Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Comprehending questions?

Here among the parents of gifted children, it's easy to overlook the basics. They're so far ahead in so many ways, we tend to assume that they've figured out things that they may not have.

I think it would be worthwhile to take some time out and go over the different questioning words: who, what, when, where, why, and how. This is a normal ELA topic for a 7yo. Common Core lists it as a standard for 2nd grade.

Many lovely answers, thank you!

Yes, I could definitely see her sitting there and thinking three or four sentences and then writing down the last one! (Or part of the last one, in many cases.)

I can also see some overthinking -- but I'm on the lookout for that, after DS.

Receptive language issues ... no, she hasn't been evaluated for anything, but if that means what I'm guessing it does, she could have some. She never does anything that she's asked to do (at home) without being told half a dozen times, reminded at every step to stop whatever just distracted her this time and get moving again. Well, "never" is a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. Some things are getting better, but there's still a struggle with many things. Her head is off in the clouds. I assume it's better at school, because she only gets a "color move" once every couple of weeks for the silliness (talked while the teacher was talking, talked in line, touched someone's backpack -- horrors).

She has a lot of trouble with the "what is the main idea of this passage" questions. I suspect it's because she reads it and her mind goes wandering off about every sentence, and by the time she gets to that question, there are lots of other things in her head that weren't actually in the passage, and then (as Zen said) she writes down some little piece of what's going through her brain.

I just don't understand, because I've always been good at tests -- I can pass a test on something I don't even know, just because I know what kind of answers they're looking for, and how to find the important bits. I did a lot of "this is what the question actually says, but this is what they meant, and so even though this would technically be correct, this one is the answer they really want" when I was in school.

ETA: Dude, I have actually seen things mentioning they're working on those words, but it seems like her problems have gotten worse since they started it. Maybe she got confused during that process!

IMO, the quality you describe is what allows very talented people to make new discoveries. Talented people have an ability to notice a subtle way in which something isn't quite right in a way that most other people don't. And yet this particular ability can be vexing for others, because the questioning extends into so many areas. I suspect, but don't actually know, that people with a lot of talent in a given area see problems there where most other people simply don't --- which can make it hard to convince others that there's actually a problem. KWIM?

So again, I'll suggest going over a couple of these passages with her (using passages she's never read before). I would ask her to read a passage and answer the first question. Then I'd talk to her about the answer to try to figure out what she was thinking when she wrote it. Etc., one question at a time.

Yes, like a sensitivity to something that doesn't bother other people. I always have to work hard to convince people there's a gas leak, or the pilot light is out, because they don't smell anything and therefore there's no problem -- or, right now, a battle I've been fighting, that there is something wrong with the water when I'm the only one who can tell.

Ultramarina, her writing is ...variable. She will go in her room or get on the computer and write a long story that makes perfect sense (at least from her POV), but when she has to write five sentences for homework, it can take hours and not make much sense at all. She's in a writing group that meets at the library every other week (just a few kids), and she writes like crazy, but when she read one page to me a while back, about a weird picture she picked out, I couldn't believe how literal she was. She makes up all kinds of stories, is jam-packed with imagination in her play, and yet when it comes to an assignment it just turns off.

Her spelling is quite variable, as well. She normally gets 100% on spelling tests, but misspells things randomly (same word both right and wrong in one paragraph) in her fun writing and even on assignments where she can copy the word on the same page. It boggles my mind.

Val, yes, I'll see if I can get some extras from the teacher that she hasn't seen yet, and maybe I can come up with an idea where her wires are crossed.

My DD may have a similar issue and initially found summarizing difficult but she is getting better at it now.

My DS5 is spectacularly bad at those, to the point that he is now getting 1:1 time with the school SLP to work on "summarizing" skills. I can't say yet whether it is helping.

Exactly!!

The problem is most severe when there seems to be NO "perspective" which is uniform and allows for the selection of one "best" answer. It's like she has to pull back until they are ALL "fuzzy" and potentially correct, and if she pulls in to a view that has discriminating power, then they are ALL incorrect.

Drives us both nuts-- and I've seen a lot of those constructed response questions-- it's not that her approach needs fine-tuning. It's that the questions require a different LEVEL of scrutiny/background for each individual answer selection.


YES.

Assess my DD Socratically, and she'll blow the doors off-- both with her speed and her level of insight. But diminish the activity to a multiple choice series, and you've killed it for her.

This is why (in part) I think that multiple choice questions are (in general) not a good idea at all for gifties. It is way hard to write them well even for a well-defined population. Whole graduate theses have been constructed from less, quite frankly, and ETS can tell you all that they do for on-going item validation, which is a 2-3year process involving LOADS of data inputs.

Pretty sure that AR isn't thinking about it that hard. LOL.


Yes-- only be aware that the people writing assessments now at this level are really not very good at this activity. So then it becomes a matter of dialing in to the individual idiosyncratic thought process of the INDIVIDUAL person who was writing test items.

DD is darned good at this now-- but it's frankly hellish for HG+ people to spend much time at this particular activity. It's completely soul-sucking to have to do this deliberate... um... well, okay, it's a specific kind of "dumbing down" in order to take a particular perspective. I have very mixed feelings about the fact that this is probably the skill that my DD's formal education has done the most to "teach" her.

HK, have you explained to her about (Robert Heinlein's) Friday's reasoning, that where she grew up, the point of an IQ test was to hit a predetermined mark?

I saw a similar comment somewhere else recently, as well -- a guy who made money in college by sitting exams for people, and what a challenge it was to be certain they received a B or C grade as they normally would.

And yes to indigo's "as if they were having a conversation instead of being tested" -- that's how DD answers things.

I was thinking about this just now, and for DD (and, um, ME) I think the multiple-choice problem also has to do with the desire for justice, which we share.

But it CAN'T be that. REALLY. No, okay. FINE. This is so STUPID. You're saying I have to choose this one, when obviously...(steam starts coming out the ears). Arrrgh! I hate this. Why do they have to... (Focus lost, child/parent is ranting)

My DD has been known to make editorial comments in the margin of her worksheets. (---> Doesn't make sense ----> Neither of these is right ---> Seemingly impossible) (The impossible one was possible; just a poorly written math question)