We are giving DS5 the 1st grade Terra Nova test in about a week and a half. This is out of level for him. Due to his young "kindergarten" age (Our local age cutoff is in December, and two weeks after his birthday.), I consider this to be more than a year out of level. The test is only for our personal knowledge and does not *mean* anything, other than giving his father a confidence that DS is doing well compared to other kids.
I've just received the test. He will ace the math, science, and social studies.
However, he's not yet a confident reader and he's going to flip out when he's confronted with the reading sections. I had spoken to a representative at the testing center, asking about the level of independent reading required for the test and was assured that at this level, there wasn't much independent reading required. This is totally not the case.
In some cases, the child is required to read only the 4 answers and choose the correct ones. These are words that I wouldn't have expected the average first grader to be able to read. There are also sections where he'll have to read a fairly long passage, then read and answer the questions on his own.
I'm hoping that since I'm not going to be the person giving him the test, he'll at least make a good-faith attempt to do the sections. If it was me, I'd probably have a lot of tantruming. He often takes a quick glance at materials and says "I can't do that!" and only realizes he can when I sit next to him and point out that he can.
What I'm worried about is that seeing these sections are going to deflate his ego so much that he'll do poorly on the other sections.
I can choose the order in which to give the sections and we could possibly do it over more than one day. I think that a lot of advice would say to do the hardest stuff first to get it out of the way, but I'm wondering if I should give him the easiest stuff first to build his confidence up, maybe even telling him something like the test will get harder as you go on so that he's expecting it.
Any thoughts on order? I don't think it's dire enough that I need to call them and see if I can exchange the test because I think it's worth it to see how he does on the non-reading activities. I also don't necessarily think that he'll completely bomb the reading sections if he actually tries. I guess we'll see.
