[mum850]

I am going to give you a testing example!
My kids go to a school that is great for gifted kids, my kids have all tested gifted.
The school decided to do a screening test, the Raven's, to see make sure they are picking up all the gifted kids, not just those with noisy parents. (That's my interpretation LOL)
A number of DDs friends were tested too.
DD had previously scored at 98th centile and then refused to particulate further in that test, when she was young. So I had evidence to say she was at least 98th. She is working 2 grades ahead at school in maths/literacy .
Test result? 50th centile. Bang on average. If it had been (say) 80th I would have been disappointed, but 50th was clearly a result that was not right.
(My friends' kids all seemed to get 95th centile. Doh!!!)
I had to get DD3 tested anyway for early entry to school so got DD2 tested formally again too.
She scored at 99.5th, but the funny thing was, in the Raven's section, she did outrageously well, at adult levels, BUT ONLY ON THE HARD ONES, SHE GOT THE EASY ONES WRONG. So that was why she did poorly on the one she had at school ( said the ed psych)

So that's a great example of when the school testing said, not gifted, not even high, but the outside/expert testing said, wow that was amazing and a really high area.

[MammaBee81]

I'm going to go in a slightly different direction - I would suggest spending less time imparting advanced knowledge, and more time teaching her how to teach herself new things (whether from the textbook or other problem solving activities). This will be far more invaluable in the long run than knowing "stuff" from 2 grades up.

It really pains me to see people who can do well in a test try to apply their knowledge to real life problems. Or when they have a problem they've never seen before, they don't even know where to begin to find or formulate the answer.

I'd rather my children (when they get here - half way through creating my first!) test poorly as long as they can think for themselves.

I say that as a G&T person who has been that way my whole life both because of a natural aptitude, and (I think more importantly) because my dear father was able to teach me how to find the answers myself from a very early age. At school, I would also be able to answer the harder questions better than I could answer the easier questions - because the harder ones interested me more (since they were challenging), so I spent more time on getting it right. The easier questions didn't interest me as much, and, while I knew HOW to answer them, I'd make silly errors as I wasn't paying as much attention to it.

One more thing - bless you for being so interested in your children's education. It's really lovely to see. I don't think enough parents are willing to put in the extra time to help their kids at home...

[charlottesmum04]

Howdo thank you!! that makes perfect sense. Now i just have to find out the grade 5 curriculum and work out how to do that.

[quote name='MammaBee81' date='22/12/2012, 08:11 PM' post='15178560

One more thing - bless you for being so interested in your children's education. It's really lovely to see. I don't think enough parents are willing to put in the extra time to help their kids at home...
[/quote]

MammaBee thank you. I think it actually started because of DS's II. We have been so used to working on school work outside of school its a natural progression to just keep doing it. Combined with DH 1 year off a teaching degree (high school science and maths teaching) and myself working in early childhood and we both share a love of lifelong learning. I am very thankful fr teachers though. I admit my failings in not being able to do the job they do.