Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Looking for info

We are new, so here is the super quick story. We have an 8 year-old daughter, O, who has always caused us to scratch are heads and wonder if she was advanced. She is at the age cutoff for school, we have her in 2nd grade, but she could be in 3rd. She has never had to work at anything, is reading better than me, and has a memory like an elephant.

We did some homework and finally decided to test her. She scored 133 on the SB-5, topping out on verbal working memory. Our tester said he has never had anyone score that high in that category. She scored 144 on the WISC, with a 148 on verbal comprehension. Although we have info on the WISC, the SB-5 seems to be newer, our school psych is not that familiar with it. She has not seen the scores yet.

We ae going to present this info to the school administration on Monday and discuss grade advancement, which I think they will be reluctant to do.

My wife has barely slept in 2 weeks. The principal, although she does not know our specific scores, says there are many kids in our school who are gifted and she may be as amateur as us in interpreting these results. We strongly believe that these test results are only one part of the equation, but if someone is very familiar with interpreting these scores, we would love to hear your comments.

Welcome to the rollercoaster ride, I am new here too. We just got similar results on our 7 year old, 2nd grade boy.. I took the test results to the school administrator, who offered us two choices...
skip to third, or enrich in 2nd..
we opted for the 2nd option for two reasons, he is only 7 and the school has much older kids in 3rd..also we are moving soon and will be able to put him in a program designed for highly gifted kids....

The school was much more supportive once we had test scores in hand...
The best advice I have a gotten so far is to relax, they are still the same kid as they were before the tests, you just know more....
Information is all good, even if you don't fully understand it...we did a lot of on-line research...and you are right you only have a piece of the puzzle...It took me a month to get any sleep!
And then we started testing our second child....
Cricket

Hi and welcome. Your daughter certainly is gifted with test scores like that. Are you considering doing a grade skip now or having her finish 2nd grade and move to 4th in the fall? Either way I would recommend that you look at using the Iowa Acceleration Manual with the school staff to objectively assess her readiness for whole grade acceleration. You can get a copy of the manual for about $20 through Amazon.

The Hoagies Gifted Education page also has great links for more info on test results and what they mean, articles about acceleration, etc. (www.hoagiesgifted.org)

I was able to advocate successfully for our son to skip kindergarten and start 1st grade before he was 6, with a school that was fairly reluctant to consider it at first. So if you need more specific suggestions for advocacy, I'd be happy to share more resources.

Hope that helps a little. Again, welcome and enjoy the ride!

Thanks for the feedback, this is a difficult topic to talk to family and friends about, I think it is viewed as having too much money and not knowing what to spend it on. We have been very quiet. Our district's gifted program is almost non-existent, its either do nothing, advancement, or a private school, or no school. We just don't want to make anything worse.

Hi nnngoose,
Welcome.
You said:
this is a difficult topic to talk to family and friends about
I say:
You can say that again!

I second the Iowa Acceleration Scale Manual, it's a wonderful read!
I think you should also apply to the Davidson's Young Scholar Program, which would give your access to 100's of BTDT (been there done that) parents who won't mind at all that your lovely little O is quite an unusual person.
It isn't definite that she would get in, but it's certianly worth a try! See page: http://www.ditdservices.org/Articles.aspx?ArticleID=252

I think that a grade skip would not be a big deal since she qualifies by birthday, and it is still young enough in the school process that they won't be gaps.

As far as interpreting your scores - I would say that they are high enough that your daughter would likely still be quite underchallenged in a full time gifted program of 2nd graders. Parents in your positon are usually quite confused because most programs that are "for the gifted" are still not a good fit for kids like this.

Best wishes,
Trinity

Personally, I think that learning to do the work of learning is one of the most important things a child can get from school. I have come to belive this from watching it not happen for my son.

Yes it is a roller coaster. Our son is a IQ of 130 but an under achiever who does not test well. He's bored with school already and we pulled him out of public school last year to accelerate him when our local school district refused to put him in 1st grade and insisted on him doing his 3rd year in kindergarten.

We are considering a French immersion program that a local private school does - he's not interested in learning Spanish.

Lanegirl902,
good luck with the immersion program - sounds like it may do what you are looking for....or it maynot, but it could be worth a try, depending on what the alternatives are.


What did you do with your son when you pulled him from public? Was he the same age as the other kids going to 1st, or younger? Do you have any plans for summer? Did you son cooperate with his IQ test - or is it just school tests he dislikes?

Best Wishes,
Trinity