Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Question about references on application

You need one, can submit 2, family is not OK, but I don't think they define family.

The chess mentor and the preschool teacher sound great!

He shoots, He scores, The crowd goes wild!

I'm going to say it again: Regular parents have an amazing resource - local parents who they can talk about their kids with! I am so grateful to this forum so we can have a chance to put our thoughts into words and let our own minds help us out. Not being able to talk about what really matters to us with our local friends really slows down our ability to come up with original ways to problem solve.

Smiles,
Grinity

Yup, chess mentor is perfect! Just right!

I don't think I'd use grandma at all, unless you just want to have her note added to your observations. I think she's basically going to be thought of as adding more of your perspective, not as an independent observer.

Only because grandma is an active third grade teacher and when DS was in first she'd comment on how he understood things better than some of her students (particularly in math).

That being said, yes the chess mentor may be good. I'll have to talk to him about it as I haven't really asked him how DS compares to other children he's worked with. We went to NYC a week ago and DS played chess against a couple of adults in central park and they remarked on his ability, so I would think the chess mentor would have similar things to say.

I'll probably submit two--the chess mentor and the nursery school teacher. She called us at the end of the 4yo class to tell use about DS trying to tell her about Fibonacci numbers (she didn't know what they were). So I think that would be a great story to include. Since child #2 is now in her class, this will be easy to arrange.

While I have some great things for a portfolio, I think we're going to wait until we have scores before submitting. It seems like the portfolio option is really for people who don't have the means to get tested. Our son has been tested (SBV) but he wouldn't have qualified. He had some achievement scores that may have qualified him for the bare minimum (*maybe*). But based on what the pysch told us (that the SBV is not a good measure for our particular child), so we've been waiting for him to be old enough to take something like the WISC. We should also be able to get more complete achievement data too.

That's our current thought right now.

JB