Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Skipping K?

Hello bbq797. Does your school have a gifted coordinator you can talk to about getting some differentiation for your son? Kinder teachers have their hands full, and it would be helpful if someone at the school can help out with differentiation ideas/materials/pullouts. That might be a good route to investigate if a skip isn't an option. And with the writing, it may not be. First grade is many times a very writing-centric year, and I think that would be hard for a kid who wants no part of it.

My DS7 had the same issue with handwriting. For us, I'm pretty sure it started out as a perfectionist thing, since around age 2 he was forming letters and excited about it, but then things didn't turn out how he wanted and so he refused to try to write anymore. We felt kindy was a perfect place for learning to write. He is still behind in writing as a grade-skipped 3rd grader, but he can write very neatly if he tries, and this year his writing is much, much better. I suspect part of it is developmental, and part of it is lack of practice and also trying to write too fast. But it took until this year for me to see any real improvement.

Thanks st. paulie girl, unfortunately, there is no gifted coordinator, but we do have an appointment to meet w/his teacher next week; she does seem open to trying to differentiate instruction.

Unlike your son, he had never been excited about writing. But, I understand what you're saying about the perfectionist issue.

@aculady-did some more reading about NVLD; very interesting, but doesn't seem to fit our son. I do however, see certain issues that he struggles with (social, spatial), but not NVLD overall.

I do have a question about OT eval--
Do I mention these issues? Do I mention his IQ test/giftedness etc. Sometimes I wonder if once you put a thought or a suggestion into an evaluator's head, he/she might read into it or try to make an evaluation "fit" what you're suggestion. Is it better to say nothing and just see what the evaluator determines on her own.

I think that's great the the teacher is willing to differentiate. Flexibility and a willing teacher is really a big part of having a good year. I like your son's suggestion of doing roman numerals - maybe she can take him up on his offer and have him do his math in roman numerals while the rest of the class is doing 1 to 5, for starters.

I'm not sure about OT stuff, but I would say it probably depends on the situation whether or not it's useful to share the IQ/GT information before the evaluation. Even if the OT doesn't find that your DS doesn't qualify for services, I am sure that they would be full of useful tips that you could use, and I think the tips could be better tailored if you gave the full information. Hopefully someone with experience in this area will chime in.

I would absolutely give the OT all the information you have about how your child functions, things you have noticed that he does well and things that he has difficulty with. My son's primary OT told us flat out that my son was very adept using his intelligence both to compensate for some of his deficits and to avoid tasks where he had to use those areas where he had difficulty. If she hadn't known beforehand how bright he was, she might have been really puzzled by what she was seeing, because he didn't present like a typically-developing 5 year old, but he also didn't present like a typical child with these disabilities, either.

Good point, thanks!

DD went to pre-K, and the teacher promptly admitted to my wife that she had nothing to teach her. But DD enjoyed the school experience, and fit in very well with her classmates socially, who even openly admired DD for her brains. The teacher went out of her way to help my daughter shine, even allowing DD to read aloud to the class instead of doing it herself.

At the end of pre-K, the teacher was emphatic that she should skip K and go straight to first grade, and was prepared to recommend the same to the school administration, except we were switching states (TX to LA).

Once we got to LA, there was a whole different mindset. There's a gifted program available, but it's closed to kindergarteners unless they test in the HG range (DD is MG). They kept trying all these patchwork solutions until she reached 6yo and could be accepted into the gifted program, but the patchwork solutions weren't working, DD was learning to hate school, and was dumbing herself down... this child whose beautiful penmanship at age 3 was beyond any I have created to this day declared that she'd forgotten how to write 't's.

We began to argue for her to be skipped to 1st grade, and the school refused to even listen to us, so to do so we'd have had to take it all the way to the district superintendent. By this time it was becoming obvious that the staff had decided to internalize the issue and make it about themselves instead of my child, so we pulled her out and homeschooled her for the rest of the year instead. She recaptured her love for learning, and even started flirting with 3rd grade math.

Now she's back in the same school district, though thankfully in a different school with a different staff. She's still in 1st grade, and administrators keep saying nonsense about "gaps", as though this is something that can't be measured and can only be feared. She's now in the gifted program each day for math and language, and she loves that. It's the rest of the day in her regular 1st grade class that's a problem. When she's getting math in GT and then getting the more boring math again later in the day in the regular class, that's a problem. When her regular class is out doing PE while she's in GT, that's a problem... especially when this whole "age grouping" nonsense is supposed to be for socialization, and isn't PE an important social activity?

Life would have been so much easier if they'd just listened to us and skipped her ahead... but with the gifted program being such a political football in the school district these days, I think they served her poorly because this was an obvious candidate for those services and she'd be another number they could use to help justify its existence. If she's half the kid we think she is (and more importantly, the one the tests say she is), she'd have ended up in the gifted program in another year or two despite being skipped.

/rant

hmmm timely thread- thank you for sharing experiences everyone- I've got a bright 4 yo with an August bday, and have heard feedback from well meaning family that he should skip Kindergarten.
He does have some good skills, is social, listens/follows directions well, but he's not reading fluently and although he is in a good pre-k, I am worried he lacks experience of schoolday structure/routines...ex- the bus, going to gym class, recess, etc. It would all be new to him.

He is physically advanced gross motor wise, draws people with hands, feet, neck, torso, ears, etc etc, and wrote his first sentence last week while I was in the shower- 'So, I luv u'- put it on a drawing, wrote Mama on it and slid it under the door- a love letter for me.

It is hard to know what to do!

Speechie: Breaking down your post, I note two concerns:

1) "He's not reading fluently" - This does not appear to be a requirement for entry to first grade. My DD's K class required the kids to learn a small selection of sight words, and to be able to read extremely simple books with repetitive vocabulary. The requirement for reading fluency is something they work on in first grade.

2) "I am worried he lacks experience of schoolday structure/routines..." - There's a first time for everything.

In your place, I wouldn't be too concerned.

Thanks for your input, Dude!

I'm resurrecting this thread, because I still don't know what to do. Lol.