This year, I've finally gotten a response from someone at DS's parochial school that was not, "We do not have a GT program. You might want to try public school if he has special needs like that." One of the resource teachers has spoken with DS's teacher and we're supposed to meet with the two of them in the next week or two to discuss what might be able to be done to accommodate some of DS's needs.

So DH and I are trying to make the most of this (hopefully) open attitude and come up with ideas that would be pretty easy for the school to implement, and would not make DS too obviously different from his classmates (for socialization issues).

We're not sure yet whether the resource teacher will be able to provide a pull-out for either Language Arts or Math.

So far, I've thought of the following:
Math: EPGY Math programs (or maybe Aleks?) or the computer-based Extend and Challenge Activities that Saxon offers (the school uses Saxon math).

Language Arts:
I'm hoping there could be a pull-out for this with a resource teacher, but if not, then I was thinking that the teacher could require that DS write book reports for the books that he reads in class when he's done with his other work. And/or maybe there could be a higher expectation for reports and projects assigned -- if the other kids have to write a few sentences, maybe he could be required to write a few paragraphs? The other option would be for him to go up a grade for Reading, but I'm not sure the schedules align properly for that to happen.

DH is worried that all the Math options I have are online, and that if DS is allowed to use the computers in class while everyone else has to do their worksheets, the other kids may be upset. He thinks some kind of worksheets that are above-level would be better. Does anyone have any suggestions for worksheets?

On another note, has anyone ever gotten bad reaction when they've shown their DS/DD's test results to the school? We're on the fence about showing them. Really, what the school reacted to was that DS needs help not because he's gifted, but because he's showing his GTness early, and kids who do that are at risk of losing their motivation. Their reaction to GTness in general is that they don't have the resources for a GT program.

Thanks for sharing your expertise. I hope this school year presents wonderful opportunities for all your kids! And hopefully, the hoops we all have to jump through to get those opportunities for them will be minimal.

I would get "Reforming Gifted Education." I think there is a lot to be done w/ out a formal gifted program (many which are crap anyhow). gifted programs are geared for MG.

He could so something like Singapore Math's challenging word problems. He can do the bar diagrams are do them using algebra if he's so inclined and the other kids wouldn't be any wiser.

We pretty much got zero reaction when sharing the academic/gifted side of things. I think it maybe convinced them to defintiely do the Co-GAT - but the gifted counselor had already been called in to do the gifted assessments and recommend that anyway. All they cared about was the behavior - and not without good reason - as DS6 is still displaying many sensitivies an in appropriate ways of speaking to adults - but you still need to tackle both things in my opinion. They also used the academic achievement as an excuse for not needing to create an IEP or a "special needs" class - and ultimately it became clear that the entire County's policy, was not to accelerate in anyway before Grade 3 - so the whole thing was just a pointless waste of time. I don't think they give a hoot about a gifted kid losing their motivation, I don't know that they even understand that. They want everyone to be equal as much as possible. They only seemed to back off a little when we pointed out that it was starting to have a majorly negative affect on self esteem, will to be in school and that it might ultimately affect will to learn.

P.S. I think the Davidson Institute articles contain information on ideas to help teacher's change what they are teaching to accommodate everyone - as does Prufock Press. I've just never fancied the chances of a school actually bothering to do this unless they make it a marketing point and major policy in their school and theya re private institutions maybe? An individual teacher might care enough - especially if they consider working with the gifted thier speciality? But how many teachers are in taht position really? It's obvious in public they don't get a choice about who's in their class and make adjustments as late as 4 weeks into the school year or alter. It's obvious they get given kids at opposite ends of the spectrum with no logic behind the choice at all. A private school would maybe, maybe, have someone who took things more seriously and had the time to learn from scratch if unexperienced? But you can see why I'm skeptical of this.

Thanks for reminding me of "Reforming Gifted Education", Dazed and Confused. I have it here somewhere. Now, if my DS could just invent a "book finder," I'd be all set -- too much stuff in my house and not enough order. *sigh*

[quote=Mama22Gs]On another note, has anyone ever gotten bad reaction when they've shown their DS/DD's test results to the school? We're on the fence about showing them. Really, what the school reacted to was that DS needs help not because he's gifted, but because he's showing his GTness early, and kids who do that are at risk of losing their motivation. Their reaction to GTness in general is that they don't have the resources for a GT program.(Quote)

At one point when the gifted teacher and I initialy talked about my DS9's achievement scores. She said, 9th grade level who knew? We won't be able to challeng him here. That was discouraging. She had been helpful in many ways.

The school put together a team - teacher, V.principal, school Pscy.Gifted teacher to plan & review my DS9 IEP several times a year. I don't think this would have happened without the test results at the end of 2nd Grade. For 2 years,I had written many notes, had meetings with the teacher pleading for his needs hoping for understanding. Without the results they didn't understand. After the test results,they said they never had a child like this before.

Thanks for your reply, IronMom. I can feel your frustration, and I completely see why you're skeptical.

I know I'm not alone here in not understanding the schools' positions. It seems like it's our culture to want to believe that everyone is born equally intellectually capable, although nobody has issues believing that some people are just born athletes and others aren't.

Frankly, I feel like I'm holding on to a fantasy in believing that this year the school MIGHT do SOMETHING for DS. But DH and I are committed to gathering whatever we think might be even remotely helpful for DS to pitch to the teachers, since any accommodations at all at this point would be an improvement.

Hang in there!

OTGMom, that's exactly what I'm worried about -- that they'll say he needs to go elsewhere for sufficient challenge. We don't have other good options here without moving or homeschooling, both of which would be huge financial hits for us. We have a letter from the pscyhologist who administered the IQ and Achievement Tests, that talks about his scores in a more general way. We're leaning towards just using that at this point.

I completely understand some of the reasons why people here might not think the school will really help you. But I too have hope and I'm not giving up on the school yet. I know it will not get perfect forMy DS9 but it has already gotten better. Try to learn what you can and approach the school like both of you can work as a team to make things better.

check out Mindware.com books. They have been great for enrichment.

We have saxon Math at school and I love how it is tricky to make sure the kids are paying close attention to the directions. I think the Math goes very slow but the are letting my son do above grade work in it. I'm happy about that.

How can I find out about the computer-based Extend and Challenge Activities that Saxon offers?

My DS9,3rd grade plan for this year using saxon Math
He is staying with class - so avoids isolation, He is getting more challenging work - 5th grade Math with help if he needs it, gets to work at his pace and he gets to do extra workbooks he loves with someone to check and explain methods if needed. I think if he went up a grade or 2 for Math he would still need to work faster than the class. So why go there? He reads and calculates faster than his "non-Mathie Mom" The only part I question is listening to 5 mins. of instruction of 3 Math before he does his page. They want him to do this so he knows everything for the IOWA test.

If you skip grades in Math watch for wholes in education I hear alot of Math is repeating concepts they just get harder. Ex. Single digit addition advances to two digit. It has been suggested that an explore test could let me know exactly what my child does or does not know in math. I'm not ready to pursue that just yet.

We also tried an online course this summer to see if he could bring this into the school. At this point maturity issues would make this too high maintenance for teachers. I think in the future, DS would benefit from accelerating in the math to his hearts content with an online course if there is a teacher with the course.

Best of luck. let me know how it goes.

On a more helpful note - we did get the K teacher to agree to DS6 doing more complicated homework - so he didn't have to do her worksheets - but could do ours. We just bought him the next grade level "what your kid needs to know" type book with work sheets in it. We also started in on some of the home school curriculum - just doing our own reading, trying to write a few lines about a story, trying to spell a few words, or encourage him to compose his own things about Star Wars or whatever. He seemed really happy that he didn't have to do her "baby" homework anymore, and sometimes he did it anyway - but got extra credit for the extra work he did. The downside though - is that they are often tired when they get home and he wasn't responding to doing the extra work as well as when we did it over Christmas vacation during the day. So I think it's that fine line that people on this site often mention: don't punish your kid with more work. But extra curricula items on computers or that tey enjoy is probably a good thing. We took examples of his work into school during our post Christmas meeting - and that helped to convince the teacher/s that we weren't crazy in advocating for his advanced level. The fact that we were willing to work with getting behavior intervention study/plan done also helped - but it ultimately didn't really change very much. It was more a tool to help the school deal with their "behavior" and didn't really change DS6's way of behaving. Singapore Math seems to be great too - DS6 is loving it - and if I'd had a copy to look at last year - I probably wouldn't have botehred with the "what your kid nees to know type" grade book - I probably would have just got him started on their curriculum or Saxons.

I went to the Saxon Math publisher's site, and then selected Technology and then K-3. It lists Extend and Challenge Activities as one of their technology products. Here's a link http://saxonpublishers.hmhco.com/en/primary_technology.htm

I have a call in to Saxon's "resident expert" on this as there isn't an online demo to which anyone could point me. Her voicemail said she's in the midst of a big project and has limited time to reply to messages. When I hear back from her, I'll let you know what she said. I also have a note into the resource teacher at school to find out if the school uses this already and I just don't know about it, or if they're open to using it, or....

If you end up getting any info from your school on it, please let me know.

Re: the Saxon Extend and Challenge Activities

I just got a call back from the rep at Saxon. If you go to http://saxonpublishers.hmhco.com/en/sxnm_primary.htm and click on the link at the lower right for the K-5 Technology Demo, it is supposed to include a demo of the Extend and Challenge stuff. (I probably won't have time to look at it tonight.)

In addition, she said that if your school is using the 3rd (most recent) Edition of Saxon Math, there is also a Guide to Differentiated Instruction that could be made available to the teachers. She said it is probably priced separately as are the Extend and Challenge Activities. The guide mentioned is supposed to provide ideas for each day's lessons to meet the needs of kids at every level -- those who need more assistance as well as those who need more challenge.