And polarbear, I would be interested in hearing how you advocated for your ds regarding his CogAT scores because that is the next thing I want to address with the school. I do believe that he is also the "out of the box" thinker and that his CogAT scores may have more to do with that than the sensory issues. I don't have any IQ testing for him, unfortunately we just can't afford it right now. He took the ITBS for the achievement piece of the GT screening but we don't have the scores from that yet. Our school doesn't do MAP testing or anything like that either, unfortunately.
I guess I am not sure how to address this with the school, because I feel like I just sound like that mom who can't accept her kid's ability level. But I really don't feel like his scores or profile matches what I know about him and what I see him do. I don't really know his LOG, but his CogAT quant percentile was 57% and he consistently scores at the top of all district assessments and tests "secure" on all concepts introduced in class even the ones that they are not expected to be secure on yet. He usually picks up on new concepts very quickly and doesn't need alot of repetition to get it down. I also think his reasoning skills are quite good. He is always pointing out things that I never thought about or highlighting the weak points in arguments and explanations. A recent example: at the doctor's office there is a poster for the whooping cough vaccine and he asked me about whooping cough and how you get it. I explained that you catch it from germs just like we do a cold so we get it from someone else who has it. And he said, "no, I know that, I mean where did it come from? Someone had to get it first before it could be passed on to someone else. How did they get it?" ( I still don't really have a good answer to this question, even after googling it!) But I don't know, maybe most kids ask questions like this? Does someone with average quantitative and non verbal ability play chess in kindergarten? To me someone with low ability scores and high achievement would be the kids who work really hard and practice alot, which he is not. He thinks he should be able to do everything perfectly the first time, before he has even been taught the concepts, etc. And, honestly, for most things at school this is true.
Sorry, this has become more of a rant than I intended. This is also why I have not yet brought the subject of the CogATs up at school because I want to approach the issue the right way and ranting like this is probably not the way to go. lol So I would love to hear more about your experiences with this, polarbear!
