Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Gifted but behind in Kindergarten?

About the tests. Our kids have tests at that level too but they are not about pass/fail but readiness. Are you sure they aren't just testing for who needs to move to a higher maths group? And/or to get info about where each student is and what they are struggling with. Not all tests are aimed to be able to pass in the way we as adults think of tests.

I'll just throw into the mix, not to forget he's a boy. Both my gifted boys (as well as many others I know) had no interest in reading in K primarily b/c they were not interested in Biscuit, or Spot, but rather some sort of DK book or encyclopedia about space, history, science etc. A fun resource for helping them is Mimio/Headsprout. It does a really good job of bridging that K-2 gap and teaching them the reading and comprehension with "higher level" interest including space, history etc..

What I find frustrating about all of this is that many bright children (often boys) get a mental block about reading and school in general by the time they are in 1st grade as they see that most of their classmates are gaining reading fluency rapidly while they are still struggling.

So while I wish I could say relax and don't worry about it, "remediation" over summer might help boost his confidence going into 1st grade.

Some gifted kids learn to read at 2/3 but not all of them. Gifted children can be quite different. I know a few gifted kids that didn't really read till 2nd grade and then picked it up extremely quickly and were way above average by 3rd grade. Reading is very developmental and some kids are just not there yet.

I would say don't worry so much except that school expectations seems to be a real problem. If you look over the K curriculum you will find that the material is really very simple, and takes a huge amount of repetition. Since you have the testing and it shows he doesn't have any obvious learning difficulties I would back off a bit till he is a tab bit older if you can.

My second daughter did not read until first grade. We didn't worry a ton, as her older sister also "read late" and didn't read until first grade. It turns out that second daughter is PG, and it also turned out that she is 2E (non-verbal learning disability). But once she started reading in first grade, she took off like a rocket -- she read the full Lord of the Rings trilogy in second grade. And had perfect SAT scores eventually on the SAT Critical Reading, Writing, and Subject Test in Literature. So at least for her, being slow to read was not a problem in the long run.

My advice is to keep reading to him a lot -- you want him to love books and language so he keeps reading once he gets the hang of it. In fact, I read aloud to second daughter until she was about 13, we just liked it as an activity. You may want to see about testing if he is still struggling by the end of first grade, though.

Our ODS really loved books (looking at and being read to) until partway through his kindergarten year. He really wasn't too fond of being taught to read, and I found it a bit nerve wracking that I couldn't get it to "take". (He knew all his letters and could spell some words, go figure.) Seemingly overnight, reading started for him, and he took off like a rocket. He's seven and in second grade now, and rapidly burning through our large library's collection.

I would echo, though, the suggestion to have his eyes checked with an eye doctor used to checking children. DS is very farsighted and I think that also slowed his start with reading, as it was really a strain.

Wow! Thanks for all the replies! I didn't know this board got so much traffic. I'll try to answer some of the comments.

We tested for LD because for three report cards he consistently was not satisfactory. At first the teacher was saying things like he'll likely be on target for next report card, then we got comments that he *might* be caught up by the end of K, as well as possibly needing retention. Well, the minute I heard retention I went into find-a-reason-for-this mode. Some of her comments included he was not answering questions consistently (for math) or not being "confident" while reading. I personally have noticed lack of attention, and there is dyslexia in the family, so we got him tested. I felt he was bright, but why wasn't he doing well? And there was NO way I would consider retention without it, as I know a large majority of children retained are found to have LD in the future.

In general, DS tells me he hates school. Teacher has never seen any indication he feels this way, but that's what he tells me (I think because of all the work). He doesn't complain that it's hard, just I feel the quantity is high for him.

We are in a elem-middle-high school high achieving area. Where we live there are a few hotspots of great schools among poor scoring ones. I didn't realize how test happy they were until we moved in and started the school process. The local pre-K has children reading easy readers before they start Kindergarten. DS is expected to read a level D reader from the accelerated reader type books to pass K. From what I can see, most of these books are 70% sight words, 20% "guessing words" (like dinosaur was in a book today), and 10% phonics. And not "easy phonics". Cake was a word from the book today as well. There are lots of pictures and the children are encouraged to look at the pictures, the first letter, and try to guess the word, from my best understanding. However, I digress.

Behavior with him is ok, but he does get some warnings, some for talking, occ for goofing around in class. The person who tested is a PhD psychologist who supposedly specializes in gifted and school testing. Though we may consider the local university in the future.

I think so too but others have said it is also par for K. So I'm uncertain. As mentioned, they have to read level D readers to pass K, and are expected to write fairly expressively (still I'm uncertain about what is required). For an example, I would say 70% of the children are writing independent sentences with very legible letters. A lot have progressed to good spelling as well. Counting to 100, plus they write to 100, skip counting, as well as counting by 5's, 10's. I don't think those math skills are required, just counting to 20?

I'm uncertain about the testing. As far as I know speaking with the other moms, all the children take the same quizzes (workbook) and the teacher has test scores she shows me when doing progress reports to show if he is satisfactory or not. I don't know % for passing, however.