Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Achievement - Ability Discrepancy

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the SBV doesn't have a strong WMI/PSI like the WISCIV, correct? So if both tests are equally useful for determining gifted placement should PSI/WMI be used to place kids in/out of a program when the WISCIV is administered?

That's one solution. I agree.

But honestly, I don't think it even has to be that significant a shift. I think we (meaning "people in general") just need to detach "GT" and "fast" in our minds. They do go together sometimes, but not always.

I don't think my son needs special services for his above-average (but not GT) PSI and WMI. I just think it needs to be okay for him to take a moment to study a problem or to consider his answer before speaking. It needs to be okay for him to write something down so he can see it so that he doesn't have to hold it in his head.

I was just despairing because I felt like if people HERE don't even think kids who are deep but not fast should be served, then what hope do we have of fixing things in the real world?

Ah, Cathy, once again, you get right to the heart of what takes me 10,000 words to hint at!

Indeed!

Timed tests are not as big a factor in the SB-V as they are in the WISC. Our psych recommended the SB for our not-fast, visual kid...then he did better on the WISC!

Go figure!

Too bad the testing is expensive. I want to try them all! Maybe we could all volunteer for somebody's research project

Wow I love this forum - this has made such interesting reading - very useful to see all your perspectives. Actually one of the queries in my mind was how they could accomodate my son given his issues.

AS for homeschooling - I must admit I have not seriously looked into it so did 'assume' (there is that word again!) that it would be longer than 2.5 hours a day. That I could live with - particularly if we were teaching to his VS strengths. Glad to have that assumption refuted. I think I will investigate a bit more.

Right, Dottie, I do always specify academics only. DS7 is in soccer for his gym class, but frankly, he'd probably be in soccer whether he were homeschooled or not. He's the only HSed kid on his team. A one-hour art lesson here, a one-hour music class there...it still doesn't take us all day! And more importantly, it doesn't take all of MOM'S day!

We do take more than the 15 minutes (!!!) to eat lunch that he had at the elementary school! And he spends a lot more time playing then he did in school, since he got one recess for 20 minutes each day. (Which he spent in "time out" more often than not...) Those are, indeed, places where we add time to the day, and I'm okay with that!

My point was that if Tiz thought that homeschooling is 7 hours of sitting at a table with her child talking about multiplication and state capitals, she had the wrong idea.

As for high school, most high school homeschoolers that I know get done with everything about the same time of day as their Brick&Mortar counterparts who get off the bus, only they're *totally* done with everything--homework, extracurriculars, etc., while the B&M kids still have all that to do.

If the HSers have some lesson, sport, or group meeting during those afterschool hours, they usually start later in the day or take off early on Friday. (At least the ones I know.)

Some of it depends upon the kid, though. I know some homeschooled kids get really passionate about music or dance or public service or writing, and they work on their passion A LOT after their academics are done. It's hard to know whether to count all that as "school" or not, since it may be literally HOURS AND HOURS of effort. That's why I usually specify "academics only." That's usually relatively standard for most kids, at least from what I've seen and read.

Sorry to join the party so late, but could we return to the bottleneck issue? We are having some difficulty and I'm not quite sure how to analyze it.

DS8 appears to have a bottleneck in writing only. On the WISC-IV he had a 42 point difference between the PRI and WMI scores, and a 29 pt spread between the PRI and PSI, although the WMI was in the high average and the PSI was in the superior category. He is fine doing math in his head, although he seems to want to calculate his multiplication table facts anew in his head each time instead of memorizing them, much to the dismay of his math teacher and her timed math tests. But the thing that really slows him down is trying to write. He described it to his teacher as "trying to write is like trying to catch one fish out of a whole school." He wants to "see" the entire story in his mind, from beginning to end, before he can start to write it down. And by the time that he has found the ending in his mind, he suddenly can't remember how he got there. I have tried to get him to outline his ideas, in order to create a mental map of how he arrived at the end of the story. But we are not having a lot of luck.

So far this discussion has been about math facts when describing a "deep, but slow" kid. Is there anyone with an experience of a slow kid with respect to writing? His verbal skills are quite high, and his reading level is significantly above his grade level. He can rattle off these wild and imaginative stories verbally at a fast pace. But when you put a pencil in his hand and ask him to write it all down, he freezes up. Note, he can write down science facts fairly well without any trouble. So I don't think it is fine motor skill-writing issue. It is more an inability to capture the thoughts in his mind as they go racing by.

OTOH, science facts are these neat little well defined bundles that his mind can parse out. They are not these large, freely-structured, amorphous creatures of imaginative writings.

Does this make any sense? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Also, now that I go back and preview this post, I realize that he has a much bigger spread between his PRI and the WMI/PSI. (even though he is not as slow with math calculations). The difference between his VCI-WMI=29 and VCI-PSI=16. ??????

Have you tried letting him use a voice recorder? If he can tell even some of his story into it--sometimes just a few words trigger the whole memory--he doesn't have to hold it all in his head.

My voice recorder was invaluable when I was writing my novel, FWIW, for just this reason.

Ooooh, brilliant idea Kriston. I'm used to the old-fashioned tape recorders from the by-gone era. Do they make kid-friendly digital ones these days? (i.e. cheap and indestructible?)

I've tried bribing him this summer, starting with small monetary sums for small stories, and finally a fairly large lego set that he really wanted for a 1000 word story. It didn't matter how long he took to write the story, if he chose to write it at all. The lego set was promised when he was finished. Was this an unreasonable length story for an eight year old? I wanted something that he would have to work on and put forth some effort in order for him to earn his heart's desire. I also wanted him to practice his handwriting this summer. But even trying to get him to write a 50 word description of the beach during our vacation met with great resistance. How hard is it to write a few sentences about finding a crab or a jellyfish on the beach?

I don't know. Maybe I should start a writing thread? But it seemed to me to be connected to his low WMI score.

Dottie: I just saw your post. Thanks. It makes me feel better. I've been struggling to figure out whether it was some form of focusing issue, or just an avoidance issue since he really doesn't like to write. (He loves to make up stories though). I even spent some time this summer pointing out the real life instance of writing in various professions, such as seeing a police officer at the side of the road with a speeder and explaining to DS how much paperwork they have to fill out in order to document the ticket. Or if a scientist discovered a cure for a disease, but never wrote the answer down, then how would the world ever know if his or her discovery. Scientists have to publish papers in order to propagate the knowledge to other scientists. <sigh>

Maybe we will give the voice recorder a try and see if it is a memory issue. I just tend to think that his ideas are streaming through his brain so fast that he can't get them down before they evaporate!