His teacher is usually very responsive to email, so we emailed to ask her if he could bring the writing journal home and complete the writing assignment at home, but she has not responded.
I depend on email a lot for communication.. and one thing that I always try to keep in mind... not receiving a reply to an email *many times* means the email has not been read, possibly not been received. It can also mean a whole host of other very innocent things, including a teacher simply being very busy. So I would follow up with a brief personal conversation if you can - do you either drop off or pick up your ds from school? If you aren't going to be able to talk to her in person, I'd follow up on the email with either a phone call or another email checking in to see if she'd had a chance to read the first email
FWIW, our ds went to a gifted pull-out class once a week when he was in elementary. It was the same type of situation, he was not supposed to be required to make up any work he missed. His teachers didn't require that he made up any work, but the reality was he missed what happened while he was not in his home classroom. It sounds like your ds has a worksheet-oriented teacher, so if it's material that builds on previous assignments, I can see that the teacher might feel it's important to make up the work. I'd consider - is the making up of work pushing your ds over the edge, or is he generally ok with it?
Re. writing, can you tell us more about what the actual challenges are? Where is writing an issue - in his regular class or in the class he's been accelerated into? Is he having more difficulty with generating his thoughts than the teacher expects the average child at his *current* grade level has? If he is, I'd really focus on looking into what's up with him. It's possible that the challenge isn't that your ds is not "ready" for the next grade up writing.. it sounds like he might have difficulty with expressive language. If that's the case, two things to keep in mind: 1) if he has a challenge, he'll have it no matter what grade level he is in. Chances are good, though, that if you make sure he's accelerated appropriately, it will make it easier to work on any challenges he may have. 2) If he *does* have an expressive language (or other) disability you want to know - the sooner the better, so that he can have meaningful remediation while young.
Best wishes,
polarbear
