It has taken me most of my teaching career (Latin, in diverse classrooms) to reorient to average. Average is frustratingly slow to me. Average is learning a skill in twenty-something repetitions (my GT population can sometimes master a skill in under five repetitions). My average kids consistently misuse homonyms and make obvious-to-me grammar and punctuation errors. Etc. My reasonably bright 125-ish kids don't all present as perfect (some are high achievers who do strive for details, though) but make fewer obvious errors and require fewer repetitions. More than five reps, though. My own learning speed is about 3-5 repetitions, so even my bright kids seem slow in comparision.
Sorry, this rambled.
No, that's not rambling. That's exactly what I am getting at. Dd11 has another very good friend who has a similar CogAT score (around 95th) to the other child from dd's school I referenced earlier. Dd's friend is clearly very bright. I don't question at all that she is a mildy gifted child. There is a difference btwn her and dd, but it isn't stark where one appears avg and the other gifted. One just appears more gifted than the other.
On the other hand, I am seeing these other kids with 95th percentile scores who
do need 20+ repetitions to learn things and sometimes still don't get it, who say things like "she and me is going to play," when they are ided as gifted in language arts, whose vocabulary excludes words like "abdomen" or "superficial" (literally don't have any idea what they mean), etc. These are pre-teens, not young elementary kids. Is that really a 95th percentile child?
