... We did approve and testing is set to begin this week. They will be administering the WISC, ITBS, and WJ-ACH.
...For those of your with more experience than me with situations like this, what should we expect? What do these assessments entail? How long do they last? Is it reasonable to expect a 6 year old child to complete them in span of just one week? Is prior preparation needed?
My dd#1 did the WJ-III (achievement), WISC-IV (IQ), and a self-esteem inventory all in one day at age 7. The ITBS she took at school at age 8, and I believe that it was broken up over the course of two days. The ITBS takes btwn 3-6 hrs to administer depending on the age/grade of the child.
It will be a lot of testing, but she should be able to get through it all in a week.
When my dd skipped a grade, we too used the IAS, but all of the testing had been done in years prior. They looked at those IQ & achievement scores from age 7 (second grade), the ITBS from 3rd grade, MAPS from 4th, and the Explore from 4th. She skipped 5th. It was somewhat less high-stakes for that reason b/c we knew that she had qualifying ability and achievement scores and she still would have been within a point or two of being an excellent candidate even if she bombed the Explore. Once the Explore scores came in, they bumped her into the "excellent" category. However, the pressure wasn't there for those scores to be high.
In terms of prepping, we have never done any preparing for any of these tests. I'd probably just try to make sure that she isn't stressed or feeling the high stakes pressure of this.
