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    galun Offline OP
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    Hello. We are at the beginning process of our journey, and would like to get some advice.

    Our son is 8 years old and is currently in third grade. We had always suspected that there was something about him but his development didn't seem too abnormal, he just learned stuff quickly. The school district screened for GATE in second grade. He took the OLSAT-8 and scored 99-9 in both verbal and non verbal. After that, we enrolled him in the CTY talent search, and he scored 96 percentile in quantative. His verbal score is much lower but I think that's because of limited vocabulary since English isn't our first language.

    We learned all this about 4 months ago and that got us started thinking about providing additional challenges. It's like something turned on in him. In 4 months he completed 2.5 grade levels of epgy math, currently at grade 5.5. He passed the pre-test for prealgerba in AoPS. In reading, we let him go to the library and choose his own books (in the past we were giving him books that we thought were appropriate for him). When I look up the books that he chose on his own on scholastic website, they appear to be somewhere around grade 5 - 7. In the school administered test at the beginning of third grade, his oral reading fluency was 240+ wpm, silent reading 300+ wpm, comprehension scores were almost perfect (forgot what they were called).

    Socially he had absolutely no issues. Plenty of friends, do silly stuff like 8 year old, plays two sports. Based on our reading / research over the past four months, we are very thankful for that.

    He already qualified for GATE and the school is willing to discuss an IEP. At this point, our primary goal is to provide the best environment that will enable him to develop. The question is - what is the best method? We live in a tiny school district and they seem very open to incorporating our input into the IEP.

    Some specific questions
    1) Does he seem like a high achiever or maybe he has high IQ? I have read conflicting opinions about the OLSAT being an intelligence or achievement assessment.
    2) Does it make sense to do individual IQ test, and if so which one? This will be self-pay but cost is not an issue if it's worth it. What can the IQ test tell us above and beyond the testing that had been done so far?
    3) Where can we find additional advice on advocacy / best practice? DYS seems like a good source and that's partly why we are considering an individual IQ test.

    If there is other advice, or any feedback from parents back when you were starting this journey, things that you wish you would have done if you had known etc., we would love to hear it.

    Thanks!

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    Three questions.
    1/ you seem to have an unusually cooperative school and access to other resources. Would the school do more or is there anything you can't access without scores?

    2/ Are you the kind of person who HAS TO KNOW, do you shake and prod Christmas presents? Did you find out the sex of your baby?

    3/ Do you second guess yourself and need stuff in black and white?

    If the answer to any of these questions is yes AND you can test without causing more than minor economic hardship then test but if not wait until you need to.

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    galun Offline OP
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    Answer to all three is no.

    The school is cooperative, but that's because it's a small school district. There is actually no formal GATE program and nothing additional to access - i.e. he doesn't need some WISC-V score to qualify for some program. There simply isn't any additional program. Every student identified as gifted gets an IEP. But they are very accommodative - for example the IEP in math so far is to have him teach other kids (learning through teaching the material and further develop social skills), and giving him time to do epgy on his own. In the future that can be working on AoPS homework or whatever.

    We don't have to know and won't second guess ourselves. I think just watching him over the past few months have us pretty convinced.

    The reason why we are thinking about individual testing is because 1) he seemed to be hitting the testing ceiling on assessments that he had done so far; and 2) individual testing seem to evaluate more areas and possibly come up with a better plan for the individual.

    It is precisely because of the cooperative school that we are thinking about individual IQ testing. If there is a structured GATE program and some kind of track to follow, we'd feel better. But now the school just came back and said okay your kid is gifted, here are some general guidelines in what we plan to do, what do you want to do within these general guidelines? We don't know how to come up with an education plan, but since we are offered the chance to help shape it, maybe individual IQ testing will provide additional information. Or if he qualify for DYS, then there's a possible resource to help shape the IEP.

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    Welcome, galun!

    Here are some further thoughts on whether to test -
    Testing your gifted child: a springboard to advocacy (Duke TIP, August 2006).

    A good starting place for finding a tester is Hoagies Gifted Education Page, which includes a webpage listing Testers.

    For information on testing, see this old post from a thread whose subject is What do you tell your DC before IQ testing?
    Other posts on this topic include this one from a thread whose subject is Help! What do I tell him about the testing?

    You'll find a collection of advocacy resources and threads here.

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    galun Offline OP
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    We had our child evaluated with wisc-v and the results came back.

    FSIQ: 144 /99.8

    VCI: 124/95
    similarities: 13/84
    vocabulary: 16/98

    VSI: 135/99
    block design: 15/95
    visual puzzles: 17/99

    FRI: 140/99.6
    Matrix Reasoning: 15/95
    Figure Weights: 19/99.9

    WMI: 132/98
    Digit Span: 17/99
    Picture Span: 15/95

    PSI: 151/>99.9
    Coding: 19/99.9
    Symbol Search: 18/99.6

    We have scheduled a follow up appointment with the psychologist to interpret the scores. But we wanted to do some additional research before the appointment and ask better questions.

    1) Is there a source to read up on what all the sub-sections mean? I went to hoagies but the information there seemed outdated (WISV-IV).
    2) Any general thoughts on how to interpret the scores? What kind of questions should we ask the psychologist?
    3) There was a comment in the report: "due to the discrepancy between index scores, the FSIQ may be an underestimate of his intellectual abilities". The big variation seems to be VCI. English isn't our primary language. We speak 3 languages at home and my son didn't start to learn english until 3 years old (he is 8 now). Would the nonverbal index be more appropriate for him?
    4) Did he hit the ceiling in anything where we may get an even better understanding?

    Thanks!

    Last edited by galun; 10/24/16 01:29 PM.
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    1. VCI addresses verbal knowledge and reasoning skills.
    VSI reflects visual-spatial thinking, with and without motor skills.
    FRI is abstract thinking and problem-solving.
    WMI has auditory and visual measures of the size of one's mental scratch paper. (How many pieces can be held and manipulated in immediate memory.)
    PSI is pencil-and-paper speed for rote visual-motor tasks.

    The Hoagie's descriptions are still relevant for VCI, WMI, and PSI. The old PRI combines aspects of VSI and FRI.

    2. Excellent scores all around. These are really strong CPI/efficiency (WMI + PSI) scores--actually about 15 points higher than his GAI, which bodes well for his ability to keep up with the EF demands of advanced work. It is true that VCI is significantly lower than the other index scores. PSI is also significantly higher than the other index scores.

    3. NVI might be more appropriate for him, regardless of the reason for the lower VCI, simply because of the extreme relative weaknesss of VCI. (I should note that, in a non-disabled GT child who reads two to four years above grade level, I wouldn't expect much in the way of L2 effects after three years in English immersion classrooms. And his vocabulary, which is usually where I see the effects, is on a par with all of his other skills.) The magnitude of the difference between VCI and NVI observed in his case occurred in less than 5% of the standardization population.

    4. He hit the ceiling in FW and Cd, both of which count into the FSIQ and NVI. As of yet, there are no extended norms, so we'll have to wait on whether additional normative information emerges for those. You can ask the psych just how far beyond the raw score necessary to obtain a 19 he went.


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    galun Offline OP
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    Thanks aeh! A couple of follow up questions.

    1) How should the low VCI-similarities score be interpreted in the context of his profile? I looked up some sample questions - describe how is a dog and a cat different, stuff like that. What does a relatively low score mean? Lack of expression? Lack of vocabulary (doesn't seem like it since he got 16 in VCI-vocab). A few observations of him - he reads very fast and figures out the context of the passage as a whole, but he does not know what many of the individual words mean when I ask him. However, his guess on what those words mean (even when wrong on exact definition) does make sense in the context of the passage. Also, looking at some of his ELA school work, he makes up words phonically and doesn't look up the correct spelling. A classic example from first grade - "I help my friends do meth (math!)"

    2) What does a really high processing speed mean? I saw your description of pen-and-paper speed for rote visual-motor tasks. Does that mean he is efficient?

    3) Should we ask the testing psychologist to dig deeper into the discrepancy in NVI/VCI? You had suggested that he may just have a tilted profile - what does that mean?

    Thanks!

    Last edited by galun; 10/27/16 08:44 AM.
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    aeh Offline
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    1. Si is a measure of verbal reasoning. It does depend a little on vocabulary, but, as you note, his vocab is good. One typical hypothesis would be that he has good concrete verbal skills (verbally-acquired knowledge and basic skills), but not as strong abstract verbal skills (problem-solving, inference). The additional info you've provided does raise some questions. If his spelling seems inconsistent with his reading skills, it may be that there is some kind of learning challenge, especially since the error you give as an example is NOT a phonetic equivalent. It suggests that he is not accurately distinguishing the vowel sounds.

    2. Yes. This is one aspect of what is called cognitive efficiency. Good for getting lots of work done, but not necessarily reflective of deep or original thinking.

    3. I think I would seriously consider this. In the absence of academic reasons for concern, I might think of the discrepancy as more of a learning preference for visual-spatial/nonverbal tasks--hence a tilted or skewed, but not disabled, profile. With your additional information on some discordant presentation with regard to his reading, vocabulary, and spelling, I would wonder a bit about areas that might require remediation.


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    galun Offline OP
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    Thanks. I will plan to specifically ask about VCI / NVI and FSIQ discrepancy, among other things.

    Another example are brain twisters. Give him a complicated equation type problem and he can solve it. Give him a relatively simple word problem and sometimes he cannot setup the equation to solve it. It seems to match the VCI / NVI observation.

    Last edited by galun; 10/28/16 05:59 PM.
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    Just wanted to pop in w/ some resources I've found as I've started this journey. Besides the davidson website, of course, there is also Hoagies, SENG, NAGC. It's likely there is a state version of NAGC for you too, so worth checking into.

    The biggest reason we wanted to know is b/c the further right on the bell curve you go, the more "quirks" that can pop up. Many of DD5's quirks led us to assume ADHD until we got her WPPSI results. May still have ADHD but we've been told to "treat as if" 2E but not test further for a couple years b/c it may be this is just the "highly gifted brain wiring." It's a lot to absorb.

    Best of luck! smile


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