My son is in third grade, and so far has done very well in almost everything. He gets almost all A's with the occasional B. The B is ALWAYS in reading, which he can do at a sixth grade level, so I really think he's just being lazy in that area. He is also doing math at a sixth grade level. He placed in the top three on his school's chess team. Second in the science fair. Had his writing published in a state competition. And he is very much an engineer in the making. He can make anything out of anything. Legos, erector sets, model kits, rockets....last Christmas while he was waiting for his sister to open her presents, he took some wrapping paper and scotch tape and made a fairly good Hubble Space Telescope. He started talking at around 5-6 months, and every teacher he has had since preschool has said that they think he is gifted. They finally did AIG testing a few weeks ago, using the CogAT and ITBS tests. His CogAT came back totally average, and ITBS was actually BELOW average. I was prepared for the possibility that he may not make AIG, just because I have no idea how far ahead of the other kids he is. But for his performance on everything else, it seems odd to me that he would come back at or below average. I'm aware that achievement and intelligence are not the same, but it seems odd to me that he would score lower than expected on BOTH of those tests.
He does zone out when he gets bored sometimes, but that's the nature of nine year old boys. So I never considered ADHD or anything like that, and I still think it's doubtful. We were told by an optometrist once that he has problems with visual processing, which I kind of ignored because he was an optometrist, not a psychologist. I just thought he was very strongly a kinesthetic learner. And lastly, he had a second grade teacher last year who made him so afraid of the end of year standardized tests, he came home in tears.
So as you can see, there are many possibilities. It may be that for whatever reason, his performance really is far higher than his IQ. It could also be that he got bored and zoned out during the test. (I have my questions about a cognitive ability test that is completely paper-based, but that's just me.) It could be that he really does have visual processing problems, or even that his nerves got the better of him. So what do I do? Do I let it go and hope he does better when they test him next year? Talk to his teacher? (I'm very wary of allowing ANYONE to see standardized test scores, for fear of pigeonholing him into their view of what he is and is not capable of). Appeal?
I guess I am not entirely sure WHAT is wrong, I just feel that SOMETHING is wrong. I'm just not sure what to do about it.
