Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Newbie here. What's next?

I think you've gotten wonderful advice already - the only thing I'd add is that this is just the very start of the school year and your ds is in a new program (I think this is his first year in the GT program?). I'm also guessing that since it's first grade a lot of the *other* students in his class are in the GT program for the first time too. It's not unusual in any classroom for the first week or so of school to be spent with the teacher giving the class assignments simply to see where all the kids are at - so your ds may be getting work right now that is easy for him but that might not be what he'll be doing for the rest of the year.

I think that before seeking out further testing (simply for school purposes) I'd wait a few weeks, watch what work is done in school (not just homework), talk to your ds about what he is doing during the day, and also talk to the teacher about her plans for the class and differentiation etc. Then if you feel your ds needs more of a challenge, advocate for it. IQ testing can help, but otoh I've also found in our own experience that achievement testing and examples of work product and teachers' observations helped more than an IQ number.

There is one reason I would recommend testing though, if it is important to you - are you really curious about it? If you're wondering a lot and thinking that having a number would help you in deciding how to proceed, then I'd have him tested.

This is just another thought to toss out there for you - my understanding is that the CogAT is a "learned ability" test - which (just my understanding - I could be way off lol!) - is that it attempts to assess reasoning skills etc but is dependent on what knowledge a student has been exposed to and also assumes some "inside the box" type of logic/reasoning. An "IQ" test (WISC, WJ-III Cognitive, SB) is an "innate" ability test - ie, learned knowledge isn't going to give one child and advantage over another. My gut feeling from reading online and from knowing other parents in other cities over the years is that what makesup a "GT" classroom in one location may be very different from what is considered "GT" in another, depending on the criteria used for screening. It's possible that the level of work you're seeing may really be what it's going to be for the rest of the year because perhaps the criteria for getting into the program isn't as high or is different in a sideways-type-of-way than it might be in another GT school. So you can't just assume that being in a GT classroom is going to mean your ds' academic needs are met. Another early elementary phenomena that seemed to occur where I live is that there are *lots* of parents who think their children need "more" in school in those early years where there really isn't much challenging going on in most classrooms - so there are a lot of kids who can do more but who really aren't going to have the ability to support or need to do "way more". That's where I found it helpful to actually have IQ testing.

Best wishes,

polarbear