Amy,
Thanks for the update. My daughter's parent teacher conference is coming up in a few weeks so it's helpful to hear about your experience. I've been frustrated that my daughter's a quarter of the way through 1st grade and there's been little challenging work. We've been getting some use out of her homework by copying it for her 4.5 year old sister to use.
Luckily our district has a gifted school that starts in 3rd grade. All the 3rd graders are taking achievement tests this week. The 2nd graders in the Primary Talent Pool are taking it as well for selection to the gifted school. There was an on-line application for the testing so I filled it out for my daughter to take it as a first grader.
I don't think the school would have supported her doing the out of level achievement test but the district approved it. I'm crossing my fingers that she does well enough for them to take notice and consider having her skip 2nd grade and go to the Gifted school for 3rd grade next year. If not, we'll do private testing and try to advocate via that route. At least I know she's going to be doing some challenging work this week with the out of level achievement testing.
There is a book called "Developing Math Talent" and it describes a process call Diagnostic Pretest and Prescriptive Instruction. I've been using this method for math and also reading/language arts. I ordered the Kaplan Stanford 10 workbook for the Diagnostic Pretesting.
I hope some of this is helpful in looking at options that are outside the box. The recommendation that you give your daughter perspective about learning what she already knows bugs me. I'm going to put some thought into how I'll respond if I'm told that at the conference.
Thanks again for the thought provoking thread.
