Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Tested, now what?

My 7 year old was tested using CogAT and scored 99 percentile in Quant, 99 percentile in non-verbal and 84 in verbal. We were a bit stunned as we thought she would only test high in verbal. So, now what? I've read copious amounts about gifted kids and I know there are many schools of thought on approach for education. Frankly, I'm a bit paralyzed by this as she is a happy kid and I don't want to send her down the wrong path. I'm hoping that the group can provide some recommendations on great books or websites that can provide some point of views that will be helpful for us while thinking through our options.

Appreciate any suggestions. Thanks!

If you haven't already found Hoagies Gifted that's your first stop for browsing. What else you need will depend on what your concerns are, if any. You don't have to fix anything that isn't broken, and although we tend to spend most of our time talking about problems here, for obvious reasons, there are children with scores like your DD who don't need any intervention. It's great that she is happy, obviously. You probably should also ask yourself whether she's happily learning things at school, or being bored but having the disposition to cope with it without it making her miserable. If the former, congrats, you don't have a problem, although you should keep watching in case underchallenge becomes a problem later. If the latter, you may have a difficult situation as you'll have to weigh the importance to her development of learning to deal with challenges against the undesirability of rocking a boat in which she's happy. One option there is to make sure she has an extracurricular challenge of some kind - music, a language, whatever she's interested in.

I'd like to echo ColinsMum's reply. It really depends on the child AND the school environment. I have an 11yo dd who has presented as pg since she started reading around her 2nd birthday. She took the Explore test last year through NUMATS and was awarded a medal due to her high score for her grade. Yet she is in 5th grade, has never been grade accelerated, and is ecstatically happy at her neighborhood public school. It is a bit of a balancing act, and has required effort and patience on our part to cultivate a good working relationship (a key factor) with an idiosyncratic school, and we combine that with extracurriculars.

She receives in-class differentiation in math (if I understand, she'll have completed the middle school math standards by the time she starts middle school next year - currently working on solving simultaneous equations). While we expect the school to challenge her and we expect her to work at the level she is capable of, we also work together with the school to shelter her from undue pressure and high expectations that can follow high test scores. So dd knows she is a good student, has the NUMATS medal on her bulletin board, but it doesn't feel like a big deal to her - it in no way defines who she is. She has many interests, and is more likely to spend a Saturday creating paper dolls, etc. than doing something academic.

I think it is very important for all kids to be in a supportive learning environment where they learn how to tackle the unknown, but beyond that, we've had success (so far....) with letting our happy kids be.