I'm curious if there are other 2E kids who are challenged by showing what they know on achievement tests? I'd really like for my ds to take one of the talent search tests but am not sure he'd perform up to the level of his true knowledge on them. He's had a lot of trouble with showing his knowledge on the tests he's had to take in the past. The types of problems he has include:
1) Sign confusion - he'll read a math problem and just completely miss what sign is attached to a number - in both directions! He'll miss a - sign, but also sometimes read a + as a -. As long as he's got the sign correct, he's got the calculation correct.
2) Copying challenges - he has an accommodation for school and state testing to write all his answers in the test booklet, but when he's using scratch paper for math he makes copy errors going back and forth between computer screen to record an answer, things like that in his homework... so I'm guessing he'd have the same challenge on a test given on a computer.
3) Doing what he's told, as opposed to remembering what his test accommodations are lol! On his TerraNova math test in school last spring he used the bubble sheet for answering even though he has the accommodation to write his answers in the test booklet - he used it because the proctor gave it to him and the other kids were using it. He *knows* he's supposed to write in the answer book, but a proctor not reminding him and handing him the bubble sheet meant, to him, he was supposed to use the bubble sheet. And... he got off by one line on the bubble answers and came out of the test with a ton of incorrect answers - ack!
Soooo... I guess I have test anxiety. DH thinks we need to have him take some of these tests just to practice taking standardized tests before it's time that he really really needs to take high stakes testing. DS wants to take some too - he's interested in taking some of the courses offered through the talent search programs. He's got the IQ scores to qualify (given on multiple occasions lol).
Is there any hope for him? Hope for either testing well in spite of his disability... or hope for him having a mother with test anxiety?
polarbear
ps - he's totally a math-science kid. He's probably more likely to qualify in a reading/verbal type achievement test, but totally not interested in language arts. Plus he really doesn't read all that much, and as he gets older I'm guessing his reading/verbal achievement test scores may go down in percentile due to that... but again... that's probably *my* test anxiety!
