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Nm

I would let her know the basic facts up front - he is reading XYZ books without assistance, he can do these types of math problems that sort of thing. I wouldn't throw out much more up front. The first month of K seems to be filled with FUNTIME, as opposed to much learning. I would have a conference scheduled around 4 weeks into school to really discuss everything. (this is what I did with my son and it worked out well. The teacher was always very willing to chat with me and accept things like extra work, different books and math sheets, etc.)

If only DS's 2nd grade class was so flexible!

Agree with epoh's response. We set up a meeting with the teacher a few weeks into the school year, and provided a list of what he was doing in math. We had compared it to the math curricula in higher grades so we knew ahead of time we didn't have parent goggles on. We were specifically asking for math acceleration, so it was also a request for her to be on our team to help get him the challenge he needed in math.

I think it's helpful if you have a specific idea of what you want out of the conversation - is it truly just a heads up for the teacher, or would you like to get something out of it? Could be as small as reassurance that there are books in the classroom at his level, something bigger like understanding how they work with more advanced kids or asking can he be excused from worksheets learning letters or numbers, to something as big as requests for subject acceleration.

I think it may depend on what your child is like to some extent. DD is very outgoing and "showy," (she is the kid who raises her hand every time) so we haven't felt a need to talk to teachers ahead of time. IOW, she is hard to miss. However, I know some kids are quiet or shy or do not display what they know. I would still give it a couple of weeks' time before scheduling a conference, though. I think teachers like to see the kid for themselves first.

I agree with this, and my DD is the kid who sits quietly. Our school spends the first couple of weeks of each year doing assessments, though, and she assesses well.

FWIW, I've given teachers a heads-up about difficulties, but not about advancements. After her grade-skip, she was very concerned about making friends, so we asked her teacher to pair her up with someone friendly, for instance.

It seems like teachers have been happy to discover DD's talents on their own. She's not way out there, though - if she were a September birthday rather than May, and/or hadn't been skipped, or were a kid who acted out when bored, so she needed in-class accommodation right off the bat, I may have approached things differently.

We just had our conference with DS K teacher and she fascinatingly spent most of the time telling us how awesome he was in his strengths - and she hasn't gotten the half of it!!! We took the don't be a PITA or have such a snowflake he can't fit in approach and waited - and waited to see what she would do with him. She tested their reading levels not until October and then finally reading boxes and reading on their levels were rolled out - this is a gifted school - and now in December she is just now getting books for him supposedly at his level - although she acknowledged he could do more. I think it was better that she came to it on her own especially since we were having such discussions about his writing. But he tends to be quiet, she wants him contributing more. So we could have volunteered more but since she wasn't seeing it I doubt it would have changed anything. We have not asked for more acceleration in math or science because I don't think she is there yet.

But the main take away I got from this board, is that most teachers need to come to it on their own. Its a special someone who is open to this information because the implicit assumption is that it is bragging or parent assisted, IMO

DeHe

I'm going to be a bit of a devil's advocate here. I think that you need to be more pro-active in assessing the teaching style before you have your kid in there. You are shopping for a school for more than one child. I would ask the potential teacher how they work with advanced kids and kids who are struggling. I would acknowledge that kindergarten classes tend to have a large range of ability and readiness to be in a classroom. You can describe the type of reading/math that your first child is doing and ask how that child would fit in the teacher's current class. You may be pleasantly surprised to hear that they meet kids at whatever reading level they are at or you may have someone who starts telling you that they start at the beginning to make sure that there are no "gaps." We've had both styles of K teachers at the same school. Embrace the former and run like h*ll from the latter. Remember, a couple months of sheer boredom can seem like a lifetime to your kindergartener (which often translates to misery for you too BTW).

Unfortunately, we got one of those teachers who is afraid of gaps with my youngest (DS7). He started kindergarten so eager to go to big kid school. His beginning of the year assessments showed that he was reading at a beginning of first grade level and he got a perfect score on the math assessment. Despite numerous talks with a very kind but cautious teacher, he got no differentiation. I asked numerous times, why did he have to go over things where he had already demonstrated proficiency on their own assessments. I kept getting the "no gaps" line. As I posted here last year, he was miserable by Christmas and didn't understand why he had to go back to school after Christmas break because he wasn't learning anything.

If you have any sort of choice about where you're moving, it would of course be nice if you could select an area that had many different school choices, because for some GT kids, you may find that what works for a kid one year doesn't cut it the next. But it sounds like there's not much choice where you're headed.

I guess what I would want to know is how flexible a school is. Does the district have a Gifted Coordinator? If so, I'd contact the GC first and ask what their policies are for differentiation and acceleration, and if any of the schools in the district tend to be more flexible than others. Ask if they have experience with kids going to higher classrooms for certain subjects, or if they cluster GT kids together, etc. If you can get the GT coordinator on your side, he/she might be able to help you pick the most flexible and willing principal, who in turn will help pick out the teachers best at differentiation and with GT kids. We went in with scores, and that helped get us the right fit K teacher, but she also wanted to see for herself, so it took a long time to get more appropriate work for our kiddo. (I have one of those kids who doesn't advertise to the world that he is very GT, especially not in kindy.)

I think both StG and Knute are right in terms of asking questions, and in some sense pressing to have some explanations. When I was "shopping" for gifted schools, I could not get anyone to answer me as to what they do with the really advanced kids - they were much more focused on the kindy kids who met the testing criteria but could not read or read well. Then it was all about the methods and approach to get them reading by (insert level here) level, which is so advanced, blah, blah, blah. There was no willingness to believe in the outlier without seeing it. This was my experience with public - the privates - we did talk to some who tossed around terms like asynchronous development and seemed really interested in designing individual programs for the kids but I haven't seen that in public

DeHe

FWIW, I gave my DS's teacher a heads up, but he is the kind of kid who will not say anything at all if he's the least bit afraid that he might say the wrong answer. He also has a number of unusual sensory issues that are inter-related that I felt like she needed to know. As of right now, he is being subject skipped to 2nd grade for both reading and math and loves school. He is in a charter school with a STEM focus.