Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment WPPSI-IV Renorming Question

looking at my two kids and how different they are while I'm pretty sure they are gifted, I honestly believe that unless there's an LD involved, the age at which these children learn to read depends largely on their INTEREST. My older one is clearly a math / sciency kinda guy while my younger one was fascinated by letters before he could talk. While the 2.5 year old is learning to read, the 4 year old has very little interest. Yet I am pretty sure if he wanted to, he'd be easily capable of it. But it's the last thing on his radar.

as for the original topic, I don't have much experience with testing just yet, but I wouldn't go by the numbers unless they are made official. If the test is still being worked on, I would go with whatever other test results I have ... and with my own gut feeling of where I see my child fit on the scale.

This concept of self taught has confused me from the beginning. For example my toddler has read three sight words before I taught her any phonics. She is not self taught. She has a rich environment. A lady with four children was once arguing that her baby was self taught and that she did not provide a rich environment. Hello. Older siblings is an enriched environment automatically. Daycare is an enriched environment. Sunday school is an enriched environment. Cable television is an enriched environment.

Some kids have a hard time learning at an older age with the same exact teaching supplements. Some people learn quicker with less effort. I've seen it argued that gifted kids still put in the effort to learn these things, even if it was earlier or easier. The arguement was in response to, "Gifted kids aren't the good students the students who work hard to learn are the good students."

Which makes me ask, if they learn with less time or effort than other children then I guess you could say they're a quick learner. Should you teach a quick learner more? If so, what? If so, what is the practical difference between quick learner, high achiever, and gifted student? And don't tell me because they feel and think things more deeply. I mean if you have any one of these as a young'un shouldn't you teach them more stuff more deeply, or more simply said just teach them more? If your child is reading at any age, don't hold them back. Provide scaffolding so they can master more skills at an appropriate to them pace. Too bad it's tricky to balance this with learning to navigate the educational offerings available. They wouldn't spend so much on test prep and testing if they (the other they) would just offer a more good education for whoever wants to take it.

I think my 2.5 year old is a good example of "self-taught" ... I have never once in my life read him a book. From when he was a baby, he had zero interest in anyone reading to him. Even now, he won't pay any attention to it. When he was about 18 months, he really got into watching Leapfrog videos and Super Why show, suddenly started recognizing all lower and upper case letters and phonic sounds and couple months later started reading words. With zero help from me, other than occasionally telling him what letter he had when he came to me with a plastic letter block in hand. He loves Vtech V.Reader books and Leappad ebooks and has now started reading parts of sentences in his regular paper books. Again without any help from or anyone else. So I do believe he is / will be self-taught.

Well, received our results. Yeah, I think there are some problems with this new test.

We didn't take our son to an amateur last year. We took him to Dr. Ed Amend, someone well-aquainted with gifted/PG children, and who has spoken at DYS Summits in the past. I'm no expert, but I'll give you a few examples of just how off these results are compared to last year's SB-V results:

1) Verbal: Difference of 11 points.
2) Visual Spatial: Difference of 29 points.
3) Fluid Reasoning: Difference of 27 points. On the SB-V, our 6 yo hit the ceiling of the test. This score on the WPPSI-IV norming test wasn't even a gifted score.
4) Full Scale IQ: Difference of 12+ points.
5) On the SB-V, 7 of 9 scores were in the moderately-profoundly range, on the WPPSI-IV norming data, NONE were.

This seems a tad problematic and off, no?

That's a really good point.

Test preparation. Any child who is coached on general knowledge/content/format/scoring principles will obtain an invalid score.

Any score on a standardised test is only valid if the test-taker, the test administrator, and the protocol are the same as that used in the standardisation sample.

Preparing children for IQ tests = invalid index scores.

You may as well send yourself a letter saying, "Your child is gifted" as trust in the index score of a child who was prepared for the test.

Mk13, Superwhy is designed to explicitly teach children to read. A child who learns things watching the show is being taught them by the show. I don't know anything about leapfrog, but I suspect it's not dissimilar.

So much of what's around for small children is designed to teach them to read, though, that I'm not sure it's useful to say that a child who has been exposed to any of it cannot be called self-taught. Mine used to like starfall.com as a toddler, and I let him play with it sometimes; it was one of a handful of sites and DVDs that I used to put him in front of when I needed a few minutes' peace (and the only one that taught reading, that I remember). He had alphabet books, too, and picture books with only a few words on each page that people used to read to him, and there were letter posters on the wall at the nursery he went to; it was probably all useful information to the toddler cracking the code! I describe him as self-taught because no person ever intended that he should learn to read (I had positively decided that it would be better if he did not learn to read until he went to school - but I didn't go so far as to ban this stuff!). He'd have been more self-taught if he'd lived without internet and with no written material below the level of The Times, but not many children do!

I think calling my DS a self-taught reader is still making a somewhat useful distinction between him and a child whose parent did daily flashcards with them from birth, because a very small percentage of children exposed to the material my DS got read at 2 while a very high percentage of children deliberately taught by their parents to read do so; "my child taught himself to read" is information about the child while "I taught my child to read" is information about the parent! Given the huge grey area (just how available were these resources, who made the choices between this TV programme or website or book and another, what was the parents' reaction to any signs of interest in them from the child?) though, it's true that it's not all that useful as a distinction for purposes of gauging anything about the child. The main use of calling DS "self-taught" to me is heading off people who would otherwise use the fact that he could read well before starting school as proof positive that I was a horribly pushy parent. I used it on school application forms to what seemed to be good effect.

Yes, ITA with ColinsMum. It's pretty difficult for a child to be entirely self-taught these days--as in, never exposed to any reading toys, reading programs or anything intended to semi-teach or enourage reading, although parents religiously following a Waldorf program may pull it off. (Many of the kids I know who did Waldorf did not know the alphabet at age 6. It's been interesting to watch their trajectories, as some have ended up transferring to publics. Some have done completely fine. A not insignificant number are now below grade level by conventional standards, although they listen to and comprehend books well above grade level. We'll see how it shakes out in the end.)

I did actually spend a bit of time trying to teach my DD to read at age 3, because she asked. However, we gave it up quickly because it wasn't clicking. If we had kept pursuing and it had worked, I woudl have said I taught her to read. I suppose maybe it helped and I just don't know it.

DS did not ask and learned without help, but he did watch Super Why--along with a bunch of other TV programs. I don't know. Maybe it helped. He was much more phonetic than DD.

I know people who sit down with BOB books every day and reward their kids when they are able to make it through each one, or who work through that Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading, or who do sight word cards or daily read-aloud sessions with the intent to instruct, using leveled books and working to move the child ahead. That's what I would call teaching reading. It IS a bit gray, though. But over here, DS was reading haltingly out of easy books and we were like "Cool!" and then a couple of months later he was reading fluently out of much harder books. We didn't do anything to help him in the meantime. That's pretty self-taught, IMO.

I think anyone that exposes their child to 'reading style' computer programs in contributing to their reading. Yet, I think you would need to have. Pretty bright child for them to have the capacity to view and transfer this information into reading. So I don't think it says much about how taught they are. Teaching is not a bad thing if done in the correct way.

We are not a hardcore Waldorf family or anything of the sort as implied above but we have not introduced TV to our 4 year old, or computer or iPad etc nor have we ever owned reading programs.

I simply read to him a variety of different types of books since birth, for pleasure and at 3 he began reading. And by reading I mean confidently reading any text presented. Having the capacity to sound out and understand phonics and sight words.

So it very much is possible to have a truly self taught reader these days but I think the difference between self taught or taught reader at that age does not matter very much. A child who is gifted has the capacity to comprehend what they are reading beyond age similar peers etc.

Yes and no. The SB tests and the Weschler tests often don't come out super close although they have some degree of correlation. A difference of 12 pts on the FSIQ isn't out of the range of expected btwn these two different tests. One may have hit more on his strengths and the other on weaker areas. Also, newer tests usually do come in a bit lower either way.

On average, the correlation between the SB and Weschler scales usually runs around .7, with some of the subtests having much lower correlations btwn the different tests, which easily allows for the composite and subtest scores to come out quite a few points apart. When they last compared the two, as far as I know, the WPPSI-R and SB-IV only had a .54 correlation btwn the PIQ on the WPPSI and the Visual Spatial index on the SB.