Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Explore test results for February

Has anyone got theirs yet?

Okay, I was kind of grouchy when I saw the title to this thinking that others were getting these in before we did! No, we haven't gotten dd's yet. I expect them to be here next week or at least I hope that they will be.

We're still waiting, too.

Ours came today!!!

Ours came today too!

I just checked and ours hasn't come yet. We will wait for another week or so. Glad to know that they have started sending the result.

Thanks

We got ours yesterday too. Given the number of questions DD10 (5th grade) had told me that she left blank in each section, I was prepared for a lot of much lower scores (she never got to, and therefore left completely blank, the last 5 in math, 5 or 6 in english and--she thinks--7 in science. I thought she had said 9 in science, but that seems unlikely...). Her reading she finished, but it did go down a bit. She was close to ceiling last year though, so I knew that that was a possibility.

This has been a valuable experience for her. It's clear that the test taking skills are still an issue for her, so we'll look at doing this again. She is in general a slow worker--I've never seen her able to rush through something, even when she is motivated by what she gets to do next. Not surprisingly, time management is a major skill she still needs to acquire, as is learning to work differently than IRL. For instance, she told me that she rechecked each problem as she went, rather than waiting and re-checking at the end. Also, she didn't want to use her calculator if she thought she could figure it out on her own. She is apparently quite accurate, since she didn't get to the last five problems and still came out with an 18 in math, but if she was using recommended test taking strategies, it is likely that that score would have been higher.

The biggest surprise to me has been her difficulty with the science part. She doesn't love science, but she is such a strong reader, that it surprised me that she had so much difficulty with it and had so many questions she never even got to read. It ended up being her lowest score and, looking at my NUMATS from last year, the only one in which she wasn't well above the mean in her grade-level group (she is actually slightly below the mean for fifth graders). That makes me curious about the science test. For the many of you who had DCs with high scores on science, would you say that it is a topic they generally enjoy? Are they big non-fiction readers? I'm also wondering if they're in science programs )at home or school) that consist of a few topics explored in depth, or in programs with a lot of breadth? (I'm a bit of an assessment junkie I always want to understand what kind of skills/talents a test actually draws upon).

If I recall correctly from the practice book, the science seemed more reasoning problems. It didn't depend on prior scientific knowledge. I think it would require that one be able to read quickly and assimilate information and draw conclusions quickly. But then again, we are a science family so what seems obvious to me, is probably not to others.

My DS sounds similar to your DD as far as testing. I'm not holding out any hopes for high scores on the Explore but it was a good, positive experience for him. He too would rather work it out in his head than have to pick up a pencil but he'd be faster if he did it on paper w/ fewer mistakes. He's also perfectionistic about math (I think from never being challenged in school and never getting anything wrong - now even w/ a year of HSing under his belt, if he misses a problem he shuts down to that topic).

Anyone else still waiting for February results?

My ds9 (fourth grade) took it for the first time and it definitey corresponded to what I would have expected. His scores were:
Composite 19
English 17
Math 19
Reading 17
Science 21
I don't really know what you'd consider "high" on the Science, but for us, I thought 21 was high-especially given that we did no prep, do no enrichment, etc. However, ds loves science. He says he wants to be a biologist. His oldest sister, my dd19, is a junior in college majoring in Biology. They talk sometimes (her college is close, although she lives there)and he loves to discuss biology things. But, he doesn't really read about science- he prefers fiction.
I'm not surprised that reading is his lowest. He has high verbal scores and had a very high lexile reading level, but he's much better with factual or literal texts. His pullout gifted program does a lot of Junior-Great-Books-style interpretive questions and the like, and that's a challenge for him. I don't think his school has a particularly strong English program (still more reading as opposed to learning grammar, etc) so I would expect that to be lower. So, I think that the science part was high because it matched his interest in science, his high reading level and his general intelligence, but didn't require the nuanced interpretations that are hard for him.
I think that it helped that he went relatively fast. I was worried because we hadn't really prepped at all and he didn't want to wear a watch (I pulled out the ticket that morning and realized that he didn't have one and offered him mine, lol) but he said that he thinks he finished them all. However, he said science was close.
We haven't done any enrichment in math, but he does do accelerated math (one year ahead). I'm sure that there were things he hadn't been exposed to, but he seeemed happy when he finished the test.
The funny thing was, last year he scored in the 75%-ile on the 3rd grade math ISAT. I wasn't concered since he was already in 4th grade math (acceleration starts grade 3 here) and has always found it very easy, but it's kind of funny that he scored 75%-ile against kids a year behind him in math, and then 89th%-ile against 8th graders.
When he came out of the ISATs he said, "boring!!" but when he came out of the EXPLORE test he said, "I liked it; it was fun."

It was a good experience for us overall, and even though he didn't score super highly, he certainly did well enough for me to feel good about where he's at and realize that enrichment would be a good thing for him!

He would LOVE to take the Biology class offered this summer at CTD (we live about an hour away) but with one in college, one a rising college Freshman and another brother who also needs camps this summer, it's hard to justify over $1,000. Sigh...

(I hope it's okay for non-Davidson people to post here. I've been reading it since we thought about doing Explore and it's really informative!)

Theresa