Thanks for the welcome everyone, glad I am not the only person up way to early in the day!
I will check out the acronyms list and the hoagies site, thanks!
Yes, the school provided the assessment including a pretty interesting question and answer sheet that I filled out to describe some of the things my DS has been up to that I felt were signs of giftedness.
They administered a K-bit, and some reading assessments as well as pulled in his scores on other standardized testing.
I think next year they administer something called a Cogat which I need to read up on. I imagine the retesting is partly budget related, and there's probably a need for them to have on record exactly the same test for all the kids...where possible. I guess I'm a bit of cynic about the whole thing.
I am still curious to see how things evolve on the math end of things for him. He has a computation speed issue, mainly involving how fast he comes up with answers; he's rarely actually wrong, but he takes 80 seconds instead of 60 seconds to complete a set of very basic math problems. On the other hand, he does really really well with word problems and every other area they've covered. I think he actually can't perform well under the 'gun' so to speak - I can't tell you how much pain these timed math fact sheets were this year, until we all decided to ignore them, including the teacher (thank goodness!). They were just too discouraging. May be similar to what elh describes.
Thanks again for all the tips and the welcome!
