Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion is it becoming true...

that they even out in third grade?

DD8 fall reading MAP is back and her score is lower than it was in fall of second grade. Yes she went from 98th percentile to 71st. Her WIAT results show her reading at a 5th grade level. Could there be a 2e issue? Her FSIQ is 124 and GIA is 132. Her working memory and processing speed were very average WMI 107 and PSI at 103


any thoughts?

Thanks
one very frustrated momma

That's likely a result of her not having been actually TAUGHT anything in the past year. It's not that they even out, but that the other kids are being challenged and pushed ahead, while your child is left to their own devices because they are ahead. Unless you are seeing something other than that MAP score issue, I wouldn't suspect 2e, I'd suspect the school is letting her just coast along.

I agree with epoh. I don't think it's possible to start off ahead and not have extra gas in the tank, so to speak. These kids are wired differently.

My DD9 for example had/has MASSIVE anxiety issues so they strongly pushed to put her in a 2/3 split when she was in third grade. I knew this would be disastrous for her grades but I was desperate to address the anxiety so I trusted her grade 2 teacher who was advocating for this. Sure enough, her grade 3 report card was full of comments about how she had trouble focusing, was often lost in thought, and needed constant reminders to finish her work. Socially though she came out of her shell a bit.

In grade 4 I wanted to do it my way - I requested (and they complied) a 4/5 split. The class was mostly 5's and some kids were 2 years older. Sure enough, DD's marks improved and she was accepted into the gifted math program starting this month.

Anyway, frannie, just like your DD, mine had an academically disappointing grade 3, but it was because of her environment. Maybe the same is true in your DD's case?

Do you have the scaled scores in addition to the percentiles? Did that drop too?

My dd was tested on the MAP reading 3 times last year (6th grade), fall, winter and spring. Her scaled score was highest in the fall and lowest in the spring. My theory is that her fall score was so high (I watched her teacher gasp when she looked at the report) that fluctuations are bigger. Also, the novelty for dd was probably wearing off after the first test in fall.

Her score at the end of first (spring) was 193 spring second 208 and fall of third 197.

That seems within somewhat normal bounds of fluctuation between tests, assuming no progress. In addition many students experience a moderate dropoff in scores over the summer because they're not in school. Unless you were teaching her and she was reading a lot over the summer, I wouldn't bat an eye at the difference in the last two scores.

I agree with lucounu, I wouldn't worry about the small drop in scores - could be any # of reasons. If there's a drop in percentile, it's most likely not from your dd "flattening out" but rather due to beginning reading skills happening across a spectrum in a wide variety of skills - that's what I've always understood the "3rd grade flattening out" statement to mean - children who start reading early aren't necessarily going to be the children at the top of the reading pack in 3rd grade because not all children start reading early (not even all gifted children). There are also probably a number of children who's reading scores are depressed in early elementary due to vision or other challenges who "catch up" to where they would have been without the issue once their challenges were recognized in school and corrected or accommodated. I've got two of those kiddos - one with visual challenges, one with a memory challenge. They both made huge leaps and bounds in reading skills, speed and comprehension between 2nd and 3rd grade.

polarbear

Why are you asking about 2e? Was there something in the previous testing that suggested something? If you have WIAT and WISC testing, that's a more accurate picture than the fluctuation on the one test.

Reading does start to shift gears in third, more towards thinking about what you're reading beyond comprehension of who-what-why-when-where. Is she in a reading rut at home? We've had leaps at home simply by putting fairies or talking cats aside for a few weeks in favor of a different genre.

OT:

This is NOT likely to be relevant to your situation--BUT...in my own peer group (parents all highly educated) I am seeing that kids who were slower starters but who I could tell were quite bright are much closer to DD's reading level now. For instance, many read Harry Potter over the summer. These kids were nowhere near her in K and 1, but they blossomed. These are third graders. So I see where that saying comes from. It takes some of them longer to "get" the skill--but once it's down, a bright kid who likes books may really start to fly with it. (In fact, these kids are probably all gifted. Who knows how much? It would be arrogant of me to presume I know! They will be honors/AP students. They just didn't have the really startling early takeoff that DD did.)

geofizz, I ask about 2e because her processing speed and working memory are significantly lower than her perceptual

FSIQ 123 94th percentile
GAI 132 98th percentile

similarities 14
vocabulary 16
comprehension 12

block design 14
picture concepts 16
matrix reasoning 15

digit span 11
letter/number sequencing 12

coding 10
symbol search 11

test raw composite score percentile
VCI 42 124 95
PRI 45 131 98
WMI 23 107 68
PSI 21 103 58