Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Achieving Only Half Of MAP Growth - Worry or Not?

A number of responses seem to be nudging you to be that role model, in the home, as the parent.

That sounds great. What is she interested in, in general? Books which incorporate topics of interest may have the most appeal. The Lexile book find tool linked up-thread does group books by interest, and may be of help to you in connecting your daughter to books at her challenge level.

There are also parent-sourced lists of books on the forum, for various ages. These are found in sticky threads at the top of the Recommended Resources forum.

Not all books need to be at her challenge level; You may wish to encourage ALL reading. When reading books with few or no illustrations, you may wish to discuss the images each of you form in your imagination as you read the words on the page.

At age 7, illustrations can be a good thing if the content is more advanced. You may want to ask your favorite librarian (or look over some of these lists) for books at the right levels that also contain some illustrations.

I would be really bummed if my DD7 didn't want to read some of the picture books we read. I mean, think of Patricia Polacco books -- they are really thoughtful, beautiful books with valuable messages (which anyone with 2E kids might appreciate a few of those, like the Art of Miss Chew, Junkyard Wonders, and Thank You, Mr Falker), that you'd miss out on if you only read text. :-)

We love the "You Wouldn't Want to be..." series, too -- history with pictures. And the increasing availability of younger audience graphic novels out there are a huge draw to both my kids. Plus, even my DS9, who reads things like Harry Potter, still will read thru Geronimo Stilton books, just for fun (though he prefers the Kingdom of Fantasy over the shorter ones).

A few thoughts for you - the first is that we were always told by our early elementary school teachers that the very best thing we could do at home to help our children develop their reading skills was to read out loud *to* them - even when they are in upper elementary. So if your dd is having trouble transitioning to non-picture books, I'd read from books you enjoy to her.

Second thing to just watch out for - not likely or expected, but something that could be happening is that you might have a very bright young child who has a reading-related challenge. My youngest dd started out reading as if she would be way ahead - and she was way ahead of grade level in kindergarten and at the beginning of first, but she stopped progressing rapidly by the end of first and other readers were catching up with her, then by second it was clear she wasn't keeping up in terms of progress and by the end of 2nd she was right at grade level. By the beginning of third she'd fallen behind level, and was diagnosed with an LD that impacts her ability to associate sight and sound. There was no way we saw that in her early reading development because her other intellectual strengths made it possible for her to compensate.

Last thing - I don't put a lot of stock in percentiles re reading in K-2 grade, simply because a lot of very able children learn to read at very different ages. My ds was assessed as being behind grade level when he was 5 1/2 and was reading high school level chapter books by the time he was in first grade. His best buddy was struggling with reading even simple sight words at the end of first but was reading really well and above grade level when he started back to school in the all for first grade - all without any parental or tutoring help over the summer. Two things I take away from watching my kids and so many others learn to read - the kids who are the top readers in the first two years of school aren't necessarily the top readers a few years later - not because they've lost ground, but because other kids who started reading later catch up. If everyone started reading at exactly the same point in time, then (and really only then) I'd expect a child's reading growth in early elementary to have similar percentiles across time if he/she is learning steadily. So, in the case of an early elementary student, a drop from 99th to 96th percentile wouldn't worry me too much - especially if you felt that part of the issue was being in a classroom where reading wasn't emphasized.

Have fun reading over the summer!

polarbear

I'll second longcut re picture books - and my kids still loved them long past the time they could read long complex small-font big-person chapter books I especially love Patricia Pollaco and agree with longcut re the value of them for families with 2e kiddos Thank You Mr. Faulkner in particular is really a wonderful wonderful book

polarbear

Agreed. Transitioning to higher level books and chapter books does not need to eliminate all picture books!

You may wish to do a web search on "high level picture books". There were a few old posts on old threads which mentioned lists of high level picture books. Using Picture Storybooks to Teach Literary Devices may also be of interest.

Is there an alternative to the MAP test that goes higher for gifted students?

Whatever kind of school (public, private, home) I like the idea of testing regularly. I like the MAP test. Both my children’s schools use it.

The problem is, gifted kids eventually max out the MAP test. They hit the ceiling and it becomes useless to them. Sooner rather than later for those of us in this forum. I believe NWEA on their MAP documentation says that reading RIT really only runs up to 245. Not to kvell but my 4th grader hit that. (Though still room to improve and MAP still useful for math and science).

I asked DD gifted school, and they are sticking to MAP. It serves at least the lower half of their grades K-8. And they say they haven’t found an alternative.

I asked NWEA (the publisher of MAP) and they don’t seem to respond to questions from parents.

Can NWEA develop “extended norms” (like the WISC test adds after enough results come in)? Or can they just extend their test beyond its current maximum at about 10th grade level. Or would their marketing department kill this notion.

So is there any alternative to MAP. Just have 'em sit the SAT 2 or 3 times a year starting in 5th grade?

Hypothetically, MAP RIT scores can go all the way up to 300, I believe (or so the tables I've seen claim), but the spread is considered relatively poor after about 245. In the case of reading, part of this may be because of the nature of reading development. Decoding skills in the NT population naturally plateau late in middle school. After that, one should be switching to measures of reading comprehension, some of which can be administered two or more times a year (e.g., the Scholastic SRI, which can be given every 30 days, and generates a lexile score, for good or ill). Creating continuous scaling from K through post-secondary, when the basic nature of the task changes in the middle, is quite challenging.

As MAP (measures of academic progress) testing is tightly tied to common core standards (the goal of which is to ensure equal educational achievement/outcomes for all students), there may be little interest in developing MAP testing which determines how far above grade level some children may be... other than to find ways in which to bring the performance of those children back to the "standard" level of achievement.

To measure achievement/growth, many families take an annual achievement test.

Might taking the SAT two to three times a year, starting in 5th grade, be somewhat excessive?

I agree it must be a challenge to span K-12 with one test. However, MAP is computer based and adaptive, so that should help immensely. I don't know if MAP fades out due to technical reasons, or marketing considerations. (why undertake difficult new enhancements, that would only please a single digit percentage of users).

I think I can say that by 10th grade MAP starts to become less useful as more and more students start hitting its practical ceilings. Or in earlier grades for gifted.

Maybe the question is, is there a test that spans 9th grade through college. SAT (or ACT) was all I could think of offhand. Possibly 3x a year is admittedly excessive. But MAP is often 3x a year. What are some alternative (annual) achievement tests. The SRI is a good suggestion. Offhand it seems to measure up to 1700 lexile, rather higher than the MAP goes. (NWEA offers data tables correlating RIT with lexile).