Magic and Mayhem

We got our CAT results back for the girls today.  This was Anna’s first time with the test and Victoria’s third.  Overall, the results were wonderful.  Each girl had one area out of the ten where she scored below average, but the other nine were all well over average.

The basic results were…

Anna (2nd grade) 

• Overall scored in the 94th percentile compared with others in her grade, with a grade equivalent of grade 5.5 (5th month into 5th grade).
• Scored lowest in Language Mechanics (capitalization and puctuation) at 34%, grade 2.2.
• Scored highest in Comprehension (reading and answering questions about what she’s read) at 99% and grade 12.5!
• Scored above grade level in everything except language mechanics.  Breakdown– Word Analysis 85%, Vocabulary 94%, Comprehension- 99%, Spelling- 75%, LM- 34%, Mathematics Computation- 76%, Math Concepts- 96%, Science- 98%, Social Studies- 91%.

When she took the test, I noticed right away that she didn’t understand the LM section and so we started working on those rules since then.  I’ve been giving her fun little assignments in her homeschool book where she has to do things like underline all the words that should be capitalized and write the rest of the story using proper capitalization and punctuation, and she seems to really get it now.  I think she’ll be way up there next year.  The test was instrumental in showing us that subject needed to be covered.  It was also very validating because Anna does much less HS that “looks like” school and it obviously is working fine for her. 

Victoria (4th grade)

•  Overall scored in the 97th percentile, with a grade equivalent of grade 9.7.
• Lowest score was (no surprise) in math computation, which she despises.  She got a 34%, grade level of 4.1.  Interestingly, she scored high in the other math area (math concepts), which she really likes.  That one is geometry, word problems and more math applications.
• Highest scores were 99% in Vocabulary, Language Expression and Science, which were all at Post High School level!
• Scored above grade level in everything except Math Computation.  The areas were: Vocabulary- 99%, Comprehension- 97%, Spelling- 71%, Language Mechanics- 84%, Language Expression- 99%, Math Computation- 34%, Math Concepts- 86%, Study Skills- 91%, Science- 99%, Social Studies- 95%.

She scored somewhat low last year in spelling (still above average) and we worked that into HS here (just in fun ways, nothing formal) to try to get that up.  She did get it up so that score means a lot to her.  I think we will still focus on spelling and we are obviously doing more math computation stuff until that clicks for her.  We have been doing it lately and it is slowly making more sense to her.  Since she does so well on the rest of math, I feel pretty optimistic that once she masters this she will do really well in all different math areas.

Our state requires that we test annually but I do find it helpful, especially since we don’t follow a standard curriculum.  It’s good for worried grandparents and naysayers more than anything else.  It also reassures us that we’re not completely screwing up our kids!