hoping I could work with the teacher to implement differentiation
Unfortunately, not all
differentiation is positive. Parents need to probe to see what the
buzzword means in the specific context of what is being offered for their child.
But then she said he still needed phonics practice for spelling, which I get, but that means he still has to practice "f says ffff" for a week?
Proof of
mastery should suffice to exempt him and/or make him eligible for compacted curriculum so he can quickly move through this phase of lessons.
And she insisted he was assessed as GRADE-LEVEL for math!
This may actually mean that the assessment was capped at grade-level, therefore your child hit a ceiling and they did not offer to measure above that. For example, by assessing counting only, and not addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.
She did finally agree to let him do "some above grade-level math worksheets" as an early-finisher activity.
Kiddos working independently, in isolation, is not an ideal experience as they do not develop a sense of:
- being able to ask questions,
- that it is OK to not know something or to be wrong,
- that they can depend on a teacher to guide them and help them move forward,
- belonging to a group of intellectual/academic peers.
She said a lot about how smart he is and how she wants him to advance a full-year's worth academically, even though he is starting at a high level.
A teacher's evaluation and compensation may depend upon the "growth" of students as shown by assessments. Unfortunately beginning with an artificially low inbound measure can make the outbound measure appear to represent one year's growth.
not sure where to go from here or what to ask for next
Have you recapped the meeting with a letter or e-mail stating any areas of agreement, outstanding questions, next steps discussed?
more thorough assessment? acceleration? Do I pay for a private psychoed eval? Or do I just give up and supplement at home while we figure out if we can make homsechooling work for us?
Each of these strategies, and combinations of them, have been used successfully.
