Why Prepare Your Child for a Test to Get Into a Gifted Program?

posted by Karen Quinn, The Testing Mom - March 22nd, 2016

If the test is to get your child into a gifted program, do you really want to take the chance that there’s something getting in the way of her testing well and you don’t know about it?

Prepare Your Child

We know that the test itself can impact whether or not a child is considered gifted by a school, and there are other factors that can make a difference as well. Here are 4 other things we’ve observed at www.TestingMom.com that get in the way of young kids testing well, before the child has had some practice:

• Inexperience with a Test: Very young kids have never seen a test question before and don’t understand that they have to listen to the question, that each picture in a box represents an answer and only one of them is right and they have to pick that right answer.  Often they will pick the first answer that seems correct to them or they will choose the answer associated with the most colorful or attractive picture.

• Inability to focus: Testing takes 30 minutes to an hour or so – some kids need to build up test stamina before they can sit still for a test.  This can be built up over time by starting with practice for as long as your child can focus.  If that is just 10 minutes, that’s fine.  The next time you practice, try for 13 minutes, then 17 minutes, then 20 minutes, and so on.  Soon your child will be able to focus for 30 minutes – 1 hour, the length of most tests.

• Bad habits (at every age): The child will say, “I don’t know” instead of making her best guess.  Or, the child will answer in 1 or two words when more extensive answers will earn them more points.  Or the child wants to answer as fast as possible and doesn’t consider all the options – until you’ve practiced with your child, you don’t know their bad habits and you can’t help fix them.

• Lack of underlying knowledge: Until you’ve practiced with your child, you don’t know what your child doesn’t know. For example, in NY, kids must take the verbal OLSAT – one subtest is made up of verbal math problems.  Sometimes parents discover that their child can’t count, or can’t do simple addition or subtraction – practice will uncover those places where work needs to be done.

Think about your own experience with testing.  Didn’t you always do better when you had studied and were familiar with what would be asked?

The same is true for your child, no matter what his age.