ReadingMama1214 Posted September 30, 2017 Share Posted September 30, 2017 DD is 5.5 and attends K at an Immersion School. Her school sent home a note that they would be administering the NNAT in October. One mom casually asked if we would be doing any prep with DD for this. I can't imagine prepping for an assessment test. It seems a bit ludicrous to prep for a test like this. Do people regularly do that? I was wondering what the test is like and if I should prep DD by explaining what the test process will be like. She doesn't tend to test well. Assessments seem to throw her off and confuse her. I'm not worried about the results. We chose an immersion school to challenge her and to avoid having to differentiate. I was surprised the school even would do such testing school wide. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arcadia Posted September 30, 2017 Share Posted September 30, 2017 People do prep their kids for the NNAT. Some schools do the test school wide to prevent people yelling discrimination. New York apparently use NNAT and OLSAT for entry into their kindergarten gifted programs so parents prep their kids. Critical thinking press has a test prep bundle so you guess test prep is good business. https://www.criticalthinking.com/gr-k-1-test-prep-bundle-nnat.html Link to a presentation by a school district with some examples http://oada.dadeschools.net/TestChairInfo/33NNAT-DescriptionofTest.pps This link is put up by a test prep company and also has examples https://m.testprep-online.com/images/NNAT/free_test_pdf/NNAT_Sample_A_Final_Product.pdf While I don’t prep my kids for screening tests, I can understand why other parents do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReadingMama1214 Posted September 30, 2017 Author Share Posted September 30, 2017 People do prep their kids for the NNAT. Some schools do the test school wide to prevent people yelling discrimination. New York apparently use NNAT and OLSAT for entry into their kindergarten gifted programs so parents prep their kids. Critical thinking press has a test prep bundle so you guess test prep is good business. https://www.criticalthinking.com/gr-k-1-test-prep-bundle-nnat.html Link to a presentation by a school district with some examples http://oada.dadeschools.net/TestChairInfo/33NNAT-DescriptionofTest.pps This link is put up by a test prep company and also has examples https://m.testprep-online.com/images/NNAT/free_test_pdf/NNAT_Sample_A_Final_Product.pdf While I don’t prep my kids for screening tests, I can understand why other parents do. It seems that her school does a school-wide test to determine eligibility for GATE programs. I assume that since it is an immersion school it may be a bit trickier for teachers to accurately identify students who may be gifted/talented. After looking at the questions, I wonder if showing her the types of questions would help easer her. She has not done well on assessments in the past and seems to get freaked out by the process of being quizzed and asked to demonstrate skills. She would freeze up on a phonics assessment and not do as well even though she had a solid phonics foundation and knew the material. So part of me wonders if showing some samples would ease any testing anxiety. I don't want to prep her for the test since I don't see how that could benefit her in the long-run. I don't really want to give her an unfair leg up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arcadia Posted September 30, 2017 Share Posted September 30, 2017 By discrimination I meant if testing was by teacher recommendations instead of school wide, some parents are going to be very unhappy their kids were not tested and it had happened at the school down the road from me. Did the school give any sample questions or examples to the parents? On one hand I understand test anxiety and usually seeing test examples do help. On the other hand if it is a one to one test and the tester ask if she has seen this kind of questions before, then it gets awkward if your daughter says she had but school had not provided samples. I am assuming it is likely a group administered test though unless it is a really small school. My district ran a group test for 2nd graders followed by a one to one test when they had the GATE program. It was teacher recommendations so not school wide. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReadingMama1214 Posted September 30, 2017 Author Share Posted September 30, 2017 By discrimination I meant if testing was by teacher recommendations instead of school wide, some parents are going to be very unhappy their kids were not tested and it had happened at the school down the road from me. Did the school give any sample questions or examples to the parents? On one hand I understand test anxiety and usually seeing test examples do help. On the other hand if it is a one to one test and the tester ask if she has seen this kind of questions before, then it gets awkward if your daughter says she had but school had not provided samples. I am assuming it is likely a group administered test though unless it is a really small school. My district ran a group test for 2nd graders followed by a one to one test when they had the GATE program. It was teacher recommendations so not school wide. The school didn't give samples, but it did give a handout about the NNAT and what the test entails. It wasn't clear if it was one on one or in a group setting. It also didn't give testing days just stated it would be occurring sometime in October. There are about 350 kids in her school. So I imagine it's group and not 1-:1 unless it's a pull out and they're taking the entire month to do it. DD Did do testing for advanced K entrance (not gifted and talented, purely skill based) so she may have seen some similar Qs but not sure. She's also done logic workbooks and I know I've seen similar questions in those. The kind of fill in the missing piece type question I do think her school does it this way to not discriminate like you said and to be able to identify those who are not as clearly gifted as others. I've known a few kids who didn't really show their true ability and were identified as gifted to their parents surprise. I honestly thinks dd is just bright and a good student. To me gifted is a completely different level of thinking and reasoning. So while DD reads and draws/writes rather advanced, I don't see the level of thinking I associate with gifted. The emotional traits, yes, but the reasoning one not so much haha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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