Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Test for 5 yr old

Wow! Maybe I am not as out of the loop as I thought. Renzulli and Reis for ID goes back to my endorsement days. Something tells me that not much has changed there. You are right that the kids can tell you who the really strong students are, unfortunately I don't think that is going to be allowed as part of the process. (One of my fourth graders informed his parents the other day that a student should have made one of our academic teams because he is SO smart. The mother worried, too, as we discussed what he might have done to keep him off.) It seems that he was so upset at not knowing some of the skills, he keep getting sick and leaving. HE DIDN' T finish the test!!! (He is now on the team after a little teacher intervention. All I shared was the opinion of the other kids, with a little data from test scores.) Our math lessons have taken a little turn, too, since these kids now have a need for division in their problem solving.

I totally agree that the "label" isn't the important part, the programming is. However, the state of Indiana now requires that we identify the "High Ability" learner from grades k-12. I am researching what that really means, but from what I can tell it mandates ID, but does not say anything specific about services. Our state gifted association conference is next week and I am hoping to gain more insight there.

I taught our pull out program when I came here---until it was soooooo watered down from monetary cuts that assigned me half time to another program. I decided that I would be able to utilize my talents in the general ed classroom much better than where I was. The program was eventually deemed a waste and eliminated altogether.

There is no way that we will hire any new staff (too bad), so we have to figure out what the staff will accept and implement. I am pretty sure that my grade will probably cluster with the "high ability" in my room. My teaching partner may not like that, but it is really already being done--it just isn't stated as such. The decision will be who else gets grouped in the mix. Honestly, I would love to have the below level with them. Perfect for peer tutoring and also giving some extra adult assistance to work with the groups so I could focus on the specific needs of each one.

As I said, I love what I do and this is an exciting challenge to kind of go back to my roots, so to speak. I know that I have a lot of influence on upcoming decisions because of my background and want to make sure that the latest information is being used. It is important that we at least try to make this the best possible program to meet the needs of our top kids.

We just in-serviced today on our ISTEP+ scores with the focus on what mistakes were being made by those not passing........but the one point that was emphasized was that our GLARING problem is we were not bringing our top kids where they needed to be. (We are teaching to the middle and those not passing the test.) Surprise!!! Surprise!!!

I really appreciate your input and will be checking out the sources mentioned. I am sure that there will be MANY more questions as we tackle this in the next few months. Hopefully, there are some willing responders.

You asked for our personal experiences, so here's mine for my 6yo son. Though I don't know how helpful this will be...

Our state has a mandate to ID GT kids, but no services required.

My son was IDd as GT using the CogAT and the WJ3 after his kindergarten teacher IDd him for testing. (Normally GT testing isn't administered until 3rd grade unless requested for a specific student by a teacher or parent. I didn't know this, or I would have requested testing. Not publicized...)

After being IDd, he got only one pull-out session with the GT specialist and a packet of worksheets we could choose to do with him at home for "fun" (bleah!), but the kindergarten classroom teacher did far better than average with differentiation and it was only a half-day class, so my son did fine that year. Since the school sends out no test scores to parents--just a "he's in" letter--I didn't realize just *how* GT he was. I didn't go to the school to find out his scores, which showed him to be PG instead of MG as I had supposed, until he began having some boredom-related behavioral problems in 1st grade with a full-day class and a teacher who *didn't* differentiate. At all.

Ultimately, when faced with a school system that hates grade skipping, does no clustering, and has no GT service until 3rd grade (and then once a week in math only!), we chose to homeschool for the year rather than to try to swim upstream.

If you use testing to ID, I think *scores* should be sent to parents, and there should be an invitation to come in to speak with the GT coordinator (or principal or whomever is in charge of GT-related issues) so that the situation can be assessed.

But if you can do things other than testing to ID, then more power to you. Tests are certainly not the be-all-end-all of GT assessment...

I think it's possible--although not necessarily ideal--to adequately serve even HG+ kids in public school with some combination of grade skips, subject acceleration, clustering, and differentiation...provided the administration is supportive and the classroom teacher is on board. It sounds like you may have both those going for you! That would be good!

On a personal note, thank you for caring so much! You're clearly one of the good guys, and it's so nice that you're out there taking your time to do this right and really help these kids.

You rock!

I do want the personal experiences. They have been tried and tested.

Who did the testing? Was this done by the teacher? We do not have "normed" tests in place for our Kindergarten and 1st grades. Those are my "testing" concern grades. Were the parents allowed to "nominate" the child for the testing pool or just the classroom teachers? If you could design the method of notification for the parents, what would you involve?

This is where we are after several years with NOTHING formal in our corporation. We now have to address parent notification and even program awareness. This really is where it is great to have the input of someone in the been there/ done that category. Your input is priceless and will be carefully looked at as we pull this together. In all honesty, at this point, if we took this directly to our parents they would think we were nuts unless they are one of those who has sought outside programs for their child.

When I was working with ID as the GT teacher, I only had formal ID on 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. I know the data that we have for 3rd grade will be ADEQUATE, not great. Second grade has very little formal data, but it should be doable. I still think that the process needs to include some informal assessments. That is one of the areas that I am totally lost on, but know that the resource is out there. But then, who do we give those assessments to? Classroom teachers? Parents?

I truly believe that GT involves so much beyond traditional classroom. Thinking skills are key to that child being ready to use all of the "STUFF" they know so naturally. I really spent the first part of my curriculum with the fourth graders learning to accept different answers and realizing it was okay to be wrong occasionally. (In actuality, I was probably rebelling against my own educational upbringing where the occasional teacher would point out that "DUCKY" missed something.) I wanted my students to understand that bright didn't mean perfect and that there could be workable solutions besides their own.

Not sure, but definitely *not* the classroom teacher. It was clearly someone trained in psych testing. The school tests twice a year, every year: Oct. and March, so they may have a testing company on retainer? Sorry I don't know more!


Yes, parents can nominate, though the process is more involved for parental nomination than for teacher nomination. (I'm sure this is to keep EVERYONE from nominating their kids for testing, which makes fiscal sense, provided the process for parental nomination isn't so onerous that no parent can actually get his/her child tested!)

The parent has to meet with the classroom teacher. Technically, the teacher does not have to agree that the child should be tested, but I don't know how that plays out in real life. I have a sneaking suspicion that if the parents says "test" and the teacher says "no," the teacher's opinion would win out. But I'm a wee bit cynical about our school, so I may not be being fair there.

After the teacher meeting, I think the parent also has to meet wth the GT coordinator. That's when the official decision is made to test or not, and I think the GT coordinator gets the final say about testing before 3rd grade, but I may be wrong here. It's possible that even if the teacher and GTC do their best to talk the parent out of testing, it still gets done if mom and dad stick to their guns.

I wouldn't call this the ideal situation! There's not a lot of teamwork in evidence between parent and teacher, at least not from the few cases I've seen. If the teacher doesn't want to see GTness, it's probably going to be denied.

Case in point: The mom of one boy I KNOW is GT (probably MG, but maybe more in math) met with the same 1st grade teacher my son started with this year. This teacher is not GT-friendly, and she brought to the meeting every paper that the child had made any mistakes on to "prove" that the boy wasn't *that* smart. Ugh. (And never mind that the teacher could only produce 3 pages and the mistakes were of the "missing comma" variety...) As far as I know, he has not been tested yet, though maybe he's up for the March testing.

I would hope your school's process will be a bit less...prickly!


Parents should certainly see the scores, though whether in a letter or at a meeting doesn't much matter to me. (I know there's a 30-day deadline for notification in my state, required by law, so I think that's why they send the "he's in" letter without scores.)

I think an invitation to meet with whomever is handling the GT screening process should be offered regardless of the scores to discuss the results and how the school will serve the child's needs. This would be a good time to start building that team feeling between parent--who may be a bit freaked out by the results!--and school.

As for the informal assessments: do you have to choose between parents and teachers? Could you have both do informal assessments? Is there a problem there?

BTW, I spent the majority of every semester that I taught freshman college English (at I.U.!) teaching my students that just because someone's opinion gets published in a book, it doesn't mean it's right; that it's good to think for yourself; and that considering the position of others and <gasp> changing your mind about your own postion was a sign of being a thinking person, not the sin of being "wrong."

That you started this process with 4th graders is marvelous!

This is definitely in the file to keep close at hand as we move forward. Thanks for being so thorough.

In most states GT falls under the "Special Education" umbrella. You have made me wonder if the same guidelines for parent request of testing apply for this as the other areas. It is mandatory to honor a parent request for testing within the traditional realms of Sp. Ed.
I am not even sure if our special education coop would do our testing or if they consider this to be outside their involvement?

You have given me some questions to ask the higher ups!!!!

I'm kind of surprised that my response helped, but I'm glad it did. Maybe now others will chime in with their experiences, too?

It seems like the special ed resource could be potential testers--better than nothing--though I'm always wary about the notion of people not trained in working with GT kids doing the testing. A tester needs to be pretty skilled at knowing when the child is getting the answers wrong because the questions are too hard and when they're getting them wrong because they're too easy! There's a big difference between looking for LDs and looking for GTs, and that's not even getting into looking for GT kids >with< LDs!

The ideal would certainly be an experienced GT tester who knows what to look for and how to approach a GT kid, especially one who's already bored, frustrated, annoyed, etc.

Bedtime at last...

Hi Ducky!
this has been a fun conversation!

Here's the link: http://www.educatorsguild.org/

So Ducky,
How much can you spend per 100 hundred children? Do you have a child in mind that you are trying to accomidate? What brand of NCLB tests does your school use, and can you get ahold of them to use as 'above level tests?' Do you have someone who can administer a WISC IV individual IQ test?

Do you have a kindergarden screening before the children start school? We do. At the end of the process, DS was so thrilled and excited, our last stop said: "It looks like your child is certianlly ready of kindergarden."
My instant thought was, "It looks like he's ready to TEACH kindergarden!" but I just smiled. This is strange, because I was in such gifted denial - it was a sort of Freudian Mental Slip because it was the first time I could acknowledge how excited he was from being in the school environment - with all the posters on the wall, adults to met and figure out...I went right back to my trusting state of denial.

Anyway, what I wish was done was a few higher level questions thrown into the Kindergarden screening process, and the ones who scored the highest in reading, color naming, math that shows thinking. Does your district collect this data? If so, you can just modify what you are already collecting to create your screening pool. Take a look at Ruf's "Losing our minds, Gifted Children left behind," for more specifics of what young children may be able to do, and that yes, some early milestones are generally predictive of later giftedness - the ones that show problem solving skills.

In my case, nothing was done except clustering, and a summer birthday, which I think would have been great for the majority of gifted kids, but for my Highly gifted child just never was enough. Also he was highly asynchrounous: Able to think abstractly, but not much interested in writing the answers to his worksheet questions in 'full sentences' - plus some motor delays and an assertive personallity - elementary school didn't go well, and in meeting after meeting there way much hand wringing but little relief.

Personally, I think one of the changes that is about to occur, is that people will start to understand LOG, levels of giftedness. Part of what mades pull outs 'look bad' was that there has to be 10 to 15% of kids who were still grumpy from boredom and social isolation, which is how my son was in his cluster group, even with the summmer birthday, and the many many bright boys who were held back for 'immaturity' reasons in our town (Redshirting) "Gifted is a group with so much variability, both within the individual, and between the individual."

I would urge you, BTW, not to ask for the Highest and the Lowest kids.
1) our school did that for 2nd and 4th grade, and it created a really weird view of the world, remember if you pull off the top level of kids, they are going to be very aware of the differences, so have trouble socially, AND get a weird message about themselves. I think the 2nd layer, 120-125 IQish would make a much better group of peer-tutors, and develop a lot of satisfaction by being leaders and not having the first layer inhibiting them all the time.
2) It misses the chance for the kids who are only gifted in one area, but very strongly gifted, to be part of the flexible grouping within the class in their area. These kids may be excellent social companions even though they are not strong readers, or have handwriting delays, or trouble with memorizing math facts. Since your main interest is providing programing not a lable, leverage your efforts by including kids who have 2E "twice exceptionalities" or spiky profiles, but have the abstract thinking abilities in at least one area.


Love and More Love,
Grinity

I'm going to ask again about what kind of

((applause))
Sorry to hear about the early days, I had the same treatment! I think it's great that you spend time on meta-cognition! I also had that thing were when I finally had to work to succede at school, I thought that I had stopped being smart! It took me years to overcome my 'laziness.'

Smiles,
Grinity

I've never heard of ISETP+, but you can use it as a screener, even though way above level kids often are too bored to do well on this kind of test. If you can use old copies to bring the 3rd grade test to the first graders and see how they do at the begining of the first grade year on a test designed to measure kids at the end of 3rd grade, that will give you a cheap ID, and a more accurate way to find kids with 'special educational needs.'

Based on my personal experience, I would screen every trouble maker from K to 3, 'just to be sure.'

I don't want to be a downer, but a key problem is that you have funding, or at least political will for ID, but not for accomidation, so I think your first job is to start building interest in meeting the needs of the teachers who will get these clusters. BUT we all have to start somewhere. Actually - the parents themeselves might be a great source of support - once the children are IDed perhaps you can get the parents to come to school and do math or literature pull outs?

Smiles,
Grinity