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Posted By: Niki It is here: "School is boring, mom!" - 10/14/09 02:18 PM
It seems as the novelty of school has wore off for my son. DS(5) just started Kindergarten this August. He keeps asking me: "I thought school is for learning, when will I start to learn new things?"
DS is not accelerated, he is in regular K and is in a gifted pull out program (40 minutes) 4x a week.
Last week we received the full report of his achievement testing (which we have done privately) and no wonder he is bored: word reading 3.8 grade equivalent, numerical operations 3.0, math reasoning 4.3, reading comprehension grade 7.0 (?) and pseudo word decoding 5.2 (the last two test norms were used for first grade).
I brought this report to his school and asked to schedule an EP meeting based on his scores. I have a week to get ready.
I am starting to gather all the information I need coming in to the meeting. I want to be well informed of all options available.
But in my mind there is a Big question: Are schools (Public school in this case) even able to deal with a such a gap between age and knowledge? Is it even doable? Are you in similar situation and it is working for your child, please let me know what schools are doing in such case.
I appreciate all the help I can get on this issue. Thanks.
Posted By: melmichigan Re: It is here: "School is boring, mom!" - 10/14/09 02:50 PM
Our schools aren't able to and our elementary school in general supports my choice to homeschool and have been very helpful. My DD9 is in what I suspect might be her last year of dual enrollment, attending for speech, English, art, and music (she also has AS so she has an IEP and receives services). She homeschools her remaining subjects. My twins homeschool exclusively right now for the reasons you mentioned.

You might want to look into what is being done in your district. In our district kids are strictly kept with their age mates. "Differentiation is done in the classroom" is the motto, and children are restricted from attending the high school for classes until "chronologic age". My DD9 is in 5th, technically a skip but only because we started her early in Montessori and then transfered her in to public. You have some advantages we don't, you must have gifted laws in your state from what you mentioned. It's always nice to start with knowledge of what the schools current views and policies are (especially any that are in writing). I researched that well and spoke with other parents of GT kids that attend the same district to get a feel for their experiences and what they have been able to do. Sadly, in our district, it wasn't much.
Posted By: Niki Re: It is here: "School is boring, mom!" - 10/14/09 02:55 PM
This is not a gifted school. We were not impressed with it. My son really liked magnet school with lots of science.
Our problem was, that the first EP was written at another elementary school (one we would belong to based on locality) and it was transfered to this magnet school. It is so vague as:Demonstrate proficiency and be able to apply advanced numeric procedures, apply higher level critical thinking skills, gather information, interpret, analyze relevent facts...and so forth.
How detailed can actual EP be?
CFK, I am glad that it worked for your son.Sometimes, I am second guessing if we have made the right decision not going to full time gifted (our psych said, he would be bored even in gifted...)
I am not giving up the battle. Not yet, anyway...
Posted By: Niki Re: It is here: "School is boring, mom!" - 10/14/09 04:41 PM
Melissa,
that is great that you can have little bit of both worlds for you DD (dual enrollment). Our district has gifted policies in place, which offers gifted full time classes (they do not accelerate, only differentiate in the classroom). I called the School district to ask them what would be our options: and that is it. The full time gifted classroom with in classroom differentiation.

I am hoping, that we can work something out with DS's current school. MY DS likes stable, to him predictable environment, and switching schools would be hard on him (at least for now, I think).

CFK, was the EP specific as far as subjects and what was he learning, who is teaching him and so forth?

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