Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Contact public school now for fall kindergarten?

I had luck starting the the GT coordinator and asking for her advice the spring before kindergarten started. We also had a psychologist's report with IQ scores, though, so that helped show that they were dealing with something a little out of the ordinary. (We had been thinking we might send our kiddo to kindy early, and that is why we got the testing. The psychologist recommended going to kindy and skipping first, as first is more a learn to read and do basic math year.)

The GT coordinator was extremely helpful, acting as a liaison between us and the principal. The ended up having the school psychologist visit DS at his preschool to see what he was like, and they also did other testing so they would know what they were dealing with (WJ-III and some other social skills inventories). They paid for it too, which was nice. They selected a teacher who was good at differentiation at who wanted to have him (both nice things to request). It took awhile to get more appropriate work, as the teacher wanted to get to know DS herself, which is reasonable enough except that to a 5yo, not getting appropriate work for several months is kinda rough.

What finally convinced the school to do some more differentiation is when they tested DS with the 2nd graders using NWEA MAP. If this test is available at your school, I'd ask about it. Teachers can see how your kiddo compares with the rest of the students.

What do you think your goals for kindergarten are? Get those in mind before you start your advocacy. If you have a kid who learns in a style that is quite unusual, teachers may not have experience with that type of kid. We decided when it was clear early on that advocacy would take awhile for an out-there kid, that our goals would be "learn to write" and "learn to do school" -- both things kindergarten teachers are experts at. When we finally got the MAP results back, the GT coordinator offered to compact 2nd grade math curriculum for DS.

So, after that long-winded background, the things I recommend include asking for advice from the GT teacher about what you should do, since your DD is doing X, which seems a bit unusual (list everything you think is advanced, giving specific examples of books). Ask if they have programs for acceleration or differentiation or clustering. Ask if they've taught kids like this before. Mention that you know it's likely that you can't select teachers, but it would be great if they could pick a teacher who is good at differentiation. Ask what sorts of GT programming there is for kinders (or omit the "GT" and just say programming for kids who are reading at 3rd grade level when entering kindy if you don't want to say GT"

Have you looked on the district's website to see what sorts of GT programming they have? That type of information is useful to know in advance. And don't be afraid if the official programming doesn't start until 3rd, or whatever. That was the case in our situation, and they still tried to do their best to give our DS appropriate instruction.

Good luck!

ETA: the best reason IMO to contact in the spring is to catch the principal before they assign teachers.