Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Top 5 questions

I know similar questions have been asked before, but I think it's worth revisiting.

Well, I have finally gotten a chance to arrange a meeting, for Tuesday, with the school we think DD7 will be attending next year. It is the local public school she started in at the beginning of this year, but it didn't work out because the gt program was a 1 day a week pull out in grade 2, and because we were new to the district, she hadn't started it even after a month of school, and there was bullying going on. So, she's been at the private school I work at for the year. (Which hasn't been all that great either.)

The public school's fulltime gt program starts in grade 3, so we're transferring her back there next year. Her class will be a combined grades 3 & 4 class (the other gt class is combined 4/5). All I know right now about the program, other than that they have one, is that when DH asked them over the phone about the curriculum he was told that even the gt kids had to meet all of the benchmarks for their grade level, including the state testing.

I expected her to have to take the state tests, but am a bit concerned about how they explained the rest "having to meet all grade level benchmarks". Based on what I know about the grade level benchmarks, she has already met and surpassed the majority of them.

I have so many questions to ask them, I don't know where to start. What would your top 5 questions be to the school at this meeting? (It is with the class teacher and the gt guidance counselor.)

Here's some suggestions:

1)In what ways do you encourage creativity in your classroom?
2)Tell me about a lesson in which you've used differentiated instruction.
3)How do you teach kids to utilize higher-order thinking skills in your classroom?
4) What do you do to prepare your students for state or standardized tests?
5) How do you ensure continuous progress for gifted students?

Here are some other suggestions:

1) Can students pre-test on the grade level benchmarks at the beginning of the year?

2) If the grade reporting is benchmark based, how is progress reported for students who have already shown mastery of those benchmarks?

1) What are the differences in both teaching style and content between the GT classes and the mainstream classes?

2) How many students are in each class and what is the range of ability scores (130-140?, 130-160?)? Achievement scores?

3) Are students able to work at their own pace, particularly in the subjects in which they excel, or are all the students expected to progress through the curriculum in a lock-step manner?

4) If the classes are divided into 3/4 and 4/5, how is it determined into which class a 4th grader goes?

5) What if the full-time GT class still isn't challenging for my child?

I couldn't have put it better. These are what I would ask to begin. I would think the answers to these would give you a very good idea as to what the real deal is there.

Thanks,
These ideas put my thoughts into focus. I'll let you all know how the meeting goes later today.
(Fingers crossed)

Well, I just noticed the time my last post says I was up writing! I don't know what happened, but I wasn't up that late last night (or up that early this morning) oh well.

We had our meetings. the first was with the teacher and I, and then the guidance counselor and I met. (There was a miscommunication about the time, so they couldn't meet together.)
I found out some generalities about the program, as well as a few specifics, but they have a big meeting with all of the incoming parents in May and strongly suggest I attend that to get more info.
The teacher is GT certified, and has been doing this class for 3 years. She works closely with the teacher of the 4/5 gt class. They follow the grade 3 curriculum, but do so at a faster pace, as well as with a bit of a twist. For example, they don't use the third grade reader, instead they read novels. They do lots of individual projects and assignments. She says that the science and social studies curricula are much more difficult than what they ahve had in 2nd grade, so that is usually the most challenging part for the kids.
She does pretesting for mastery of concepts and if a student pretests out of a topic she usually has them do what the 4th graders are working on. In DD's case, since she is already doing gr 3 math, she would probably start doing 4th grade math right away. (Math ability is how the 4th graders are actually divided between the 3/4 class and the 4/5 class.) She said she had 1 student this year who consistantly tested out of gr 3 reading, and so was given more difficult tasks to go with the novels they were reading.
The big downfall for DD is that there is no art at the school (the position was cut a few years ago and the art room has been replaced with a science lab. Which means that science has become a specials, rather than a real subject in school! ).
The teacher said she is always mixing things up because she knows how quickly the kids' needs change and how fast they understand things, so she does a lot of curriculum condensing.
I wasn't awed by what they had to say, but at least both the teacher and counselor seem to know what they are talking about, and have alternative ideas about what to do with her if there is a need. (It also can't be worse than what we have now, so we'll see how it goes, and keep our fingers crossed.)

Thanks for the update and the lack of art is disappointing. Having a science lab with kids doing hands-on experiments every few days sounds better than having a teacher giving a science lecture or the kids reading a science book. I'm cautiously optimistic for your DD.