Well, we met with the principal today at our private school, and had about as good a meeting as I could have hoped for.
DS5-almost-6 is going into first grade, but the principal has agreed with our idea of using a math tutor/mentor after school and allowing him to work during math time on an accelerated curriculum that is guided by the tutor/mentor. We all think he will probably be ready for 3rd grade math next year, and both think that the best person to do this would be the 3rd grade math teacher, who is familiar with teaching that curriculum and is, according to the principal, a good fit for DS. The principal is going to approach her and see if she would be interested. Once we get hooked up with her, I will see how flexible she will be in terms of pace and additional topics for enrichment (e.g. logic, probability, etc). It will mean an extra expense for us, but that is well worth it to have him stimulated again and excited about learning new math. They are even open to using a different curriculum (e.g. Singapore Math) if we decide we want to use that. We are going to take home the 1st and 2nd grade workbooks this summer to make sure there are no areas of deficiency, and then they will test him at the beginning of the school year to see where he is.
We told the principal that we are going to participate in the once-a-week gifted math class pullout at our local public school, which my husband sat in on when DS went to shadow the class. Both my son and my husband were VERY enthusiastic about the program, when we had been lukewarm beforehand. So two good things. I think they will be flexible with whatever classtime he misses at the pullout, as he is pretty far ahead in the other areas as well.
They are also doing a "Think Outside the Box" program for the last period of the day, where the students get broken up to do more work on various topics that require critical/creative thinking (e.g. some topics are Odyssey of the Mind, Zoology, Functional Geography, Botany, Robotics, Math Lab, etc. They will have one section that is only for gifted students, although the gifted kids can choose a different topic if they would prefer.).
To top it all off, I think in large part because of our pushing and insistence that there are a good chunk of kids who are ready to accelerate in math, they are going to try ability gropuing. At our school, they do kindergarten math in pre K, but repeat it with a different, slightly more complex curriculum in kindergarten. Since my kids both scored in the 96th to 98th percentile on the end of year test (based on norms for kids finishing Kindy, not preK), I thought it was a little silly that they had to repeat the whole year of math. I'm sure that's true for a number of the other kids too. DS5 is particularly good at math, and is probably at least two years ahead, but DS4 is solidly ready to work one year ahead -- I think it would have been hard to get her differentiation because she isn't as obviously ahead as my son. Anyway, long story short, the principal is FINALLY ready to try grouping for math in kindergarten. Woohoo! I don't know exactly how they will do this (divide the two classes up by math ability? do different curriculums within the same room (e.g. both classes have some kids doing K and some doing 1st grade)?), but this is BIG progress! And once they do it this year, they will need to continue it as they move forward into later grades.
I am getting excited about the next school year. :-)
