Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How/ when to start discussing skipping 1st grade?

DS6 is in kindergarten this year but has been going up to 2nd grade for Math and Reading for the last two or three months. Recently he has started telling his dad and I that he wants to go to 2nd grade next year and to move up for Math and Reading from there. Just wondering if anyone has any tips to share regarding going from subject acceleration to full grade acceleration? How do we bring this up to the school and what kinds of steps do we need to look at to make the jump?

Thinking about it, I think it does make sense for him to skip up and he's not too worried about changing friends- he's always fit in better with older kids anyway (he loves going to the 2nd grade classes) plus he has a number of age-level friends in the neighborhood (some of which go to his school and others that don't). The thing that get me, though, is that he will still have to skip up for Reading and Math so is the grade skip even useful? His reading level in October was tested at mid 2nd grade level (fluency leveled out around there- comprehension and decoding were both a good bit higher). Currently he is around a mid 3rd grade level (per his 2nd grade sub teacher). He reads 5th-6th grade level books out loud with me (Harry Potter, Horrible Science, etc) but isn't up to reading them silently on his own yet. In math he is doing all of the 2nd grade work without difficulty plus he knows the concepts of multiplication and division (the facts themselves still take him a while), adding and subtracting negative numbers. I just honestly don't know what kind of grade level these things are at and how to know if skipping to 2nd for a baseline and still skipping up even higher for Math and Reading is really going to cover it.

I appreciate any help you guys can give.

It's not too early to suggest this. We started in October the year before we wanted ds12 skipped. But our district is very slow moving and anti-acceleration.

I do think the acceleration will help as he'll be with more mature peers and hopefully find some gifted peers as well. A grade skip certainly made all the difference for ds, although we're now battling over subject acceleration, but one fight at a time.

I'd definitely get on it before spring break.

Good luck!

How are his fine motor skills / executive function / stamina for longer writing assignments? If 2nd grade isn't doing timed math facts drill, do they still not do them in third?

My DD skipped 2nd, and the timed drill and increased writing load in third were the only things she really had trouble with. At the beginning of the year, she literally could not write fast enough to meet the time targets, even without pausing to think about the facts. (I counted the number of digits in the worksheet they used, and had her write 0,1,2,3.... until she had written the same number of digits. It took her 10% longer than the maximum allowable time to pass, and 120% longer than the time that got you a reward.)

AlexsMom: I'm curious about the timed drills. What are these?

My dd skipped later in the process (5th) but I wouldn't rule it out simply b/c it isn't enough. For instance, my dd was still well above grade level in everything post-skip. The way I look @ it, if she hadn't skipped, the fit would have been even worse.

I honestly can't remember exactly when in the year in 4th the skip came up but I do recall that it was a many month process before it was approved. I believe that I called the assigned middle school sometime before or around Christmas to say, essentially, 'here's the kid I have; what will you have to offer when she gets to middle school?' I wasn't requesting a skip, but I wanted to start planning so we knew if we needed to apply for school of choice the following year.

I do recall that the skip was approved before her Explore scores came in and that she took the Explore in February that year so I'd guess that it was about a two or three month process of filling out the IAS, meeting with the school administration, district GT person, having dd shadow at the middle school, etc. This was all with it being the school that was suggesting the skip.

I imagine that it could take longer if the parent is the one suggesting the skip or if the school is less than enthused about it. I'd absolutely bring it up asap b/c you need to have it approved before the end of this school year.

Just out of curiosity, since he is already working well and achieving in line with the current second grade students, is there some reason you wouldn't want to ask for him to just be placed with them in third next year? Is his request to go up to second and be subject accelerated to third in Reading and Math partly a request to stay with his friends, as well as getting interesting work? If so, having him placed in a class with kids he already likes and gets along with would be optimal, in my book.It might require some support in terms of organizational skills and motor output, but having a good social fit AND a good academic fit is an amazing gift...

Thanks everyone for the thoughts.

Alexs Mom: So far he seems to be doing okay with the stamina and executive function aspects of the second grade assignments. The fine motor skills ARE definitely behind the average 2nd grader but not to any extreme. We have been working on getting him to write smaller and faster but he's not so far behind that it causes real problems.

Aculady: I guess I don't know why skip to 2nd and not go all the way to 3rd with his 2nd grade class mates. Never really occured to me, I guess??? Like I said, this is just something that he brought up to us recently and the 2nd grade with a subject skip was the idea he had. They do have other classes (like Chinese) that I'm not sure if he NEEDS a skip in. Although I think he would probably catch up just fine after 1 skip in Chinese I wonder if 2 might be two much?

At our school, 100 math problems (addition or subtraction or multiplication or division), to be completed in 5 minutes.

Since the school is already comfortable with him going to different grades for different subjects, do you think they would have a problem with him taking Chinese with the first or second graders, and the rest of his classes with the third graders?

Why not get him jumped up to first grade now to let him adjust and then go on to second next year?