1st Grade at Seaton for an advanced reader

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone, my DS is #2 on the waitlist for first grade at Seaton. At our current school, he was tested as reading at the third grade level, but he doesn't go to a different classroom for it because we thought he was too young and did not have the attention span for it. Can any Seaton parents talk about how Seaton handles advanced readers in that age group? TIA.

[Anonymous]

Our kid is still in PreK at Seaton, but I know that they do pull kids out for various enrichments in the higher grades, including Junior Great Books for those who are doing well with literacy. (FWIW, our son is reading at three, and the teacher was great at diagnosing that and assisting him here and there.)

[Anonymous]

Our first grader- who is advanced but not gifted- has a strong group of peers on the same level at Seaton. I think they have done enough to challenge these kids.

[Anonymous]

We have found that Seaton does have a growing population of advanced students. That being said- the teachers are on a learning curve with this population. Our DS is in First this year...and for better or worse.. I would call this group the first of the gentrifying cohorts. This type of population is different from the existing population- and there has been some adjustment to figure out how to meet the needs of that population while still meeting the needs of the existing population.

We have been very impressed with all the teachers, but like I said- they have not been dealing with as many advanced learners. They have room to grow in this area... and seem to be open to trying new things.... but it’s not a perfect system yet. For literacy...Reading groups based on level, different homework assignments, different in class reading prompts, different individual goals to work on, etc. For math, I have seen less obvious differences.

I have a feeling next year the first grade teachers will do better with these students because they will have had a year under their belt. And it will continue to improve going forward.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, PPs! You are making me feel like I have an actual solid option in this messed-up system. Are you planning to stick with Seaton going forward? What do you think you'll do about middle school?

[Anonymous]

We plan on staying at Seaton for the long haul. But we are definitely Unclear about what we will do for Middle School. We will cross that bridge when we get there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We plan on staying at Seaton for the long haul. But we are definitely Unclear about what we will do for Middle School. We will cross that bridge when we get there.

Is there any effort to improve the middle school? Cardozo, right?

[Anonymous]

I notice Seaton offered 25 K seats in the lottery this year. Are they adding a classroom?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I notice Seaton offered 25 K seats in the lottery this year. Are they adding a classroom?

Yes. They have 3 classes per grade for pre-k 3 & 4. Upper grades have 2 classes per year. Next year they are adding a 3rd Kindergarten class to accommodate the growing demand.... including the number of people staying beyond preschool.

[Anonymous]

Keep in mind that when they test reading level and say your kid reads on X grade level, that doesn't mean you kid should be in that grade, even for ELA. It is used to choose the "just right" books for your child to read to increase comprehension and vocabulary. It is very easy to have kids on 7 different reading levels in one room and they all tend to progress ad varying rates within a given year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Keep in mind that when they test reading level and say your kid reads on X grade level, that doesn't mean you kid should be in that grade, even for ELA. It is used to choose the "just right" books for your child to read to increase comprehension and vocabulary. It is very easy to have kids on 7 different reading levels in one room and they all tend to progress ad varying rates within a given year.

Exactly, that is why I'm interested in Seaton. We did not place our DC in a higher grade for reading because we didn't think it was developmentally appropriate. I want to move my DC to a higher-performing school where there might be a reading group that is closer to DC's developmental age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I notice Seaton offered 25 K seats in the lottery this year. Are they adding a classroom?

Yes. They have 3 classes per grade for pre-k 3 & 4. Upper grades have 2 classes per year. Next year they are adding a 3rd Kindergarten class to accommodate the growing demand.... including the number of people staying beyond preschool.

np: If they already have 3 classesfor pre-K 4, then they can presumably fill 3 K classes without taking many additional students. 25 kids is a whole additional class by itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I notice Seaton offered 25 K seats in the lottery this year. Are they adding a classroom?

Yes. They have 3 classes per grade for pre-k 3 & 4. Upper grades have 2 classes per year. Next year they are adding a 3rd Kindergarten class to accommodate the growing demand.... including the number of people staying beyond preschool.

np: If they already have 3 classesfor pre-K 4, then they can presumably fill 3 K classes without taking many additional students. 25 kids is a whole additional class by itself.

I believe it's 18 kids for PK4 and 20 for K? So they would need to add 20+2+2, which is 24. Then one extra plus the waitlist to backfill attrition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I notice Seaton offered 25 K seats in the lottery this year. Are they adding a classroom?

Yes. They have 3 classes per grade for pre-k 3 & 4. Upper grades have 2 classes per year. Next year they are adding a 3rd Kindergarten class to accommodate the growing demand.... including the number of people staying beyond preschool.

np: If they already have 3 classesfor pre-K 4, then they can presumably fill 3 K classes without taking many additional students. 25 kids is a whole additional class by itself.

I believe it's 18 kids for PK4 and 20 for K? So they would need to add 20+2+2, which is 24. Then one extra plus the waitlist to backfill attrition.

Oops I did that wrong! 18 kids in PK4 classes, times three = 54. Target is 60, for three K classes of 20 each. So they need to attract a net gain of 6 kids. 25 seats does seem ambitious but I suppose there will be some attrition so it will all work out?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We plan on staying at Seaton for the long haul. But we are definitely Unclear about what we will do for Middle School. We will cross that bridge when we get there.

Is there any effort to improve the middle school? Cardozo, right?

Your best bet would be to try and get Francis-Stevens to stop doing middle school and have their feeders also go to Cardozo. Then Seaton, Garrison, Ross, Cleveland (students who don't choose the dual-language feed to MacFarland), Thomson, and F-S would all go to Cardozo--that's a big enough cohort to allow for differentiation, electives, and extracurriculars (especially with the fact that removing middle school from F-S would allow for the elementary school to offer more classrooms there). It would also create a good synergy where more kids would go on to HS at Cardozo, so they could offer more courses (including APs and interesting electives) and kids who were really advanced in middle school could even bump up to high school classes. If a kid is ready for calculus in 8th grade, having it offered in a different wing of the same building is a big advantage.