I fear his has no real 'peers' kids who can read and like math as much as he. Last year in his class there were a number of kids who were very high (higher than he)in math and reading. He thrived with them in the class - they talked books, they talked math, etc. In this calss, there is dearth ... He reports many of the children are below average.
FWIW, I found this (in hindsight) to also have been a huge wall to get over and a *need* when it came to remediating our ds' challenges - our ds has made the most significant leaps in bounds in remediating his challenges when he is given work to do at his intellectual level, not at the apparent "grade level" where students would be doing the same work. This isn't easy to explain and I don't have much time at the moment, but for instance - with written expression - ds was clearly below grade level for many years in ability to produce various types of written expression, and he needed very basic remediation, and he needed to repeat repeat repeat to learn the skill (the essence of dysgraphia). Yet he couldn't find those words and never made noticable progress until we were giving him written expression assignments that were making him *think* close to the level of his intellectual ability to analyze and synthesize ideas. When we got the "mix" in the right proportions (appropriate thinking level + appropriate remediation level) it worked - not always right away and not always astoundingly amazing, but it worked
And that was something that I don't think his elementary school teachers *ever* understood - except perhaps one gifted program teacher.
polarbear
