I'm having trouble coming up with portfolio ideas. I feel like I'm supposed to have some extravagant items, but my son is only eight years old. He's done projects at school, and he writes in his personal notebooks, but it's not like he's writing essays.
Is it a bad idea to include one in-depth project he did at school, and 3 videos of him talking about an area of interest?

I already submitted the application and the test results. What are they actually looking for?...will he get rejected if I have poor examples?

Thanks for any advice or experiences.

Wish I could be of help as I just ran into this same problem, but I am not very excited about what we submitted. My son's WISC score was 153 but the achievement testing was for the grade above him so his achievement scores were not qualifying. Both the reading and math put him at least two grade levels over his, so I feel like he did well, but... He is so incredibly bored in his class that we try hard not to teach him too much as to make it worse but I feel his achievement scores will suffer from this. He is going to skip 2nd grade next year so hopefully that helps. I did include a video of his piano playing which I feel is a great example of his achievements.

Hello! I'm new here, so I can't give advice on what has worked.

We did not have achievement testing done and are also pulling together a portfolio. I've been reading previous posts and did call DYS. The person I spoke with was helpful. She stressed several times that they really only want 4 examples of work. She also stressed that these should show academic achievement. In light of that, I'm keeping it simple.

Like your child, our DS is young and doesn't produce work samples that highlight his verbal and math skills. I'm sending a video clip of him reading last December (age 4.5) and one current one. Also two math sheets up a couple grades. Also, I've asked his teacher for the assessments they've done in school, which I'll include. Spelling is a strength, so I thought of giving him a spelling test and just sending one math sheet. I suppose we'll see what he's in the mood for this weekend!

We're in the same situation. I feel if I spend time teaching him division,fractions, etc... he would be even more bored when they're covering 2 digit addition in class. One idea I have for their DYS application is a video of us teaching him something he hasn't been exposed to yet and showing that he can absorb the material readily and apply it. Otherwise he can do multiplication currently, but I don't know if that is 2-3 levels above his current level (1st grade). He's very good at doing multistep problems in his head so I was thinking of doing that for him as well.

The other video submission we'll do is of the kids reading advanced non-fiction books e.g. on astronomy, human physiology, etc and discussing what they read. Along those lines I'm planning on submitting videos of the kids reading Spanish books and discussing those in Spanish as well.

You know, these boards make me feel pretty good about our local public school. My child does not report being bored. Although in 2nd grade and capable of 6th grade math concepts, the teacher tests speed. Most of the class is working on mastering memorizing addition and subtraction math facts -- how fast and how many can they do in one minute? how fast and how many can they do on a timed race the computer? But if, as in our case, your child is ready to race in division and multiplication, then that's what he or she will do instead. I feel that learning these route concepts is incredibly helpful to a mind that does not get stuck on and that really "gets" how numbers "fit". Meanwhile at home we can do math "insights" and franctions or even explore Pi and other concepts like square roots or base numbers. The teacher also lets the kids work independently at their own level on math worksheets. And finally, on reading, she let's our child read whatever she wants from the library and she is setting up a book club for the strongest readers.

All this tells me - it is all about the teacher. I am very grateful to our teacher this year!

But last year was horrible....so what will be next year?

Let's hear it for the gifted teachers!

I'll share what we put in the portfolio for my DD. We applied when she was 5, a few months from turning 6, with achievement scores and portfolio first, and were given 6 months to submit more portfolio samples to clearly demonstrate she's working at the level they require. By the time we submitted more samples she had turned 6.

1st portfolio (This was not enough and we were asked for more)

• Several videos of her doing precocious things as a toddler
  
• Some writing and drawings from age 2-5
  
• one math worksheet done a few weeks before submission
  
• 2 recent videos of her solving logic puzzles (no talking)
  

2nd portfolio (This was enough and she was accepted this time. Almost all of this was assigned by me or videoed just for this purpose.)

• many pages of written responses to reading comprehension questions for a novel she read- found on a 5th grade teacher's website.
  
• video of her reading 6 & 7th grade nonfiction passages aloud and also completing multiple-choice comprehension worksheets to go with them.
  
• video of her working on math in EPGY and doing multi-step word problems in the 6th grade level of IXL, with me asking her questions to get her to explain her thinking aloud. Also screen shots of EPGY progress in both math and language arts/writing.
  
• book list showing 300+ books read over the past year, mostly chapter books at least grade 3 level.
  
• 2 videos of her talking about a couple of things that interest her, including some visual aids she made to explain the concepts.
  

Also, I thought this was a good quote from an older thread on this topic:

W'sMama, would you edit your post to add your daughter's age at the time? You told us the level of work she was doing, but I can't tell if this is a 5-year-old or an 8-year-old you're talking about, so I can't be properly impressed.

Sure just did,although it's in my signature as well.

See, now I am very impressed. Thanks!

What about independent work my son does, like letters he's written to the president, or speeches he's written in his run for 2nd grade class president? It can't really show specific grade level ability, but I think it definitely shows higher level thinking on his part. It also shows that he is a very fluent and advanced writer.

There are some great ideas so far, and I am certainly going to use a few.