Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy testing for 1st grader

my ds is in 1st grade. His kindergarten teacher (last year) asked us if we were going to test him for gt and now his 1st grade teacher has approached us as well. We are thinking of having him tested this fall. (To be qualified for the gt program he has to be tested through the school district and not by an outside testing center).

The other part to this is that both his kindergarten teacher last year and now his 1st grade teacher have been wonderful about giving him extra assignments/ projects that are in line with his ability. They are not waiting until he has been classified as gifted to give him appropriate work. He is happy in class socially and academically (esp when given extra projects).

My concern is in the length of the test. It is an all day test with a break for lunch. If he doesn't score well he cannot be tested again for 2 years.

It seems many of you have tested ones younger than 7 so I was wondering if you could share how they did with sitting through a long testing day.

My thought is that he should be tested, I just want him to be able to do his best and am worried that by the end of the day he may be worn out. Any thoughts?

We are testing our 1st grader at the University. They do it through the psychology department. You might want to try it out. We go 1x per week for about 2 hours.

We had our DS tested privately (at the time about 5.5). I think we did three sessions over three or four weeks lasting on average about 2 hours a session. While it took FOREVER to get our results, it was probably the best way to go.

JB

Thanks for your response...Did your school district accept the outside testing then? I asked specifically about that last year and was told if he wasn't tested through the district they could not accept the score.

We got my son tested through the university for their summer program when he was 3 and the test only lasted an hour. He got tested through the school board (an IQ test) when he was 4 and he seemed to think he was just playing so for the most part he didn't have any issues and he took some academic tests last week which lasted about an hour.

My son is very, very full of energy and I was really worried that he'd not last 10 minutes in the tests but he seemed to think that they were all fun and did pretty well. What tests are they giving him that take that long?

mjb, in our district (and I would guess in most of PA) if you get tested by a certified school psychologist, then the test results have to be accepted. That doesn't necessarily mean that we'd get our G/T identification, but we did use it to justify early admissions to first grade. And it did show that DS is gifted.

One thing that I've learned is that "trust by verify" really holds true here. Who is telling you that you have to get IQ testing through the district? (Or do they just mean "evaluation for their gifted program?") You should be able to get the district policies. Now, IQ testing is different than being id'ed as G/T for the district and a lot of that depends on where you live. In the end we got testing privately because we just weren't sure what to do and we wanted a professional, non-biased opinion.

JB

We are having DS4 tested this week for this very reason. Our district has seemed amenable to seeing outside testing, but he's a year away from school. We're testing more from the standpoint of needing to know where we stand in order to make some pretty major decisions about school for next year. I was concerned about testing at age 4, but Dr. Amend indicated that the test he will be using will take 1 1/2 hours at most. Dr. Amend seemed to have no qualms about proceeding now rather than waiting until next summer. So off we go!

Good luck!

Yes. I need to recheck this. Last year I asked the school counselor and the response I received was that he must be tested through the school to qualify for gt.

thanks for the input.