Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy anyone convince teacher to increase reading level?

We actually had an awesome teacher for ds in first grade. He was between her highest group and the next highest group in a combined 1/2 classroom. There were no 1st graders in either of those groups. She placed him in the higher group stretching him a bit. By Thanksgiving break he had not only caught up to the kids in this group but left them in the dust. He started kinder barely reading (a late reader by GT standards) , started 1st at a F&P "M" and finished 1st at F&P "U". His MAP scores showed HUGE jumps.

If you have a teacher who "gets" gifted kids... they will follow the lead of the child.

To be fair at ds6's new school the teacher is happy to put him into the top group- I just don't think he can manage the output requirements.

Historically, I have focused my advocacy efforts on math, and figured that reading challenge would be addressed by leisure reading outside of school. (But this is for our socially adaptable child.) We did have one teacher who spontaneously advanced reading level by about two grades, though, and created a group just for our DC (and, I think, possibly one other child).

Does the school have higher grades? My K'er's teacher borrows books from another classroom for DS. He gets very old versions, sometimes interestingly decorated by previous students, but he still loves the stories. This seems like a very minor, easy-to-overcome problem.

Ours weren't allowed to borrow books from higher classes.

Why does it feel like that sums up the problems in education? Not being allowed to walk to a nearby classroom to get a book that would actually be useful for a child.

In K and 1 DS was given books at his level by his two great teachers. He was a reading group of one. It was the school librarian who was an issue--the teacher and I had to intervene, because she would only let him check out picture books (DS was reading Harry Potter in K).

The situation is quite different now that he's in a gifted magnet (they are all reading at about the same level, which is a few grades above but not where DS can read) but it's all right with me because he gets the benefits of being actually taught.

I did not need to advocate to the teachers, but I think they were unusually cool.

Apparently, those teachers are few and far between. I haven't encountered one yet.

How did you get them to agree to do this? Last year, in 1st grade, I asked about the reading specialist and was told that oh, no, your child doesn't need this - its for kids that are falling behind. UGH.

I think it really depends on your district. My DS was assessed by reading specialist and his classroom teacher when he was in K, because I told the teacher that he could read at higher level. I did not ask him to be assessed. I think it was just their process of making sure that he would be reading at an appropriate level. Sure enough they were able to give him higher level books to read. Also he was assigned a higher reading level in RezKids. Although at that level it was still easy for him, I was OK with it because they wanted to make sure that he comprehended well before moving on to next levels.