Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion DS taking WISC soon; stakes are high; tips?

It might have been a good idea to get a few Critical Thinking workbooks. We did not realize the test day would be so soon. He did previously pass a couple of initial screeners.

Unfortunately, he already knows he has to "pass" this test to go to his sister's school--that cat was out of the bag ages ago and would have been no matter what we did.

DS is very personable and friendly, so that may help. He establishes rapport easily.

The Hoagies link was helpful--thanks.

The ultimate tip that I have would be to pack a snack and a bottle of water just for the test.

Background.
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I intentionally didn't research what an IQ test involved because DW and I did not want to prime our DD and we wanted the results to be as 'honest' as possible. We were not testing for a GT program and were not expecting our DD to be found to be well into the 'GT' zone but were testing to rule this out as an outside possibility for the cause of behavioural issues that we were observing in our daughter. As a result, I naively thought that we would be done after 30 mins or so. Instead, it took about 2-3 hours and I saw my DD flag a bit towards the end, had she had a snack and a drink I honestly think she would have done better on the WMI and PSI tests.

That's a good idea. I don't know if we will have any access to him, though? No clue. DD's test was done during the school day, but we are out of school now here.

Same advice here - good amount of sleep, good breakfast, and a drink and snack if they give a break during testing.

Maybe get some analogy pages off the internet or there is a site called "Testing Mom" that will give you 100 free practice questions if you give them your email info.

We told both of our girls that it would be some fun riddles and puzzles to get them to really use their noggin. We told them to stop and think before they gave an answer and to try to answer everything even if they didn't know the answer for sure. We asked that they didn't give any "I don't knows". Our tester even mentioned in DD8's write up that she seemed to really think out each answer.

I would say testing for each girl was pretty high stakes for us and it was very stressful for me each time. I know how hard it is to not let that show. Try to keep things light and make sure your DS understands things will be fine no matter what. Give him a big hug (if he is a hug kind of kid) and smile and tell him to go shine!

Oy. I tried him on a few random practice questions and he bombed most of them, answering immediately after barely glancing at them. I had to stop because I could tell it wasn't a good idea and would just stress me out.

I have not worked with DS on much of anything this year. He plays chess and many other board and card games and reads a lot. We sometimes talk about math.

I asked my DH if it was possible we were wrong about DS and he looked at me like I had just expressed a belief that the world might be flat. There is certainly no question that DS would ace any achievement tests given. But that's not what they're measuring.

Well. I guess we'll see. I don't know.