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Hi Carrie or anyone who can offer advice,

I am going to be giving my dd the 3rd grade CAT and there are some areas she is catching up in. She is still learning multiplication and is just now working in Rod and Staff 2 grammar book. I just don't really feel like she is ready to take the 3rd grade test, but we did the 2nd grade last year. She did well on the 2nd grade one, except for the math. Is there anything I can do to help improve her score? She will be taking it in the next few days and she is still learning her multiplication tables. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

Terri in WA

We were using the same material when we tested grade 3 and had the same problems with being a little behind. Your scores will be a little lower if they do not know their multiplication and if they can't identify nouns, verbs and adjectives (I think adjectives as well). My BTDT advice is not to worry. R&S catches up very quickly the next year on those things and kids learn at different paces. Remember standardized tests are based on PS philosophy not hs or R&S for that matter and there are different views about how fast to move in the early years. Just know where your scores are going to be low in the areas you kids might not quite have grasped yet and expect the test to confirm that. It won't be horribly low and it will give you an idea of what to make sure is grasped in the next year or so. It sounds like you already know those areas. It is not that you are not doing a great job or that the material is bad it is just a difference in pace and early learning. It will even out.

One word of advice. Try not to make yourself crazy trying to conform hs to ps ways. Know that in the end your kids will be so much better prepared for life and further education and that they are learning very important things at the pace that God is showing you not a board of people who do not share your values or goals. At this point I would just relax and take it. If they score lower and you are asked about it the reason is the textbook you have chosen moves slower in the beginning years to give a firm foundation then picks up quite a bit the next year. The test scores will be fine in the years to come. Just know that is will all even out and it is only a problem now if you are planning on graduating today and send them out in the world.

I love your response, water2wine! I have been a little frustrated getting started w/my dd in Bigger because placement for math and english is not an exact art. I decided to go with Preparing to Build 2 and Singapore Math 2a/2b. Right now as we are getting started it's WAY to easy so we are flying through the material in both. But there are concepts, especially in math, that she missed out on because of our public school's "new math" curriculum so she was moving into multiplication and didn't even know how to regroup. I felt like it was a good decision to back up and move quickly through what she does know already, and slow down as we get to new material. But there are moments when I get concerned that her peers might be moving faster than her.

Then again, the time she has in reading, history/geography, science, and especially Bible is WAY beyond what those kids get, so it's all relative. My dd even had a friend sleep over Friday night and we were watching a movie about 3 princesses (Cleopatra, Isabel of Spain, and Elizabeth I) and this little friend asked if I could homeschool her too! What a compliment! She just thought it was so cool that we were getting to learn about so many different and interesting things (specifically making the connection with Isabel of Spain and Columbus).

I wouldn't worry too much. Like W2W said we are testing them & we already know what they know! It is for the PS. They won't even bother you about it unless the student barely passes. My dd is 11 & I consider her 5th grade but she is doing 4th grade math. When I get the test I tell her don't worry about the division problems & I also help her study to the test.....I give it o her so I know what she needs to know.

just my 2 cents...

Terri,

There are standardized practice test books out there, but they are quite overwhelming and take a lot of time to complete. So, unless your child is taking the high school level SAT's, I don't find the test prep. books worth the amount of time they take to complete.

I couldn't agree more with the ladies on their wise advice on test results. I agree that most of us already know going in to the test which subject areas we haven't covered as thoroughly as we'd like to have covered them, and we can expect those areas to be reflected on the test results. The tests are designed to show us which areas are our kiddos strengths and which areas need more work. That is how I use our test results.

Sometimes we need a little push in a few areas to get us motivated to do a more thorough job teaching that area the following year. Sometimes it's just an area that particular child will struggle with life-long. I try to use the test results as a tool for me in my teaching and for me to also have a better assessment of my kiddo's strengths and weaknesses.


Blessings,
Carrie