Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Advice For 6 Year Old With High Test Scores

Hello. This is a great form and I appreciate any feedback on my 6 year old first grade son.

His math MAP is 232, reading MAP is 220, Lexlie range is 627-777L, and percentile ranges are 99-99-99.

He is in the advanced first grade class at our public school. It�s a great public school in our area. This public school starts the gifted program on-site in 3rd grade. He loves school, his friends, plays lots of sports, but has asked if he can do more/different math because the class math is �too easy.� He reads high level books for his age quickly on his own, unprompted nightly. He is especially adept at putting complex models together designed for much older children, doing complex math problems in his head and and is already writing stories on his own, usually about countries as he's already traveled quite a bit for his age.

Our family does not know much about standardized test ranges and have a few questions:

- is my son gifted?
- if so, what can we do to challenge him? We�re not interested in grade skips, but want his classroom time to be rewarding
- at what age should a parent administer an IQ test and what is the best test? If the IQ tests come back gifted, then what do we do?
- Any recommendations for a supplemental at-home math curriculum? I�m not too impressed with https://www.khanacademy.org/math but we fool around with it.
- Are there any online games/tutorials to challenge him? I�d like to give him something to do for a half hour to an hour a day, math strategy games and puzzles preferred.

Thanks for any advice, resources, or information.

DS is also in 1st grade. He got pretty much the same math MAP score (230), but much lower on reading (207), and, oddly, the same lexile range? DS is ID'd as gifted, but only an IQ test can tell you for sure if a child is gifted. I know that at some schools MAP scores can be used for entrance into the gifted program, ranging from 95%ile to 99%ile cutoffs that I have heard of.

We use Beast Academy for math and have gotten the school on board with it as well. I think it's a great program and it's really fun for DS. My son's favorite challenging stuff to do in his free time includes: Pinwheel Paintdoku, Sokobond, World of Goo, Loop, nonograms, and sudoku.

Welcome!

The MAP test shows he is high-achieving. He may also be gifted. There are lists of traits, but an IQ test provides the definitive answer.

Parents can often provide academic/intellectual challenge at home. Parents can also check their State laws and school policies to see what ideas those resources offer. Parents can advocate for specific changes to their child's curriculum, placement, pacing, learning environment.

The ideal age may be 8, unless there is a need to test earlier. The test(s) may depend upon the test administrator. The latest test is the WISC-V.

If the scores are high enough, apply to the DYS program.

Like everything else, that depends on the child. Have you looked at Art of Problem Solving, Beast Academy?

There are several sources of free online Sudoku games.

LOL, SaturnFan, we posted 16 seconds apart... and included some of the same information for the OP!

If you are not interested in grade skipping, supplementing academics at home might be a poor choice.

My son's 1st grade (6 year old) winter MAPS scores were lower than your son's - math 214, reading 206.

I chose to supplement at home.

The elementary school starts their gifted program in 2nd grade. By that time, my son was doing 5th and 6th grade work and would have been bussed to the middle/high school for part of the day. (No way!) He is accelerated 5 grade levels now and homeschooled. He will likely graduate high school at 14, but I'm trying to delay that until he has his driver's license at 16.

My son's IQ is *not particularly high* as compared to the children of many of the forum members. He's barely over the Mensa cut off, while Davidson Young Scholars are a whole standard deviation higher intelligence. He's not so far ahead because he's so brilliant. He's so far ahead because I let him do continuous progress acceleration in "afterschooling" with me and later with a virtual charter school.

Supplementing academics at home is easy and immediate, but has unintended consequences down the road. If your son is doing well in school (socially, emotionally), then advocating for him for differentiation (reading) and subject acceleration (math) might be a better fit.

If you choose to supplement and you are sure that you do not want grade-skip acceleration in the future, I recommend non-academic choices. Music lessons, dog training classes, 4-H projects, or elective classes which the school does not offer.

Thank you for the suggestions for challenging activities.

Why?


Consequences such as?

I agree that it may take more testing to determine whether your DS is gifted. I will say, though, that my DS looked and sounded much like yours at that age.

Much of what your DS will need really depends on what is available to you at your schools. Do they offer gifted or advanced programming? Has he tried it? Such programming may or may not be enough. Prepare to attempt to figure out and communicate your DS's needs. It may take some time and patience.

DS is now a DYS, SSA'd in math into an advanced above-grade course, and is in his school's G&T program. He seems very well-liked and has friends of various ages. He is involved in a number of extra-curricular activities. Right now, things are great at school for him, but that took years of trying to communicate his needs.

Wishing the best to both of you!

Afterschooling academics may result in rapid advancement well beyond grade-level curriculum, which is not, of course, a problem in and of itself(some may consider it a benefit), but does make it increasingly difficult to coordinate with conventional classrooms, especially without grade-skipping.

There are pros and cons to grade-skipping. Naturally, I'm sure you have good reasons for leaving grade-skipping off the table at the moment, but if you haven't yet done so, I would encourage you to review some of the research on grade acceleration, conveniently curated elsewhere on the Davidson site.

LOL, there is a roundup of acceleration research and discussion threads containing collected wisdom of forum members... with anecdotes of personal experiences PRO-and-CON, opinions, hindsight-is-20/20 reflections (if I had it to do over again... if I knew then what I know now), etc... stories of single-subject acceleration (SSA)... multiple grade skips... leading to early college and/or gap year. Please feel free to point to any of these roundups anytime it may be helpful... or create new roundups.
I collected some of the most frequently posted info on some of the most frequently discussed topics... because the number and quality of responses to any particular inquiry can vary considerably... new posters are subject to moderation and sometimes their inquiries can get overlooked due to the time delay... additionally it can be difficult for newcomers to search and find pertinent threads on the forums.

On the Davidson Database, you can search for acceleration to read a variety of articles and resources by experts.

Yup. That's what I meant by conveniently curated--by indigo!