Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment WISC, CogAT - describe learning strengths?

Hello, I am a newbie with lots of questions. Our daughter came home with 99% composite scores on her Cogat, and NPR of 99% Reading/99% Math on her Iowa test. Her strongest score on the Cogat was 149 on the nonverbal. She received a 143 on her WISC-IV with her strongest scores in the Perceptual Reasoning Composite (18 in something called Matrix Reasoning). Laying all that out - what does that say about her strengths? How is perceptual reasoning going to help her? How does that fit in with her strong nonverbal score on the Cogat? Her worst score was Symbol Search (13) yet her Coding was 17 in the Processing Speed section.
Our girl is all about art art art and writing books. She has filled out numerous journals that are all highly illustrated, and she is crazy over photo editing and creating these wild web pages that the IQ tester didn't believe an 8 year old could produce. Finally, her favorite books are non-fiction books about things like color theory, and she also loves to read dictionaries. I can't give a "theme" to her reading choices because she picks very random books except for the constant reading about how to do photography and art.
Thoughts? I am just trying to figure out what those scores mean. And I just saw elsewhere why she did well in processing speed - her art skills help her with the pencil and paper section I would bet.

My DD sounds like the same age (8) and is similar where non-verbal is the highest. Block Design 16, Picture Concepts 18, and Matrix Reasoning 19. (psych said she ran out of questions on Matrix Reasoning). Her verbal score was also in the 99th percentile but non-verbal was something like 15 points higher.
My 6 year old took the WISC and also scored a lot higher in non verbal (in his case a 27 point gap!). So he was well over the 99th percentile in non-verbal and average or high average in everything else. The psych who assessed him didn't say much about it, just said that his learning style is "different".
In the report about DD, though, the psych (different psych) talked about visual-spatial learners and how these people tend to go into careers in fine art, architecture, engineering, computers, etc. I don't know about your DD, but both my kids are VERY into the computer game Minecraft, where they can build and design worlds. It's like virtual legos. They have been playing that game since preschool, before anyone had even heard of it. Now it's everywhere.

Anyway, she recommended the book visual-spatial learners by Alexandra Golon and the website visual-learners.com. She also recommended the book "Right Brained Children in a Left Brained World." I've skimmed through a couple books about VSL's and they are interesting but but not sure how much of it is backed up by research.

DD seems to be strongest in math in terms of academics. Not in terms of remembering math facts or rote calculation, but in terms of grasping the concepts. So I showed her algegra once or twice, the kind of algebra that I didn't look at til 9th grade where you have to understand order of operations, and she caught on right away. She also really likes geometry, probability, and statistics.

Hope this helps.

I believe to get a 99% composite on the CogAT you have to have fairly high scores in all 3 subsections - so your daughter is likely to have many strengths. It sounds as though she is consistently showing strength in the nonverbal/possibly visual-spatial areas, and is drawn to artistic pursuits. She is so fortunate to have both academic strengths (ITBS) and a potential artistic outlet, as well!

My DD8 also had a 99% CogAT composite, with her greatest strength in the verbal area, followed closely by the nonverbal area. On the abbreviated Wechsler test, however, my DD's perceptual reasoning score was actually higher than her verbal reasoning score (both were high). So at least your DD is more consistent! LOL!

I've always thought of my DD as both quite verbal, as well as a visual-spatial thinker. My DD loves to read and has been drawn to science. She also loves to draw and create art.

I think one of the toughest things about being both bright and artistic is that many well-intentioned adults may wish to steer your DD to think of art only as a hobby. They may want to tell her to focus on her purely academic strengths, without regard to her artistic interests. Your DD already sounds passionate about the visual arts (and the science of it, too! Impressive in such a young child!). To be happy and reach her potential, your DD probably needs to nurture ALL of these strengths - no small task!

You may find that your daughter excels in geometry, art, science, sculpture, architecture, engineering - so many fields! It sounds like you also may have a budding author/illustrator on your hands. At this age, your DD should enjoy finding her passions!

How are you having your kids challenged in school? And I am curious about the geometry that you showed your daughter. Was it a book or online program?

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We have a subscription to www.ixl.com and she doesn't do it very often (maybe once a month), but likes it a lot and works a few grade levels ahead. You can try it out for free and do a certain number of problems each day.
She is in the "gifted program" at her school, which is a joke, so school is a waste of time for the most part. It's good for her in terms of the structure and socialization.

My other kid recently changed teachers/schools (a different school in the same district) and she is trying very hard to differentiate work, unlike the last one. She seems to do this with all the kids in the class. She told me that everything that she gives him is on purpose, she doesn't give the same work to the same kids. So the last homework assignment he brought home was multiplication like 14X60 even though he's in first grade. She gave him tons of assessments, including above grade-level testing and is trying to fill in gaps that he has. So much depends on the teacher and the principal and what the principal allows teachers to do. The last principal refused to put DS on the computer to do above-level testing, insisted he was too young and it wasn't even technically possible, but then we switched schools and the new teacher did it like it was no big deal (I didn't even ask--just assumed it couldn't be done).

Our schools have no G&T until 3rd grade, so DD just started the program. We are still trying to get a sense of what DD will learn from the program, but so far we've heard great things from the parents of the older students in the program. DD seems to be learning much more than she was before the program started, so we are feeling hopeful that this will help meet her educational needs. Up until now, we've been trying to keep her supplied with LOTS of books (she is a voracious reader - fiction and non). We've also signed her up for many extra-curricular science and enrichment courses. IXL, mentioned by blackcat, is actually used by DD's school, too, and she has permission from her teacher to work ahead of 3rd grade. DD also plays chess and an instrument.

I draw, too, so art lessons up until now have been at home.