Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Quick answer - motivation issue

That was a cool reading test (the reading key one), but I'm wondering how accurate it is? I have a hard time believing DS4 is at 5th grade level? we only did the first part, because he asked me what the test was for after he did that part, and I just said, oh, just seeing what kind of books we can get you. He ran off after that.

Okay. You're a crazy idealist.

<snicker>

But if you are, then so am I. I feel the same way.

To be honest, even testing 3-4yos for admission to a school seems nutty to me. They're not the most reliable of test subjects at that age!

But if that's the system, and if you think the school will be a good fit, then I guess you do what you have to do...I'd just want to be darn sure it's going to be a good fit for my particular child and not just a status symbol thing if I were going that route. I think going too academic at that young age isn't always the best move. I know that wouldn't ahve suited either of my kids at that age. But then again, for some other kids it might be the *ideal* choice of school. <shrug> Case by case is the only way to go.

Yeah - what Kriston said!

I definitely would say it's got to be a case by case situation. I'm guessing there are many highly to profoundly gifted children that wouldn't pass that screening at 4, and go on to do extremely well.

Oh, fer sure! All it takes is a child spinning tales in her head, or a child more interested in the way the table legs join the tabletop, or a child silently multiplying to figure out how many floor tiles there are in the room. Those kids aren't likely to cooperate with testing, but at 3, they might all well be HG+ and good candidates for a school like Hunter.

I guess you hope the kid has a good day and make sure to find a backup school!

ROFL! Exactly. And those would be my kids!

We used the Schonell to assess DS6 and the result matched up perfectly with his age equivalent from the WJIII achievement in Word-Letter ID. And as someone else mentioned, his comprehension lags his decoding ability quite a bit (about 1yr 8months difference).

For my DS6, I think that his aversion to hard work is something that he picked up starting at about 4 when he realized that it was really easy to impress his preschool teachers by just showing off things he learned without really doing anything. I didn't realize how ingrained it was until we started homeschooling and I bumped his work up to his actual ability level. We had constant fights when he had to think about the answer for more than a second. It's slowly getting better and it's been really great to see him take on true challenges, but I don't know that our solution for him at 6 would have been effective at 4. I'm not sure I would have done anything differently even knowing how hard it is on him now. At 4, I was too busy trying to get him to stop challenging *me* to worry if he was challenging himself, lol.

Sorry for mixing up two threads in one post


I don't know how accurate it is. I think you really need to start asking for the word meaning at the 4ht+ grade level as they suggested. All I know is that DS5 scored noticeable lower on WJ-III than on this test, but then he also scored lower than the reading level my friend teacher gave me a long time ago. I think he didn't do as well on the reading part of WJ-III as he could have.