Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Qs on Testing & Suggestions for Math Curriculum

All,

I have contacted the first tester that I thought could work. Grinnity taking your advice, I need to find another tester since the first one would not give any kind of educational recommendations or advice. This first tester offered reduced fee testing $350 for the WISC.

Any advice on what to look for in a tester? Due to financial reasons, I think I will start with the WISC, then depending on the results, consider an updated Woodcock Johnson test. Does this sound okay?
Also, since I know that DD is advanced in math, any suggestions on a curriculum that I could use. I saw an earlier post about EPKY and I cannot afford that.

One last thhing: I looked at the criteria for DYS, just for fun, and do not really understand what kind of work would represent Blume�s taxonomy for a kindergartner in reading/language arts and wanted to know if anyone can tell me.

Hi Momofonegirl,

The tester we chose is an expert with regards to gifted children and we were very pleased. He didn't give us much advice concerning educational recommendations, except that they would do better in a private school for gifted children.
Duh.
But, it's hard for someone to give you advice on how to plan your child's educational career after a 2 hour test. After all, no one knows your child/family like you do!
He does, however, offer great advice on issues pertaining to their giftedness when things come up.
I think the WISC is a good test to start out with.
We have sent in an application for DD8 this year. I have a DD5 in K but we will not send in an application because her WPPSI scores do not meet the cut-off.
However, if we were to send in stuff for her, I'd send in her drawings, writing samples and she's interested in science and has drawn molecules and atoms.
If you don't have anything on paper, I know people have sent in videos of their children. I guess you could videotape anything your child does that you think is somewhat unusual compared to her agemates.

Hope this helps.

Incog

The educational advice part is tricky. It can be as general as you need grade skip or such and such school works great for gifted kids. Make sure that he/she works with gifted children on regular basis. That's the most important part.

As for math I love Singapore math. It's very affordable. You may also want to look into ALEKS.

I second Singapore and Aleks. If you and your DD prefer workbooks and pencil, then I'd say go with Singapore. If you think working on the computer would be better, go with Aleks. Both are very well-liked by parents of GT kids and are reasonably priced.

Also, you might want to look at Singapore's harder workbooks, like "Challenging Word Problems" or "Intensive Practice." They offer significantly more challenging problem-solving work (some of the problems even made DH and I scratch our heads a bit, and he's an engineer!), even though they don't require higher level arithmetic skills. That's good for HG+ kids who can handle the concepts but don't have the full arithmetic toolbox at their disposal yet. (i.e. my DS6 understands multiplication conceptually, but he has yet to memorize the times tables.)

http://www.singaporemath.com/Default.asp
http://www.aleks.com/independent/students/getting_started

As for DYS, I think it is extremely hard to show "work" for a child in K-2ish. My recommendation: film your child doing her thing! I didn't submit video, but if I'm asked to provide more evidence, that's what I'm going to send in!

Please do remember that you need to distinguish not between an ND (normally developing) child and a GT one, but between an MG child and an HG+ one. Try to show that your DD is at least 2-3 grades minimum beyond her age level, and more is better.

Is math her strongest area? I'd focus on whatever she's most obviously GT in.

As for Bloom's taxonomy, I think the idea is to show that she isn't just memorizing facts, since that could be the result of a hothousing parent instead of an HG+ child. You want to show that the child thinks at a higher level--deeper, with greater sophistication, with greater ability to use what she knows--then other kids her age.

Does that help?

All of you are wonderful. Thanks for sharing your insight and which resources work best.

Kristen, without knowing through testing, DD6s
Reasoning abilities are way beyond what other kids her age understand ard articulate. Several people have commented about this and this makes for interesting parenting issues! I mean I cannot tell her the same thngs as other moms tell their chidren. It just does not work.

Hee, Hee
As in "Eat your vegtables or the police man will come and put you in jail" perhaps?

It used to drive me nuts listing to my BIL's family do that to my niece.

But now I know why it drove me nuts. It 'worked' fine for them, and she does eat more vegetables then my son - so now I'm feeling much less judgemental that I did!

Smiles,
Grinity

Oh my, I can relate to the you can't always tell GT kids the same thing as ND

My son's daycare told them that guns are bad and to stay away from them. Not a bad bit of safely advice overall...

However, my son was afraid of the police and military for at least a year, since both carry guns.

The timing was Fall 2001...So this really was a problem with the high presence of police and military around town.

Of course getting him over his fear, then opened up a whole lot of other social justice and equality concerns... Why are there wars, why are there criminals... Not your typical conversations with 3 year olds...