Update on DS - 11/27/08 04:26 PM
Hope everyone is having a nice Thanksgiving.
We had our first official parent-teacher conference yesterday. Mixed results I'd say. (DS5.5, getting closer to 6, was admitted early entrance to first grade, effectively skipping K. He's reading probably at 3rd grade level and does math at 3rd grade level and up)
Overall he's doing well. I don't take a whole lot of stock in grades at this point and I'm more interested in what the teachers have to say. The mixed feedback that we received came along of the lines of "obviously he is doing well in math and yes he's already mastered 1st grade reading" *but* "he's not showing us what he's capable of." I wasn't terribly surprised at this. Apparently he is very quiet at school a lot and he's not being assertive by raising his hands or otherwise participating in discussions. He did this for more than half of the year when he was in nursery school, but then he really opened up and became quiet the little talker. We've heard comments from nursery school like "he doesn't say much, but when he does he's really thought about it and it's profound." So apparently we're seeing this in first grade too right now.
We talked with his teacher and we said we'd work on getting DS to express himself more. We explained that sometimes we too have difficulty getting him to summarize a story that he's just read. If you "trick" him into telling you about it--say by intentionally misstating facts of the story--it becomes pretty clear that he has read it and understands it. Sometimes the boy is just plain stubborn.
I think I'm just a bit worried about the "we're not seeing him demonstrate" comment. I think the positive side of it is that the teacher *did* come out and add "that we know he's capable of doing." Still, we're not officially identified as gifted yet (a big deal in PA).
So it was pretty mixed. And we got further reinforcement that right now the supplemental work that he's getting is just more on grade level material. I expected this too (but we are disappointed).
Anyways, that's the update. I'm just hoping the "not demonstrating what he knows" is not their diplomatic way of them saying to us "he's not gifted."
JB
We had our first official parent-teacher conference yesterday. Mixed results I'd say. (DS5.5, getting closer to 6, was admitted early entrance to first grade, effectively skipping K. He's reading probably at 3rd grade level and does math at 3rd grade level and up)
Overall he's doing well. I don't take a whole lot of stock in grades at this point and I'm more interested in what the teachers have to say. The mixed feedback that we received came along of the lines of "obviously he is doing well in math and yes he's already mastered 1st grade reading" *but* "he's not showing us what he's capable of." I wasn't terribly surprised at this. Apparently he is very quiet at school a lot and he's not being assertive by raising his hands or otherwise participating in discussions. He did this for more than half of the year when he was in nursery school, but then he really opened up and became quiet the little talker. We've heard comments from nursery school like "he doesn't say much, but when he does he's really thought about it and it's profound." So apparently we're seeing this in first grade too right now.
We talked with his teacher and we said we'd work on getting DS to express himself more. We explained that sometimes we too have difficulty getting him to summarize a story that he's just read. If you "trick" him into telling you about it--say by intentionally misstating facts of the story--it becomes pretty clear that he has read it and understands it. Sometimes the boy is just plain stubborn.
I think I'm just a bit worried about the "we're not seeing him demonstrate" comment. I think the positive side of it is that the teacher *did* come out and add "that we know he's capable of doing." Still, we're not officially identified as gifted yet (a big deal in PA).
So it was pretty mixed. And we got further reinforcement that right now the supplemental work that he's getting is just more on grade level material. I expected this too (but we are disappointed).
Anyways, that's the update. I'm just hoping the "not demonstrating what he knows" is not their diplomatic way of them saying to us "he's not gifted."
JB