APS Gifted Referral Form
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Anonymous
Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like your child's teachers did a great job of communicating what differentiation was provided in the classroom. Parents often think that if the RTG isn't directly involved in the activity then nothing is going on. |
Anonymous
And your child's RTG is not using the model promoted by APS, which unfortunately sends the wrong message when things aren't done with fidelity across the county. APS Gifted Services makes it very clear all over their website that APS does not have a pull out program. |
Anonymous
| RTG seems like a very cushy position. |
Anonymous
I feel just the opposite, at least in my experience and from the info session from fall. 1 RTG for all grade levels with 100+ kids identified per school? Normally there's 1 SPED teacher per grade level and multiple reading and EL teachers. They also mange all of the paperwork for the ID process and create materials they push out to all grade levels. I don't know if there's really any "cushy" positions inside a school building... central office another story. |
Anonymous
I suspect that like everything in APS, it varies by school. We have never had any interaction with the RTG at our school and there are way less than 100 kids identified as gifted. From what I can tell, the classroom teacher is doing all the work for differentiation and the RTG rolls through to co-teach a lesson once/month-ish |
Anonymous
Can you share what school this is? My DC has to do the same required work whether she knows it or not. She knows it all, and it’s mindblowingly easy. That would help me know so much more how to advocate for change. |
Anonymous
DP, but DHMS does this. |
Anonymous
Often it depends on teacher, not the school. Some teachers know how to and are willing to differentiate. The RTG can help teachers who don’t know how and are willing, but it is really the admins job to hold teachers accountable for differentiation. Unfortunately, not all teachers are open to collaboration and putting the work in for what differentiation requires, which often creates an environment for “teaching to the middle”. Also unfortunately, I don’t think principals want to ruffle many feathers of teaching staff who are at least average with this teacher shortage. |
Anonymous
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We did not refer our gifted child in K, he got picked up with the 2nd grade testing and we had to answer the same questions. We didn’t stress too much about our answers because we knew his scores were high. We had a few weeks to fill it out and we just made a point to notice the things they were asking about.
I don’t know what they really do in APS prior to 3rd grade. The principal at our school said they select very few kids as gifted before 3rd grade because the assessment tools they have don’t differentiate well between giftedness and just being precocious in kindergarten. The purpose of the survey questions is to try to differentiate. |
Anonymous
Are these projects that make students think more deeply actually beneficial? Do you feel they are advancing your child's knowledge and understanding? Or are they just using concepts they know in a different way with unclear additional benefit? |
Anonymous
I don't know, but my student enjoys these activities more than relearning things she already knows. Some projects are more fun and interesting than others. Others are more busy work. It varies. |
Anonymous
In our experience (4th grade) it is pure busy work. My kid has not learned a single thing since starting at her north Arlington school. The math curriculum and “extension” activities are a joke. I am one of the PPs who asked which school lets the kids skip over the required basic content if they know it because that’s not happening at our school. |
Anonymous
Your kid has learned nothing? That's ridiculous. My 4th grader is learning all sorts of Virginia history that is new to both me and her. (I didn't grow up in Virginia.). With the new language arts curriculum she's been reading passages about cholera and the development of vaccines, the middle ages and serfs, geology and tsunamis. She's been practicing using some pretty advanced vocab in her writing, where she may have seen the words before she's never had to use them in written exposition. She learned about meter and rhyme patterns in poetry. Wrote a brochure and had to practice paraphrasing and proofreading. In math most of her class struggled with the fractions unit. The advanced fractions work she got through the RTG was challenging even for my advanced math student. I'm not saying that any of this is overly hard for my kid, but is absolutely untrue to say that she's learning nothing. There's a lot being covered that we'd never exposed her to at home. If your kid isn't seeing any new material, I'd stop supplementing on SOL standards at home and supplement in music, chess, athletics, etc. No need to pre-teach what they're going to cover at school. And I refuse to believe that you commonly discuss George Mason's contributions to the development of personal rights over the dinner table. |
Anonymous
Check the growth assessment reports on ParentVue. Look for your kids fall scores and make sure they got every question given to them correct, and as many difficult as possible. Then do the same with the winter score. |
Anonymous
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