FLAME

Today Mommy and Daddy went to a special meeting at Parker's school with his teacher Mrs. Leveritt, the gifted teacher Mrs. Hester from Shady Hill Elementary and the gifted specialist Mrs. Snelling from the district office to discuss Parker's abilities and his education. During kindergarten Parker's teacher Mrs. Robles began the process to have him evaluated for the gifted program. The first round of evaluation was mostly teacher observation/evaluation and was done before the end of last school year. Mrs. Robles was impressed with all of his creative thinking and higher reasoning and he was reading far above grade level and doing excellent on all the writing assessments. The second round of evaluation was done over the summer as we took Parker to Ward-Highlands Elementary one morning before camp for psychological testing, including an IQ test. He had a composite IQ score of 129 and a verbal score of 126, with a non-verbal score of 125. Apparently it is unusual to have your non-verbal and verbal scores so well-balanced. Based on all the evaluations and test results, the specialists today recommended to Mommy and Daddy that Parker be admitted to the gifted program (called FLAME here in Marion County). FLAME is a pull-out program, meaning that one day a week Parker will be pulled out of his regular classroom and sent on the bus to Mrs. Hester at Shady Hill Elementary for four hours of enrichment learning and activities. He'll eat lunch during his time there and then be back at South Ocala before the day is out. The nice thing is he won't have extra homework from FLAME and will not have to make up the work from his regular class when he is gone, unless it's a test. It sounded to us like an excellent way of helping him to stay engaged and focused and challenged by school, which is exactly what we want to encourage. So Parker will start FLAME next Wednesday! An added bonus is that they are working towards having a FLAME teacher at South Ocala by the end of the year, so he may not have to travel back and forth for too long.