Ok,
This was a very big year at our house. To recap: After hitting bottom in 2nd grade, having a wonderful year in 3rd grade and a so-so year, with lots of "in class enrichment" in 4th grade, our District had a meeting to tell us that there wasn't going to be any further accomidation, basically becasue our child wasn't really the kind of kid who was so smart that he needed subject or grade acceleration, even thought the Iowa Scale put him just under the Excellent Candidate for Acceleration catagory.
This September he started a local prep school, as a 5th grader, and was instantly worried that he was falling behind his public school friends. :-0 ! At first they said it was because the follow the "Responsive Classroom Model" - but within a month it became apparent that DS10 was happy socially but unhappy academically. At my cue, they looked him over for Middle School, and he mostly advocated for himself, and blew away their Algebra Readiness test, and he joined the 6th grade after Columbus Day weekend.
They even offered him Radical Acceleration in Math, although he isn't one of these kids who breaths Math, into their 7th grade "enriched" program. Unfortunatly this meant missing 50% of class time of the History/Language Arts. It was too big a step, and the six-day rotation schedual without any pattern kept him hoping until just recently. We had heard that 6 weeks was a normal transition time for a grade skip, but at 12 weeks things were only just starting to settle, and it was clearly time to go back to 6th grade Math. From then things have started to click, although I still get angry notes about him not bringing his pencil to class from time to time. Although he misses the intellectual stimulation from the 7E math, the homework is much for doable. It was exciting to see him approaching his Math school work with the same Zeal usually reserved for videogames.
The acceleration scale manual notes that some years are worse to skip than others - the "bridge" years, and if I had known what I know now, I would have tried to arrange the skip over 4th. This is part of the reason I am such a fan of keyboarding skills - many a night DS was worn out from spending an hour on his Math, and then we was able to whip off 6 short paragraphs to respond to the questions at the end of his history text. He even used full sentences that echoed the question! I can't tell you the scene we would have faced if he had had to handwrite them!
The school has been wonderful, and it seems like the amount of extra attention he has required has been considerable, but the school is a true partner in his education and I love having that support. I'm a different person...a happier person, a calmer person.
Did I mention that DS is happier than he has ever been at school? Much - Much happier. On paper I have reason to suspect that a single grade skip won't be enough, but in real life, there are one or two kids who are "as smart" as he feels himself to be, and the organizational struggles are enough to keep him working hard. He is so proud of himself now. He says: "Look,Mom, I'm learning how to learn!" Socially he is fitting in fairly well, but he is sure looking forward to next year when the current 5th graders move up to the Middle School, and he'll have twice as many friends.
He is a fairly odd kid, and it ends up looking like immaturity in someways. It may actually be immaturity, but whatever it is, he sure seems able to handle it better as he gets older.
His grades were mostly Bs with a few even lower! But I think that now he finally knows what end is up, and accepts my "help" with checking and planning his homework, so I'm really hoping that this last trimester has nothing lower than a B, with a A-/B+ average. It sure has been strange to be helping him be sure he has done his homework. I was kind of spoiled by the old days of 90 seconds of homework/night. Less than a month to go, and it suddenly seems so easy! I am so glad we took this chance.
Love and More Love,
Trinity
