On The Ball! Testing Has Begun

Talk about being on the ball! This evening, on the way home from an evening out with the family for Dad's birthday, J suddenly remembered that he "got to leave class and go to a nice lady's office, and she tested me!"

During the drive home, and then when we got in the house, he described the test. He built patterns with blocks to match the pictures she gave him to look at. He had to find matching symbols in a set. She asked him some vocabulary words (he thinks he remembers the word "vocabulary" being one of the vocabulary words). And there were grouping questions, where he had to look at four pictures and group two of them together. He drew out a sample question, with a rake, a bucket, a shovel, and a car. He grouped the rake and the shovel, because they're both garden tools. Dad suggested that a bucket and a shovel would work together, too, but J just didn't think that was a very good answer :)

J told us that the test was for all kids, from his age all the way up to high school. He seemed to feel very cool taking the same test that really big kids take. I hadn't really understood what the Challenge Facilitator had meant when she told me the same information yesterday, but now I believe it means that everyone starts at the beginning, and as the questions grow progressively more difficult, the child won't be able to answer them, and that is the child's level of ability. I like this idea, because it eliminates hitting a ceiling. J couldn't possibly max out a high school curriculum the way he maxed out his kindergarten grammar program.

He also reported that this "nice lady" thought it would maybe take more than one day to finish the tests, but after a break, he finished the whole thing! That was an hour and a half of testing he did, according to the estimate the psychologist gave me at the IEP.


I am amused at how quickly the psychologist got to testing J. It seems that she was being completely truthful when she said that she was excited to test him, because "he sounds fun." But even so, at the IEP, she thought it would be next week at the earliest.

From J's very thorough and accurate description of the test, Dad thinks that he probably did quite well on it. J said it was hard sometimes, but pretty fun, especially the blocks.

I can't wait to hear about the academic testing next week!