Speaking about my DD9, Irena, I make a point to lightly discount any rote, mindless teacher criticism of fresh, exciting work. That is, I might say, "Well, it's true that you didn't include a topic sentence as your third sentence, and that's what you're supposed to do. So, next time, do that. But this is still a great paragraph. It's so exciting because...and I love how you..." That is, if anyone is trying to suck the life out of her excitement about writing by turning it into "Insert tab A into Slot B" exercises, I remind her that that stuff isn't really what good writing is about. Fortunately, she has only had one teacher like this.
Quantum2003, entrance to the GT magnet (starts in gr 2) available to my kids is typically by IQ score only. However, we are discussing alternate options for DS. His current teacher would like to put him in grade 1 part-time right now (pending a meeting with the principal next week), and there was some discussion of a skip, but it appears this is unlikely due to school admin. Next year he is very likely to spend at least some time in grade 2--not sure if gen ed or GT. I lean against a full skip to GT magnet grade 2 in part because I do feel he would be in the bottom 10-20% for writing there with these skills. But I may be misremembering what the other grade 2 kids were doing.
