation and the kids will be working more at dd's levl...as St. Pauli girl said