Hi Giftodd,
I think you're right that it's an issue with the teacher, but hopefully not the school. I thought I'd share our recent experience starting kindergarten (also in Australia) which has been a more positive experience probably because of the preparedness of the teacher to provide extension work.
My DS who is also 5.25 has WPPSI scores including FSIQ all > 99.9%ile with the exception of processing speed. We were incredibly worried about what starting starting school might bring as behavioral problems due to boredom in child care were the reason we had him tested. The playbased pre-school at our local public school was okay but he was very socially isolated. My observation was that he was completely alien to the other kids. We are very lucky to have a public school with a highly regarded gifted stream starting in 1st grade reasonably close to us (an extra 15 minute journey each way) and I cried the day we found out he had a place it was such a relief even though we have a year of kindy which is not ability grouped.
Within the first 2 weeks of school starting, reading assessments by the literacy teacher had been done for all the kindy kids with DS assessed as reading up to the 6th grade level and comfortably at 4th grade. The readers he's been bringing home are generally 50 page short chapter books however the teacher advised us that she'd be happy for him to read other books that interested him and have us record those in his reading journal - the focus should be on him enjoying reading and not becoming frustrated by it. Best of all his teacher told us of another boy in his class who had been assessed at around the same level and they work together on reading. That's certainly made my son less inclined to hide his reading ability.
I've also been really impressed with the approach on maths. I'd never thought of my son as mathy, an area he really had no interest in, but put in a classroom environment with a couple of other kids who are very good at it he's made huge leaps. The teacher provides the kids with extension work she calls math challenges so now after 6 weeks at school he's mastered his 1 through to 5 times tables and the application of them. He now can't stop talking about maths.
He has typical young boy asynchrony with his handwriting but that's also improving as we suggested to his teacher, who happily took the suggestion up, that rather than doing individual letters he'd get far more out of doing something with a purpose. So she'll set him and some others in the class a task of writing a story with each sentence needing to have x number of words with the letter g in it for example.
Socially he's also thriving with a core group of close friends who get him. And while he sometimes complains that somethings are a little boring on the whole it's been so much better than we expected. Though I live in fear of it going pear shaped - how he's traveling at the 6 month mark will be a true indicator of the fit.
The differences in our experience jump out - the refusal of your DDs teacher to give her extension work to extend her and the lack of peers for her. While the school may have agreed to the acceleration it doesn't mean much if they're not prepared to provide extension work. She's obviously well beyond grade 1 level work and the acceleration is just a concession to finding her a better peer fit. It's through extension work she'll really be challenged. Hopefully that can be fixed. The peer issue is a much harder one to fix. The change in our son that having someone fairly close in ability to work and play with has been so marked. He's so much happier and easy to manage. If there are some children in other classes she has a strong rapport with it makes so much sense to see if she can be moved.
It might also be worthwhile finding out if one of the k - 2 grade teachers has taught in the senior school recently. Our wonderful teacher usually teaches grades 3 - 6 (4th grade last year) and I think that's made all the difference in her approach to DS. She deals with what she sees rather than what she expects a 5 year old to do.
Best of luck talking to the principal.
Last edited by freya; 03/29/11 04:53 AM.
