School Preparation


Preparing young children for school starts with their birth. The first three years are now thought to be the most important time for cognitive development in children. Parents play an important role as the first teachers to their children. Parents, from the beginning need to interact with children in ways that will provide the stimulus for language and psychomotor development. The older a child gets, the more he/she will struggle to learn a new language.

Experience counts in building vocabulary. The size of a toddler's vocabulary is strongly correlated with how much a mother talks to the child. At 20 months, children of chatty mothers averaged 131 more words than children of less talkative mothers; at 2 years, the gap had more than doubled, to 295 words. The critical factor is the number of times the child hears different words (Huttenlocher). Only live language, not television, produced these vocabulary and syntax boosting effects.

Scientists have reported in Neurological Research that spatial-temporal reasoning in 3 and 4 year olds was affected by weekly piano lessons. This kind of reasoning underlies math, engi-neering and chess. Parents and preschool teachers need to tune into each child's daily experiences and needs, helping them feel safe and loved while encouraging them to explore and experiment in a rich environment of educational resources.

Young children seem to gravitate toward the natural world of animals, insects, and plants. Children love being involved in experimenting and asking questions. The more that they can be involved in a variety of experiences, the better they will be prepared to enter a formal schooling process. The gifted child's needs are sometimes overwhel-ming for parents.

Check out all the educational programs in the museums, zoos, libraries, and recreational or cultural centers for specific points of interest for your child. Children's museums and discovery centers are located regionally and in the state capital.

Develop a Portfolio For Your Child

Christine Garrison, Ed.D


Most teachers are comfortable with the portfolio concept. A portfolio is a collection of pictures, projects, and developmental data that serves as a demonstration of specific abilities and develop-mental needs and provides school personnel with the

concrete evidence they need to design an appropriate program for a child. It also presents information in a direct visual way with clear data which teachers and administrators trust, allowing them to feel more comfortable. The individuals with whom you meet hold the keys to the possibilities at school. They want to provide appropriate learning programs for their students, but sometimes have not had the experiences, the coursework, or the will to provide effective alternatives to the regular curriculum. The portfolio, with its evidence and your interest in using positive problem solving skills, will make it more possible to create an environment which produces a range of educational alternatives that more closely meet the needs of your child.

Begin with the end in mind
It may help to visualize the meeting in which you will present your portfolio. Who needs to be present at the meeting and what will you present? What do you seek or what do you want to happen as a result of this meeting? What is possible in this school district? What has been done in the past for other gifted students? Are you the first to ask for alternatives? Who is the building administrator and what evidence do you have of how you might be received? What information might the people who come to this meeting need in advance to give them some background to even the playing field and help them feel like partners in a problem-solving process?

You want the initial meeting and those that follow to be as productive as possible, so your advance preparation is important. Try to answer as many of the questions listed above as you can to assist you in your planning. One important tip: Do not overwhelm them with evidence. Less is probably more in this situation because time is a critical factor for people in the intensive service of teaching and learning. Provide them in advance with a letter that addresses your needs or one or two examples germane to what you will seek. A portfolio that can stand by itself after the meeting is important. many families have presented notebooks, some have created a video (under 30 minutes please!), and some have presented computer discs. Choose the medium (or a combination of media) that will be most effective for your particular school. Decide on the format right from the beginning because the presentation style determines how you will gather and organize the data. You will collect much more than you will need for the portfolio, so choose the evidence that is most important to convince the school to meet your child's most critical needs.


Your portfolio must show how your child is unique and provide evidence of the areas of high intensity or interests that your child exhibits. The evidence you present needs to provide information to clarify the severity of the gap between what is being planned that is appropriate for other children and what needs to be designed for your child. As you begin to consider gathering evidence for a portfolio, the following general questions might help to get you started:

Be sure to use any numbers or scores that you may have that indicate asynchrony from the typical school population. If your child has tested well, use the scores to get the attention of the school. Scores on readiness tests and achievement tests are particularly helpful when scores are in the high ninetieth (90) percentiles, especially in reading and math. In spite of the IQ test controversies, it is difficult to ignore a formidable score. A student cannot score high by accident and educators know that. They cannot deny that a high score indicates intellectual capacity. If you have a good score, use it. However, you need to be aware that the newer IQ tests (Binet IV, WISC III) have a low ceiling for highly gifted children. When scores on the newer tests have been compared to scores on the older Binet LM and WISC R, the new test scores are drastically lower (Silverman and Kearney, 1991).It is strongly recommended that you request an evaluator to use the Stanford Binet LM because it is more likely to produce a more accurate number.

What else do you have that would be effective evidence? If you recorded when your child began to read and what books have captured his or her attention along the way, it is important to point out how the interests and reading levels are different from what typical students would choose. What were some of your child's unusual questions and clear understandings about the world that demonstrate high intellectual capacity? At what time were you sure your child had learning needs that were different from other children? How did you know? It is helpful to have brief anecdotes explaining such events. What are your current observations and concerns? Do you have examples of events or situations in school that cause you concern? Your concerns probably go beyond content needs. What is happening to your child as a result of not having intellectual peers with whom to interact? Is it difficult for your child to share ideas and be understood?

How Do You Present Your Portfolio?

Gather all of your data and then organize it into categories. If you choose to present your information in a notebook, divide data and examples into specific notebook sections with a table of contents at the beginning. Possible sections might include: Definition or description of giftedness, brief abstract of needs to be met, the numbers that demonstrate both ability and achievement, a full evaluation with recommendations, early developmental data, social, emotional and intellectual needs, evidence and examples of the gap between what is being offered to your child in school and what is developmentally appropriate, a timeline of events that demonstrate the different developmental trajectory of your child, and products that your child has created. Pictures of large or bulky products or projects might be advisable rather than filling the principal's office with boxes of inventions and or collections. In the section about needs to be met, you and your child need to prioritize the needs because there is a great probability that the needs will be met in increments. You must be clear which needs must be met first. Use the portfolio as evidence and have possibilities ready to suggest. The meeting will work best if it is experienced as a problem-solving meeting with your child's needs as the focus.
-- Dr. Christine N. Garrison is principal of Camden-Rockport High School in Maine. She has worked extensively with highly gifted children in the public schools and was the founder and first Director of the Program for Exceptionally Gifted at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia.)

The American Association For Gifted Children, Preschool Project

For more information about AAGC, contact Margaret Evans Gayle, Executive Director or call (919) 783-6152.

Write to us at:
American Association for Gifted Children
    at Duke University
Box 90270
Durham, North Carolina 27708-0270