Typically, a gifted test is administered to children who are at least 8 years of age and in Grade 3 (or older) because this is now what school boards are requiring. Should your child be younger, we will discuss details with you beforehand. Your child will be working one-on-one with a practitioner for about 1 to 1.5 hours.  You will have an opportunity to speak to the examiner about your child. Sometimes, we need to supplement our assessment with additional tests. We do our best to make the testing as engaging and as interactive as possible as most of our tests are administered via iPad and we offer prizes (regardless of outcome) to our clients.

Important Points Regarding a Gifted Test

• You should not tell your child that they are attending our office for “gifted testing”.  Only 2% of children actually test within what is normally referred to as “gifted limits.” We don’t want children to feel as if they have “failed” the gifted test because they don’t meet the requirements.  Instead, replace “gifted testing” with an explanation like, “We are going to see how you learn and to help figure out ways to make school more interesting.”  It gets especially complicated if your child does not meet the gifted cut-off especially if they have a sibling who has met the cut-off.
• Please do NOT tell your child they will get a prize if they are gifted as this sets unreasonable expectations and pressure on your child.
• Please do NOT get coaching for this gifted screening. Our assessors are trained to detect children who are coached and must report this, especially, if there is a suspicion that the child has had prior access to the materials which are bound by copyright laws.  Also, we will have to re-administer the tests with less popular tools, which may add to your costs.
• If your child has been through gifted testing or other psychological testing in the past, we please ask that you disclose this to us and bring copies of previous reports, if possible. We strive to get the most accurate results and school boards will not honour test findings that are repeated too soon.   Knowing which test(s) were previously administered will aid us in finding an appropriate alternative to help attain the information that will be acceptable to the school district and this will not bias us in any way. We stress that if you do not disclose any previous testing to us prior to commencing the screening, we will not be held accountable if our results are deemed null and void.

Once the gifted testing is completed, it takes approximately one week for you to receive the report.  The practitioner may contact you earlier and notify you of the results in advance.

Summary

We would like to reiterate that we see many children who are incredibly bright but only a very small percentage of the population is considered gifted. Nonetheless, the results of the gifted testing still can be very meaningful as these can give you a “snapshot” of your child’s learning profile.  Moreover, even if your child does not qualify, it is important that they be provided with opportunities to be stimulated. Speaking with their teacher(s) may help you acquire advice/direction for opportunities to be able to give them an outlet for their native abilities. Additionally, you may wish to consider extra-curricular programming that will provide your child opportunities to foster their strengths and interests.

We would also like to take a moment to highlight that this type of testing can uncover other important findings. More specifically, an assessment can reveal an unevenness in a child’s learning profile or identify weaknesses in certain areas that were unexpected. Should we see any “red flags”, we will identify them and advise you of the options you may wish to consider. From there, we leave it at your discretion to consider investigating this further.