Preparing Students for CTYI Talent Search

lauratkd

Hi all

I am a teacher and have only just come across CTYI and am planning on sending a couple of students in my school to do the Talent Search tests. I have never been involved in this before and cannot find a whole lot of information on the CTYI website so I am just wondering if any of you have advice for me in preparing students...

Is there anything they should be doing before the tests or is it just down to raw intelligence?

Thanks

P.S. Enjoyed reading the "What is CTYI" post and will be using some of it to sell the idea to some of my students

P.P.S. I did my Dip in the UK but my sister just finished hers here and there was not one mention of teaching "Gifted and Talented students" or CTYI or anything like it in her Dip while there were plenty of UK refenerences in mine. A serious problem imo. Do the Irish Dip people not think there is that callibre of student here?!

Haw

CTYI alumnus here!

It's changed since I did it (we used to have to do the SAT rather than PSAT), but I don't think there's really any preparation needed. I did the test half way through first year without any prep other than having the triangles in the booklet I was sent explained to me. Others will have varying opinions, but I wouldn't worry about preparation.

And regarding the PPS, urgh, tell me about it. It's quite the pet peeve of mine. Since 'gifted' students aren't seen as special needs, there's no support system - or teacher training - in place to help. Despite the fact that if you're at an extreme, you're at an extreme, and should be able to avail of some sort of support if you choose. But that's a rant for another day...

lauratkd

I hear you Haw!! Doing a course in Teaching Gifted and Talented myself at the minute so just trying to get some ideas of things we could be doing in school and introduing CTYI is one the first thing I've come across. Hopefully I'll have many more ideas. Any of yours would be great too

Mr. Presentable

My child is in the CTYI programme. We made no preparations for it other than what is on their website - we wanted her in on raw talent rather than training.

I agree with Haw re the special needs of some children not being catered for -I had that particular chat with the teacher this morning during the P/T meeting.

miss no stars

A friend of mine really wanted to go to it and took all the prep tests and read loads of books on studying for SATs etc etc (she took it 2 years after me, in 2004). She was pretty bright, got something like 560 points in the leaving cert but missed out by a mile. On the other hand, I did no prep, didn't study in school but sailed in. If they have the intelligence, they have it. The only thing would be to explain slopes and some other basic trig stuff if they haven't covered it in class yet.

as for the PPS

I hear ya. Boy do I hear ya. I'm sure you're perfectly aware that a lot of CTYIers are terrible underachievers... Funny that...

vektarman

miss no stars wrote: »

I hear ya. Boy do I hear ya. I'm sure you're perfectly aware that a lot of CTYIers are terrible underachievers... Funny that...

That's quite a surprise. do you have statistics to back up this statement?

miss no stars

No, sorry. I read it in a journal article ages ago and damned if I'm going back and finding it. On the other hand, I can give anecdotal evidence. Myself and all but one of my friends from CTYI got leaving cert results that didn't even fall into the "high points" category. Problem seems to disappear in third level though, as most of us rank quite highly in our respective classes.

claire h

Generally speaking there's usually a fair percentage of gifted & talented students who are underachievers, it's not just a CTYI/Irish thing. Most school systems cater for the average, and do a lot of repetition stuff as part of that... there are a whole lot of bored/underachieving gifted kids around the place.

Re: the test - students used to, don't know if this is still the case, be sent out a practice test. Most of the former CTYI students I know didn't take the practice test, and like others, I can throw out a handful of anecdotes about people who did practice and didn't get in, but nevertheless did well on tests like the Leaving Cert, because it's a different sort of thing being tested. Probably the best way to prepare students for it is to let them see the kinds of questions that will be asked, get used to the phrasing, layout etc, get used to the idea that it's not the kind of test they're used to, explain the scoring system, etc. Also, and I'm sure you've thought about this already, but think carefully about who you'll recommend the test to (as well as making the information available generally so that other students can choose to take it) - performance in school isn't always indicative of aptitude.

Zofan

Hi I was at CTYI last year and it's my opinion that people shouldn't be prepared for the test AT ALL because it ruins the whole aim of it. The only thing that should be done is to explain that it's a timed, multiple-choice format and that you lose marks for a wrong answer.

Also congratulations to you for getting your students involved - I only got involved because my mom heard about it, and there are so many students in my school who should be in a Gifted Education programme. The more it is done through schools the better; unfortunately it is very expensive at the moment but the more teachers support it the more the government will and hopefully it will become more universally accessible.

BTW this Irish Times Article is a bit old but mentions a report on the idea of gifted underachievers
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2009/0311/1224242651684.html

Also most sources that talk about gifted children reference underachieving - a lot of it, I think, comes from their being bored with whatever is being done in class that is way below their intelligence!

Look at the CTYI website for more information and depending on how old your students are they might like to take a look at the CTYI wiki, run by the students themselves...mostly those of us who are about 15/16 though, so it might be a bit intimidating for 13 year olds. www.talesofthequad.com