Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment High CogAT, Low WISC in PA

I'm with you Grinity! When my older daughter was about 3 she had severe speech problems and was diagnosed with verbal apraxia. I immediately started researching, making calls, advocating, etc. I got her into 4 days a week of speech and 2 days a week of occupational therapy, a special preschool, had her on 4-5 different supplements, plus a GFCF diet. Boy did we kick the apraxia's butt! I was told at one point that she would probably have lifelong problems with speech and possible learning disabilities and that she might be on the autistic spectrum, and now she is thriving and no one even believes she ever had a problem!

Kerrip
I don't want to joke too much about moms causing Psychiatric issues in their kids but from my observation. Moms have different gifts that they are able to pass along to their kids. Its awesome that you were able to kick apraxia's but. It is awesome that Dottie was able to give her DDs the gift of time as far as talking to strangers. We give our children the gifts we can and as our kids grow they get to seek out other role models to pick up the rest. Like every other relationship each member of the relationship does some asserting of their essence and some blending/blending. How much? In which areas? We get a lifetime to explore this issue.
L&ML
Grinity

Hey just an update as an FYI to anyone going through a similar thing...

I talked to our school guidance counselor yesterday, and she said that typically it's only the non-verbal section of the CogAT that correlates with the WISC, because WISC doesn't really have any quantitative section. My daughter's worst section was non-verbal, and it did indeed almost match her WISC GAI. She said that my daughter will be placed in the higher level math in 2nd grade and will probably be able to accelerate to 4th grade math in 3rd grade.

Another interesting thing, though, was had she not bombed that one section (picture concepts?) of the WISC and instead got a score in line with everything else, she would have got into gifted. She only needed a 127 on WISC because all of her other scores and evals were so high. They will automatically test her again next year.

This all made me much happier about the whole thing. Really, it's not the gifted program I wanted for her. I just want her to be able to accelerate and not be denied because she's not in gifted. Apparently, our school district only uses gifted for enrichment, and acceleration is based on completely unrelated measures.

This certainly wasn't the case for my dd, but the verbal section of the CogAT is actually the one that correlates with the WISC more so than the nonverbal part. This study has the correlation btwn the verbal section of the CogAT and the verbal index of the WISC-III at .87 and the nonverbal part of the CogAT only having a .64 correlation with the performance index of the WISC-III. I only skimmed the article, but I do believe that the subjects of the study were above average but generally not gifted. It would be interesting to see the correlation when using kids with gifted identifications only.

Well, I guess she was bound to do worse on the WISC either way, because her high CogAT (139 composite) was mostly due to hitting the ceiling on the quantitative part (150) while still getting decent scores on the other two. Verbal was 124 and non-verbal was 121.

Okay, now I'm even more confused. I was starting to think about summer books and enrichment, and I wanted to see what I could find about DD6's reading level. All I could find from her GOAL report was that her WCPM was 129. How does that compare to where she should be?

I couldn't find anything else, so I decided to have her take the DORA test recommended in another thread. Here were her grade-level scores (she is in first):

HFW - 3.83 (ceiling)
WR - 12.83 (ceiling)
PH - 4.83 (ceiling)
PA - 89% (good?)
SP - 1.83 (ha! she aces her spelling tests, but will just spell everything else phonetically)
VO - 4.83
CO - 5.5

So it seems like, other than the spelling, she has the reading skills of a 5th grader. Is that about right? Is this an extreme difference, or is more common than I would think. She did not qualify for GOAL, and it was because her verbal scores were not very high. I realize that the DORA is not supposed to be a very accurate measurement tool, but I kind of was blown away the few times I was looking over her shoulder and saw what and how she was doing. The reading passages seemed WAY above her reading level, but she didn't have any problems and answered most of the questions correctly.

BTW - I had DD8 start to take the test too. If anything, it confirmed with me that DD6's abilities are innate, because DD8 didn't do nearly as well (WR-3.83 and PH-4.5). We don't "practice" this kind of stuff at home.

So the big question is - what kind of books should we look for at the library? How do I know what will be the right level?

I had ds5 take the DORA last week. It recommended 5th grade reading for him as well. He is far from a 5th grade reader. He is about first grade reading (he is in pre-k)

HA! This made me LOL. Thanks for the laugh.

I didn't think DD6 was that far ahead of grade level, but then when I heard her reading the passages for the comprehension part and then proceed to answer most of the questions correctly I changed my mind. The passages were about The Silk Road, The Trail of Tears, Erosion, etc. Far from first grade level, and she did really well with them!

When it comes to the library, get a selection of books from varying levels. Books published before 1970 are going to have fewer 'mature themes.' See if she is interested in 'Little House on the Prairie' or 'Ozma of Oz'
We loved 'The Phantom Tollbooth' and anything by EB White.
also the Dinotopia illustrated books.

Take a look here for more ideas:
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/hot_topics.htm

Once you've found a few books at 5th grade level that she likes, ask the librarian for more suggestions.