Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment V superior result on WPPSI-3, *update* at bottom

I watched a free lecture today at UCI website Gifted Lectures I don't know if you can get there from that url, as that's the link you get once you register. If you have a problem let me know. Anyhow, he discusses what current IQ tests measure, IQ, percentiles etc. He talks about you can have 10 kids all w/ IQ 145 or 145 in VCI or PRI and you could have 10 very different kids. One might be happy in regular classroom w/ same-aged peers, living inside his head, challenging himself at home, etc, another might need radical acceleration, another might need college at 14, another might need 1yr grade skip........my point being that you can't make decisions based on IQ. Whatever you thought she needed is probably still valid even though the FSIQ was initially in error.

You can have two kids w/ FSIQ 138, one being more even as your DDs and another say w/ VCI>>PRI or WMI/PSI pulling FSIQ down to 138. Those kids might need something very different.

Hi,
I registered, but can't figure out how to see that lecture, any more hints?
Thanks!

Dottie, thanks! I will try to keep that in mind!

Dazed&Confused, you make a very good point. It appears we had the wrong impression of how much information we could learn from this test. My DD gets impatient (and sassy) when I tell her things she already knows. This makes me nervous about what she will be like in school. She is very curious and loves to learn new things. I am sure we will get a better idea of her needs once she starts Kinder in the fall.

I tried to follow the link, but it requires a login. Is it free if I register? It sounds like a good lecture!

Thanks!
Dawn

Dazey, I hope this is the right lecture you were talking about (See below).

sdeothco and elizabethmom,
Yes, it is free. Let me copy and paste the email that was sent to me. The lecture is under Gifted and Talented Education Seminars and Community and it's lecture #4 Understanding IQ Testing and Special Programming for Advanced and Gifted Learners. This psychologist tested my DS. He also has a book out called Parent's Guide to IQ Testing and Gifted Education.

This is the email that was sent to me:

Thank you all again for your continued interest in UC Irvine Extension�s Gifted & Talented Education webinar series. Many of you were unable to attend all four webinars in May and have expressed an interest in accessing the recordings and documents associated with this month-long offering. To meet your needs, we have posted recordings of all four Gifted & Talented Education webinars in UC Irvine Extension�s Open Courseware site. The site includes links to each webinar as well as PDF of the PowerPoint presentations and all handouts that were distributed.

To access the seminars, users must first create an account by clicking create new account at the right just underneath the login button. (See picture below). After creating an account, simply log in and paste the website http://learn.uci.edu/cms/course/view.php?id=2829 into the address bar of your browser. When prompted to enter an enrollment, type in the following: gate_access. Please feel free to send the link and enrollment key to anyone else that you feel would be interested in viewing this information.

By registering for this site, you will be able to access all four GATE webinar recordings as often as you�d like. Every time you subsequently login at http://learn.uci.edu, you will find Gifted and Talented Education Seminars and Community listed in MY COURSES on the left hand side and won�t need to enter the enrollment key again.

This is what came in the email:


hth
Dazey

My oldest's IQ fell right around where your dd's did when she was tested on the WISC at age 7. She, too, appears to be "more" gifted than that, but she is a very focused person with a personality that lends itself to appearing pretty unique. Her scores on the WISC also ranged from the 25th percentile to the 99.9th percentile. For her, we've made a whole host of different educational decisions over the years depending on what she needed at the time -- from a limited GT pull out to subject acceleration to, most recently, a grade skip. Like others have said, you can't make the decision based on IQ alone although it is one piece of the puzzle. I'd start with whatever you had initially planned and then make adjustments according to how it is working for her.

Cricket, Thank you for sharing that with me! My DD is also very focused, so perhaps that is the key? She is also very much a perfectionist and I wonder if that factored against her in the test? She will often not even try something if she is not *sure* she can do it correctly. We work with her on it, but she has always been like that: She would wait a very long time to do something, watching and learning, and then do it correctly the first time. This is always intensified if someone she doesn't know is watching.

We will continue with our current educational plans, and keep working on what to do with her long term. She *likes* her teacher for Kindergarten and for a shy, sensitive kid, that is important. I will have to make an appointment with her teacher though. I told her that my DD was reading, but didn't tell her how much and what she is reading. I am sure the teacher is imagining the 'step into reading' type books, not magic tree house and magic school bus chapter books.

I have yet to watch that webinar, we are a very busy household. Hopefully I can watch it today during nap/quiet time. It looks very interesting!

Thanks again,
Dawn

Thanks for the great link.....sdrothco.....your comment, "She is also very much a perfectionist and I wonder if that factored against her in the test? She will often not even try something if she is not *sure* she can do it correctly".... is a description of our DS6 :-)

When he did his achievement and IQ test a few weeks ago, the psychologist stated that she kept seeing where he would overthink his answers and was making them harder than they actually were - she said she could see why he was saying the things he was saying and that his ideas were correct and that she could see that he knew the answer but because of the way he answered it, she wasn't able to mark it correct on the test. He is 100% perfectionist and even though she heard him talk his way through an answer and that many times he hit on the right thing, he would not take a guess out of fear that it was the wrong answer. So, she concluded that his true score, in her opinion, probably is higher than what the calculated score was. He did score in the HG range so makes me wonder,hmmmmmm...where he is exactly and we will just do our best to try to get his needs met....but I do believe that things like perfectionism do play into scoring.

That's our oldest dd to a tee, too. Her scores that ranged from the 25th to 99.9th were on the same subtest and supposedly measured similar skills, but one of them was on a timed test where her anxiety was fairly high. Your descriptor of her watching until she can do it right made me smile. That's my dd, as well. She didn't walk until 15.5 months, never cruised around furniture, nothing. I thought that she would never walk until one day she stood up in the middle of the floor and walked all the way across the room.

That lecture was very interesting! Thank you so much for sharing the link! It really helped my understanding of this topic.

Can anyone explain to me why there are a number of areas tested that aren't included in the full scale IQ? What do those tested areas tell us? For example, she took the 'symbol search' subtest but that is not included in the FSIQ. What do we learn from her taking that subtest? Is it just to round out her processing speed score? I am also curious why she would score and 18 on that subtest but only a 14 on the coding? Don't they test the same skill?

Most likely DD will get tested again at some point in her educational career, and perhaps that will give us a truer picture of her level. I guess the actual number doesn't matter that much once we know that she is very above average and needs an educational environment that can handle that.

I am sure that the testers don't want us to have the kids practice the test activities, but for a child like this even running through the activity one time could help reduce the anxiety associated with new things for a perfectionist.

In some ways, it is difficult raising a perfectionist. There are so many great experiences we come across that she isn't even willing to try because she needs to watch and learn it first. For some things that works, but for other things the opportunity passes before she is comfortable with trying. As she has gotten older, this has improved but there is still significant room for improvement. Perhaps she just has to learn this for herself.