We have finished our second week of 2nd grade and so far all seems great! Our school is seperating classes by reading and math abilities, this year. First time for grade 2
Our reading class: We are getting good vocab words and actually had to study for some of our spelling words. A very rare thing for us.
I also found out instead of reading those little 2nd grade stories, they are going to be reading and discussing chapter books, first one is a Judy Blume.
Our teacher seems organized and excited to be in charge of the higher leveled kids. I would say atleast 1/3 of the class are in the gifted program and are reading beyond 4th grade, so she is sure to have her work cut out for her.
Math & the gifted program has not really kicked in yet, but we are hopefull.

I'm glad to hear that things seem to be working!

So glad to hear it's working out.
We too can now add on to the "so far so good" this year, although it is after a rocky start.
We switched DD6 (gr 2) from a local public school that is the gt designated school for the area to the private school I just started working at last week and WOW what a difference. We had been going through the same frustrations voiced elsewhere on this forum by lots of other people. (No challenge, little or no differentiation, at least another month before gt services started, and then it would be 1 day a week pullout for k-2 together) But then my school opened another section of grade 2 and we decided to talk to the school and see what they said about DD and meeting her needs, etc. We were really pleased and cautiously optimistic after those talks, and after a bit of an uneasy visit day for DD and her soon to be new teacher, we took the plunge and made the switch.
It has been like night and day! All the kids in her class get a pretest on spelling words and if they get enough of them right they get challenge words for that week rather than the regular words. (And she had to study a couple of them) Then when she got done with the regular math sheet in record time she was given a challenge sheet in math. Since she could do those too she no longer has to do the simple stuff! Although she is still reading from the 2nd grade story book, rather than having to answer the simplistic questions at the end of each one the teacher has been asking her more challenging questions. For example, the other night she had to explain how the story would be different if the setting changed from being in the country to being in the city. !!!! DD loved it, and wrote a whole page explaining the differences! (This from a girl who claims she can't write more than a sentence without her brain and hand getting too tired to continue. )

DD has come home everyday happy, singing, can't wait to go back the next day. We've had no fights about doing homework, even when it was taking her a long time. And, she even has to get up earlier to go to school with me and she isn't complaining.

What more could we ask for when we still have our happy, silly DD even though she's back in school?

Good to hear that!:)