Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Anyone know what this screener is? (preschool or K

DS was screened for admittance to a pre-K program at a Catholic school today. (Insert long story about why this may be our only logical choice even though we aren't at all convinced it's the right one, but just trust me for now...we're working on it and this is our "safety," as it were.) The person who screened him sort of showed me the results, which were definitely at the high end of the scale, but I didn't see the name of the screener. The items he missed (there were only 3 he missed) were that he was unable to tie a knot in a string (duh), unable to complete some kind of jumping task where he had to jump feet together-apart-together-apart or something, and did not correctly identify the missing item (a door) in a picture of a house (this is kind of interesting, since his sister did not do well on the picture completion subtest of her IQ test).

I'm just curious what the test might be, if anyone knows. I suspect it might be a kindergarten screener. He clearly passed with flying colors, whatever it was. (Insert another rant here--if it is a K screener, why is the preschool using a K screener? I know.) It was clearly a standardized screener. Took him about 20 minutes, I'd say. Green print, looked like about 4 pages.

Nobody at all, huh? No guesses? Oh well.

Sorry, I don't know. It does sound a lot like DS's kindy screener though. I don't remember any knot tying. I asked DS8 if he ever did a knot tying test, and he said he did while in kindergarten, a failed miserably.

It does seem advanced for pre PreK. Maybe it's a good thing?

I don't know the name of the test either, but fwiw, the questions sound very similar to questions my dd went through when she was around 3 1/2 and was screened by our school district for LD. Even the green print

polarbear

I don't know what it would be called (they might just make up their own) but the town we lived in when DD was that age, they had a preK in the public school that was set up for LD kids but were full inclusion so they had NT kids as well to make up a balance. It was free for the LD kids and tuition-based for non-LDs. Anyone with residency could be screened (nearly everyone did this).

The screening was similar to what you described. Did they have them cutting too? My DD got super high marks on that...wow...they really made a big deal of it. I don't remember any jumping but it could have been on there. My DD's coordination has slowly been falling behind her peers but it wasn't a huge issue back then. She was a very good climber.

Mostly I remember that I was sent to a different part of the building to wait, and after the fact was told that she ran away a few times during the screening, one time getting all the way outside before being caught, which is part of why I waited another year to send her to preK.

Ironically it came up during disastor K year that when she was screened at 3 yrs 1 m she was 2-3 years advanced across the board, but it didn't raise any flags. Probably because they thought I had been hothousing her.

I don't remember knots. She would have gotten age '0' for that I'm sure.

The story I remember for kindergarten screening was told by a friend of mine (her son is now in high school, but this was when he was starting). They were doing color identification, and the teacher handed him a crayon and asked him what color it was. He looked at her quizzically, then turned it sideways and read "turquoise" (pronounced correctly, too!).

That's too cute!!!

polarbear

Bwa ha--I love that turquoise story. That could totally be my DS, only he probably wouldn't pronounce it correctly--well, I bet he would sound it out as tur-quh-o-eye-suh, or whatever, then correct himself. I wonder if the person who screened him caught on to the fact that he can read. He reads environmental print aloud, everywhere, all the time. (5 minutes ago he was reading all the chapter titles to Inkheart, which is sitting on the coffee table. Despite this, as yet he has almost no stamina for reading an entire book, even a very easy picture book. It's so interesting to see how different his trajectory is from DD's.)

(Honestly, can any 4yos tie knots? I'm serious. Is this just an old K screener from back before the days of Velcro shoes or what? DD didn't learn to tie shoes till she was hmmm, probably summer after K, and IIRC, it was a struggle, too. And she has very good fine motor skills. To be fair, I don't know if it was a shoelace knot that they asked him to tie.)

Both of my dds could tie knots at 4 years old. I don't think with preschool screeners it's so much of a "can the child do this" re the knot tying as watching how the child approaches it and seeing if there is something that looks like a potential fine motor issue, which I think you could have seen with my ds in the way he might have approached tying a knot at 4.

polarbear