So my daughter brings home her CogAT scores from her recent testing. And what is the CogAt, you ask?The CogAt stands for the Cognitive Abilities Test, which supposedly measures general thinking, and problem-solving skills that students have learned through in-school and out-of-school experiences. Supposedly, it indicates how well students can use these skills to solve verbal, quantitative and nonverbal problems.
Sounds like the old-fashioned IQ test to me.
The district uses these test scores to help identify those who may quality for advanced learner (AL) screening. Teachers can use the test results to help students learn more effectively.
Or can they?
I say that because when these score sheets were sent home about a week ago, they were sent home with a website to input the scores in order to download a profile of how your child did. And that was it.
So I did...and I feel I need several degrees to understand the results:
Students who obtain these profiles have generally below-average scores with a relatively higher score in quantitative reasoning and a relatively lower score in nonverbal reasoning. They have a median age stanine for the three CogAT batteries in the very low (stanine 1), low (stanine 2), or below-average (stanine 3) range. The majority of these students have a Composite score between the 1st and 25th percentiles of their age group. Although the overall level of reasoning abilities estimated by the median stanine provides useful information (see "General Instructional Suggestions for All Students with a Median Stanine of 1, 2, or 3 " below), generalizations must be qualified by the student's relatively higher score on the Quantitative Battery and relatively lower score on the Nonverbal Battery....
...Although their achievement levels are low, students with these profiles appear to have resources in quantitative reasoning that are most evident in, but go beyond, a facility in computation. For example, in the primary grades, these students show some advantage on the reading comprehension subtests. At the elementary and secondary levels, they show a similar small advantage on the reading comprehension, social studies, science, math concepts and math problem solving subtests. Because their relative strength in quantitative reasoning is broad based, these students tend to prefer learning rules to learning concepts, especially abstract concepts that cannot be clearly defined...
...Although these students can use general rules that guide their learning, the tendency to "do" rather than to reflect about "what to do" makes transfer difficult. Transfer is most easily achieved by practicing a skill in varied contexts. Reflection on "why" is sometimes best done after practice rather than before. As noted in the profile description, part of the difficulty these students experience in transferring knowledge and skills stems from their difficulty creating visual mental models or coordinating visual models and verbal or quantitative concepts. Encourage transfer by using drawings to summarize passages or problem statements. Then practice mapping verbal or quantitative statements onto the drawing. With young children, practice detecting inconsistencies between a story and a picture. Older students will do best when the model is either in view or involves envisioning a familiar scene or object. Memories for objects will be best if the student has been able to hold and manipulate the object repeatedly....
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Is it me? I'd love your thoughts on this.
E.C. :)
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4 comments:
Huh? speaking of transfers, I need one in Plain English.
Hey this sounds like fantastic information, what is the url for the cogat interpretation site? I would like very much to see it.
It sounds like they are saying most children with similar scores will: have good to very good abilities with computation, number sense, number operations, but relationships as well. This may be what gives the advantage in reading comprehension, science, etc. Problem solving will be strong but learning will be most easy 'hands-on', with some quick review of the entire problem and then maybe going back to break things down a bit at a time when going over entirely new concepts. (the why after the what).
Sounds very exciting good info to have!! You should certainly speak with your child's teacher to get more out of this information - they should absolutely have this information in order to do the best job for your child.
:)
Physical, tactile learners may have 'below average achievement' because teaching using the methods described in your quoted text is not how most classrooms are run (varied contexts, one-on-one work). Typically there is a monologue from the teacher and then everyone is supposed to do some independent or maybe group work. Some school districts are beginning to recognize this and expand the types of 'learning styles' they try work with in the classroom.
Fyi: Visual-spatial vs. auditory/sequential may be one way to look at the difference (your child may be more of a visual/spatial type of learner. There are other classifications of learning styles: visual, auditory, tactile (learns best through touch, such as using and abacus), kinesthetic - learns best through movement and may actually benefit from being allowed to move around a room, or at least 'wiggle' or tap their foot (that goes over really well in a classroom, I'm sure you'll agree). This last is only recently come into vogue as even a recognized learning style so it might sound very 'new age', but I think there is some merit to looking at these things.
Here's the link:
http://www.riverpub.com/products/cogAt/
There are practice tests for the CogAT exam that are available to parents - they can be found at: www.mercerpublishing.com/CogAT.html
The CogAT exam is intended to measure how your child solves problems when information is new to them so the questions on the exam are ones your child has probably not seen before - like analogies. If those test areas are not well explained on exam day, your child can miss entire sections.
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