Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment 5 std dev variation in scores on the K-TEA

What you haven't listed here is "hasn't had the opportunity to learn it yet." This kid is on his third day of kindergarten, and while I know that this board appears populated by parents of kids who intuit reading, there's a reason why reading and writing are taught in schools, right?

Nothing beyond letters and letter sounds were taught in preK. No writing. I have actually been suspecting that he'll figure out the rhyming when he starts in with inventive spelling in another few weeks. This is why I was looking for information on what grade level expectations might be based on his "old for grade" status.

I have a little information (and confirmation that he has unusual math ability) and I'm watching like a hawk.

We are going to give DS a chance to learn in school while I get things more figured out and watch him learn through a more formal setting. I'm working on a temporary hypothesis that he's got a bottle neck that will be opened by formal education.

I'm not rejecting the ideas of dyslexia or something else leading to learning difficulties at this point, but I'm also not rejecting the idea what he just needs a chance to learn in a more structured manner.

That's under "nothing really wrong but splinter skills confusing people into expecting that everything should be that good."

Geo, did the SLP report give you any information on the speech delay or current characteristics of his speech? That's an element that's not off "in comparison to the splinter skills," but even "in comparison to typically developing kids."

Or were they too dazzled to think about that any more?

DeeDee

Sigh. I think I understand why he got discharged from speech when he did last year still with the errors he was making. The SLP understood everything he said during the testing.

I understand about 80%. The difference in his speech between a clinical setting and home is huge. DS talks about more complicated things, faster, and with mumble set to High. He did not do this during the testing. We're to go back in two years if his /r/ still isn't in place.

Most other adults who know DS also report understanding everything. He does not talk to them about the same sorts of things he talks about at home, nor with the same complexity. His last babysitter, DH, and myself then are the only people who report such problems. I'm now tasked with keeping notes on it, and it does seem to be a lot of mumbling, coupled with poor grammar, and unusual choice of topics or words.

She did not observe other speech quirks the audiologist and interprets the description of "thinking too much." While I might add that to the list of 'wowed by the scores' DS did verbalize a lot of what he was thinking, in a few places giving two to three options of what he could have answered, or in describing a multi-step way to his answer.

The 'thinking too much' hypothesis explains about half of the slow responses we see. The others really looks to me as what we've started to call "taking the scenic route" through the brain.

In other news, I asked my grade level equivalent question to the school psychologist. He has failed to answer that question still, but he has started the process of scheduling an educational team meeting. That could be the first step to getting DS accelerated in math, and it can be the first step for more testing. Either way, it's a forum for me to bring forward strengths and weaknesses.

I'm also taking notes on issues to discuss in the trip to the psychologist, and working to justify to DH the need for private testing ($1800).

What is the odd grammar like? Age-appropriately odd, or odder?

We still get "caughten" and "catched" once in a while at my house from little DS, but not whole sentence structures that are garbled. I don't know if mine is a good basis for comparison, though.

DeeDee

Yeah, it's age appropriate, things like your example. Sometimes he says a sentence inside out, but rarely. He now uses all the appropriate "supporting" words like 'a' and 'the' that he hadn't been doing even after he was discharged from speech.

I struggle to understand this more than they did in the clinical setting I suspect because I'm rarely sitting in a quiet room seated directly opposite him, watching his every move. I suspect he also knows he mumbles a lot and that people can't understand him, so he speaks more clearly to strangers.

The school psychologist blew me off. He won't tell me the agenda for the meeting: "Talk to your classroom teacher." Grrrrr. Dude, you're the one that called the meeting...

Can you nicely pretend that your ears aren't working when he mumbles, and ask him to "repeat it clearly"?

Our kids both went through a whining phase; we simply couldn't hear them when they whined, and it was a blessedly short phase as a result.


Uh-oh. That is... bizarre. Can you get the school's person in charge of IAT meetings (the EIS or equivalent) on the phone? I don't think they'd call a meeting to berate you for having your kid tested, but failure to answer basic questions seems like trouble to me.

Good luck--
DeeDee

"Repeat it clearly" leads to him dramatically simplifying what he's said. Instead of me missing some of the details of "We lined up in the room and then Mrs. A. walked us out of the room into the hall, we turned north, went through the cafeteria - oh and we saw Mr. F on the way and he said 'good morning kindergarteners' and then we went into a room next to the cafeteria. It was the art room. But we get a different teacher for that, nor Mrs. A. .... ..... ...."

A request to say that kind of thing clearly becomes:

"We went to art."

Once we have an EIS, I'll be calling her. I think she starts next week.

How sweet that he'll dumb it down for you. :-)

DeeDee

Note that grade equivalents are kinda dumb things and not well-respected by psychometrics geeks. If a schoolie wants them and will listen to them, okay, I guess (I've put them in reports a few times for that purpose) but it's best to base arguments in better statistical grounding, or to give up on the statistics altogether and base the arguments in terms of how the kid's actual skills match up to the actual skills expectations of the actual curriculum.