Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment IAS Question

Truer words have never been spoken. Cheers to everyone on this board!!

Glad to hear you had a chance to re-charge yourself and relax. Good luck again, LotL!

Good for you! I felt the same way, that I was able to enlightem them on a topic they knew nothing about. When they told us several things they wanted to do, we told them no way, and believe it or not, they turned around and agreed and even changed the way they will do things moving forward after hearing our reasons etc. They even went on to tell us that we "paved the way for many kids, not just our own" by being so well researched and letting them know what we expected. I feel confident that with your persistence, it will pay off and you will come up with a solution you can all agree to! Good for you!

What does the 4-6 week trial program consist of?
I love to read the advice you've gotten - I'd include an outline of the 4-6 week trial in your email.

I don't really know why school act like this, but they often do. Our local public school did. Every time I talked to them it was a different story. I don't know if the negative responses were worse than the positive response, but I do remember it was a roller coaster emotionally. So typical that they pretended to know what the IAS was, but didn't really. That's why I wanted you to read it and know.

It's a tough line to walk between showing them - gently - that they have no clue about this area. They will need to save face at every step. I think that things will probably work out, but it's a slow and uncomfortable process. In the end you'll hear self-congratulatory comments about how glad they are that they detected this problem and solved it all by themselves. That's actually what you want the ending to be. Just be ready to breath and smile when you hear it.

Love and more love,
Grinity

They are going to do higher level thinking activities with her and a couple other kids in the class. Take ideas they are already doing and just give more project based activities. It is mostly going to come in the form of learning centers. I explained how I thought this wouldn't be enough for her that basically her whole curriculum needed to be modified for her to really be satisfied. They feel we will be very pleased when the next meeting comes around. ( I am trying to be optimistic, but feel a little less optimistic than I did last night b/c the more I think about it the more I pretty much know it will be like giving a person dying of thirst a dixie cup of water) I don't want them to think that my mind set is a grade skip and nothing else. That we aren't willing to even to give this a chance, because I feel they will be less supportive if we poo, poo thier ideas without giving them a chance.

I am going to document everything they do with her...the teacher and I will have a communication log of every activity they do outside of the curricululm and how she did with it. Then when we go in I can show them why this will not work for dd over a full year period. I think they have their hearts in the right place in a way, but I just don't think this is going to be enough for her. She craves learning and when she doesn't get it at school she comes home acting wonky and then we supply it to her. Which I don't have a problem doing, but I hate for her to be in school all day to come home for the real learing to begin. It is too much wasted time and it really frustrates her.

She told us at dinner the other day "mom I'm ready for fourth grade now"

I wonder if they're going to try to use Susan Winebrenner's methods. If so, you might want to check out her book, "Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom." http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_s...ing+gifted+kids+in+the+regular+classroom

That is what our relatively small parochial school has implemented in DS9's classroom in response to our request for differentiation for him. This year has been his best ever, but he also happens to have a fabulous teacher this year. If the Winebrenner methods are implemented well, I believe it can be enough for a gifted child, even a HG/PG one, but there are a lot of things to be concerned about with this approach. We're in the midst of this experience, so I'll share my current thoughts, in case you might find them useful.

I see several potential problems with this type of in-class differentiation.

1) Will it be enough for your DD? That's really the question, although I can almost guarantee that it will not be what your DD is capable of learning. For DS, it has been enough for us to see some progress, but he still has a lot of the same problems with challenge that we saw previously. Certainly, it's better, but the jury is still out as to whether it's enough (in lots of ways IYKWIM).

2) If the school goes this route and you stick around, I suggest you set up a meeting about halfway through each school year to discuss the following year's plan. This type of differentiation is very teacher-centric, and you'll want to understand what next year's teacher is going to do early enough to change course if needed.

3) How far apart is your DD from the other kids who will be included in her differentiation group? If there are miles of difference, she'll still be having the same issues, just in a slightly different setting. This is where we got lucky (in addition to this year's teacher) in that DS has one good friend in class who is close to his LOG.

4) For which areas of study will these "higher level thinking activities" be offered? In our school, while we are pleased that they're making progress, the diffentiation is really only for Math, Spelling and Language Arts, which is unfortunate.

That's what I came up with for now. Feel free to PM me if you have specific questions. If you think that this method is similar to what the school is proposing, let me know and I'll try to think of our other concerns about this and post them.

Sending good thoughts your way!

I call BS on that one.

Our state has a well-laid-out path to advancement, which you'd think would generate more parent interest. Our district provides written notice to every parent once a year, and to gifted-identified kids twice a year. When my DD went in for one of the two assessment days, there were 4 other kids there, out of a district of 16,000+.

My DD's last-year teacher told me there were multiple kids just in her class who the teacher felt would be fine with a grade skip. I've spoken to the parents of most of them, and the overwhelming response was "Yeah, my kid could probably have done that, too, but..." One of those parents actually did request a skip, was granted it, and decided to switch her kids to private school because she felt that changing schools was better than skipping.

So, in my experience, most parents won't push for a skip unless there are absolutely no other options that fit their kids' needs, and maybe not even then. Heck, I wouldn't have considered a skip except that it looked like the least-worst solution.

(Mine skipped 2nd, and is currently in 3rd. I will say that writing speed has been a big issue for her this year - really the only academic issue that she's had. But neither her speed nor her legibility is remarkably bad for a 3rd grader; she's just not at the top of the class for that.)

I had a totally different experience with our child's skip. We have had a remarkable skip this year and have had no set backs what-so-ever. Maybe it's the difference in grade that was skipped. All's I can say is that a skip is not always a solve all. Our DD skipped this year, and is still pulling off a 4.3 GPA for both quarters. She is not challenged but just think of where we would be without it at all. The other positive was the level of independence in the receiving grade. There is more interesting work, while not challenging for our child, it is definitely more engaging. I wouldn't have second guessed the skip for the life of me. In fact, I am sure we'll be looking at more accomodations in the future with the rate she is going!

Thank you so much! I may take you up on that. I am going to get that book too. They never gave a name to go along with what they are doing, but I can email the coordinator to see.

Part of our problem this year even with the program is that while her classroom teacher is nice, I don't feel she is good with taking the initiative to do things herself. If she is told to do it and how to do it, it gets done. Otherwise it doesn't.

Keep playing the part of the respectfully squeaky wheel. Eventually you'll wear them down. Go Girl!

This would be a big red flag in our situation. A teacher with good intentions isn't enough. You need someone who is willing and able to come up with different appropriate-level work and actually make it happen consistently throughout the year.

In our case, all the kids in class are given the opportunity test out of the math/language arts/spelling units if they want to take a pre-test. If they succesfully test out, they do not have to listen to any of that unit's lecture. Instead, they are given a different, generally open-ended activity. For example, in Language Arts, they were once sent to the school library and told to pick a book from a particular genre (e.g., biography). From their book, they were to prepare a report to deliver in class which included some type of visual piece (e.g., a timeline). In Math, they were once given books/fact sheets about an event in history and they worked in groups to come up with a verbal and visual presentation which included word problems based on the information to present to the class (e.g., It was below freezing from x date to y date, in z year. How many days was that? DS thought that one was funny because the kids had to figure out that it was a leap year before they could add up the days.)

Because the work is open-ended, it does let the kids work at a higher level. In our experience, though, it doesn't push them to do something that they might initially think is too hard, which is something we worry about with both our DC. I've been impressed with some of what DS has come up with on these projects, and he's much happier this year, so we've seen it as "enough" for now.

If "testing out" is the plan at your school, you'll want to know what score your DD will require in order to skip the work. Make sure it's not 100% -- just because someone makes a single mistake shouldn't mean they have to listen to several days' lectures on the topic. Setting an expectation of perfection to test out just does bad things for perfectionists. I think that's included in Winebrenner's book.

HTH. Keep us posted on your progress with the school!