Our 5yr old son's teacher has told us that our son is gifted and that he would not need or couldn't be tested until he was a bit older but said there could be some other tests we could do in the meantime to discover his strengths and weakness (her work with gifted children has mostly been in Aussie I think and she is not sure yet how the NZ tests etc work). Can anyone tell us what tests are avaiable so we can discover a bit more about him. I am mostly concerned with social behaviour as he doesn't make many friends or keep the friends he makes. Many thanks
Just read your message and feel exactly the same way about our 5 year old son.
His teacher has told us how gifted he is and we went to see about "One Day school" but feel a day out of the class would make him "different" as his social behaviour is the problem. It's like the other kids aren't at his level and he finds it hard to relate to them.
I would like to know also if anyone else has had the same problem and could shed some light!
We got a SPELD assessment. It was very helpful. I would recommend it. Don't worry about your child appearing to be singled out in some way. They already are - and they are already aware of it. Count on it.
Many GT kids develop their social skills more easily when they have the chance to work with other GT kids for extended periods of time. All three of mine attended a one day programme for most of their primary years and it actually helped with their social skills. There was no detrimental effect on their achievement at school either, even though they were out of the regular classroom for 20% of each year. They have all done very well at secondary school.
Regarding tests, children can be assessed by an educational psychologist from 4 onwards, so I'm not sure why the teacher says your son is too young to be assessed. Tests available include the Woodcock-Johnson III, the WISC and the Stanford Binet - there are others, but those are the ones I can recall off the top of my head. The ed psych would choose the most appropriate one for your child's age. Janet is right - GT kids already know they are different, and it usually helps them to know how they are different.
Hi, we just had out just turned 6 son assessed at the ODS in Owairaka, he's been having social interaction and behaviour difficulties at school as he is in a Yr1/2 classroom but doing Yr4/5 work and has difficulty interacting with the children in his class (who are all well below the National Standard aswell), he starts at the ODS on Monday and the people there said that it helps to 'normalise' them re social behaviour as they get to spend time with other children who are like them and so will likely help to improve their behaviour.
