Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment General gifted question

I am trying to decide whether or not to pursue formal I.q. Testing. My child has entered our states gifted program. I feel like I must be a gifted child moron, because I had anxiety about her getting in, and she completely kicked the testing critieras patootie.

So, I thought my work would end. I thought I could now stop all the stuff we did after school to enrich her. Instead, I am finding that the gifted program in the state of Georgia is more about "bright learners" (example, nine of the twelve gifted kids in her class are all teachers children). She is still not challenged. I am still doing the work. She learned in one repetition of most material, but, I have two sets of twins and really can't engage only her in the evening. So I feel I am sliding. She is enriching herself with her reading, not sure if you are familiar with AR, but she is competitive and uses it to track her books. She is seven years old, the youngest in her second grade class, and has the highest AR score in the grade (210) reading on a grade level of six and higher with accuracy. But, I totally have no clue how to enrich her with math. I have been giving her multiplication, and she does them and then checks her work with her calculator. I have no started her memorizing, I decided to let her understand what she was doing first. But, aside from this... I get nothing. I go into her class, and although it is fun for her to be around bright learners, I am not sure anyone there is "gifted". I do not mean that boastfully. She has the same issues with bonding and making friends, the same quirky sense of humor that leaves her peers staring, etc, that she had last year before gifted. She is also, from what I can tell, a meyers brigg INFJ. Any thoughts?

I go into the classroom, and she is usually all by herself, doing her own work. The girls get together in little groups, and she doesn't notice or maybe she doesn't care... I don't know. I thought when she entered gifted she would find a kindred spirit, someone more like herself.

You could get testing if you can afford it. I am generally in favour of testing because it reassures you as the parent that you are not, in fact, crazy.

But you also need to think about what you want. She is already in the gifted programme - do you want her grade skipped as well? Or are you suggesting they differentiate (given the number of teacher's children that might not go down well), is there another programme in the district that is more selective?

The other kids in the class may or may not be gifted - I wouldn't advise mentioning that, but there is a big difference between 95 th percentile and 99.9+ percentile.

I want her accelerated. Maybe not the full year, but a few days a week I think she would appreciate and enjoy going to a higher grade level math class. And oh yes, I agree that mentioning that her peers (teachers kids) do not offer her a challenge would not go down well! Their school required testing in four areas, of which three you must be "gifted" in. The areas of cogat required only above 96 and the divergent thinking and feeling, terra nova and the GES/motivation above 90. They told me when she entered last spring that she was the first child to be gifted in all four areas that they could recall in some time. She didn't score below a 96 in anything, and her terra nova, cogat, and GES/Hawthorne had 99.

I think you have to either go for a full skip or subject acceleration. I don't think it would work to do a few days at one level. If nothing else it would confuse their testing regime. How about pushing for going to the next grade for her strongest subject and take it from there? If you have two sets of twins coming along you might as well get some of the fighting out of the way now. We don't use any of those tests here (NZ) or have gifted programmes for that matter so I can't comment on the marks but if you get her tested will the schools pay attention to the results?

You might try Dreambox for math at home. It is not terribly expensive.

www.dreambox.com

That sounds great, thanks!

Also check out Beast Academy for math. Maybe even try out a class through EPGY.

I am bookmarking all of the suggestions.

I just wanted to add in a good luck.

I think the primary problem you are going to find is that the problem isn't WHAT she knows, it's the speed at which she learns. She's always going to be faster than the kids around her. So how can you mitigate that? Would the school be open to her using Aleks.com? Some other online learning tools?