Test Results

I really need to get back to posting more often. I got out of the habit, and now I tend to just not think about it. Even though I have plenty of things I could write about!

So, to start with tonight, I'll update you on my 1st grader's standardized test experience. We did the test over 3 days, doing 2-3 sections a day. It really didn't take too long, and my daughter ended up enjoying it too. She wants to do it again now! I made sure she knew that some of the questions were meant to be too hard for her to answer, and that it was mostly just for fun, for us to see how much ahead of 1st grade work she really was, and how much she had learned. It was interesting to me, too, to see what kinds of questions they asked, since that gave me an idea of what "standard" 1st grade students were supposed to know. The social studies and science questions were particularly interesting, since those topics are more random really, than the basics of math and reading. I knew that we hadn't covered exactly the same things as were on the test, so I wasn't worried about her scores in those areas. I know that we will get to everything in time, whether or not we do it in the same order as public schools.

The main area of interest to me, as far as her score goes, was reading. That is really the biggest thing for 1st grade, and Rebekah did excellent - better than I expected. The test placed her at a 2.8 grade level, which is the 8th month of 2nd grade (and the 90th percentile). Her vocabulary and listening scores were also extremely good. Her spelling, on the other hand.... Well, I already knew spelling was one of her weaker areas. We'll be trying a different approach for 2nd grade.

Her math was not as good as I'd like either, but it was obvious that her main difficulty was memorizing her basic addition facts. I have not pushed her with flash card drills nearly enough, since she protests them so much, and she didn't get enough fact review with her math curriculum this past year. Again, this is an area we'll be doing differently for 2nd grade.

For science, she did not score very high, and that bugs me a bit, since science is the one subject I like the best, but I know it's just because we covered different topics than were on the test. She left too many blank on those questions - not wrong answers, just unknown to her. Then for social studies, surprisingly, she scored the best of all the subjects, coming in with a grade equivalent of 3.2, and ranking at the 94th percentile.

So, overall, combining all the subjects, she ranked comfortably above average, with a grade equivalent of 2.1. Considering that she still had almost 2 months left of 1st grade material to cover when we took the test, I'm pleased with that!