I'm meeting with DS's school next week about next year, both in terms of his special needs and his advanced abilities. I'm the most concerned about math. Right now he has a teacher who is giving him worksheets that the "suggested learning objectives" show from computerized testing, which is above-level. She does sit down with him and teach him the concepts one-on-one so he can do the worksheets, but I don't know how much time is actually spent on this. So he is in first grade, but most of what he has worked on has been 3rd-5th grade material. The current teacher thinks the next teacher should just continue on with this method. My concern is that he probably gets about 5 min. of instruction each day and then he's on his own. They are not doing any "curriculum" it is just random stuff. One day it might be (-5)-(-27) and the next day it might be convert 428 inches to yards. Then a few days later he might bring home graphs or something about probability.
This is WAY better than what the last teacher did (she did nothing), and he is clearly learning, but it is not ideal. She thinks he would benefit either from this method, or subject acceleration (going to a higher grade for math, then coming back), but I don't think the district would allow any more than 1 grade. If he went to third grade math next fall instead of second, he would probably still know 90 percent of the concepts. I'm sure there are things he could brush up on, but the pace would be way too slow.
I don't know if anyone will ask my opinion, but if they do, or if I have the opportunity to present an alternative, what would it be? He should stay in second grade and work independently or one-on-one with the teacher for some concepts, but go to the next higher grade for others? Is there anything that would actually work? I know probably nothing is ideal but if there is a better solution than what we are doing now, or subject accelerating, what would it be? I am not sure if the district would actually allow the teacher to teach the curriculum from an advanced grade. Right now the teacher can just say she's "enriching" or whatever.
