Gifted and Talented Report

In the last newsletter, I wrote about the tests we use to determine a student’s academic ability and potential. In this article, I would like to expand on this and explain in more detail the use of Allwell data. The Allwell Test of Ability has the following components to the assessment:

• General reasoning
• Verbal reasoning
• Non-verbal reasoning
• Mathematics
• Reading comprehension
• Spelling
• Writing

Most of these components are self-explanatory, but what about verbal and non-verbal reasoning?

Verbal reasoning is the ability to comprehend and reason using concepts expressed through words. A verbal reasoning test is a form of aptitude test used to find out how well a candidate can assess verbal logic, and how successfully they can extract the correct meaning from complex written information.

Verbal Reasoning Example 

Even though the minimum age for obtaining a driving license has increased in recent years, a substantial increase in car sales over the corresponding years has resulted in a staggering rise in fatal car accident numbers. As the latest figures show, fatal car accidents are especially prevalent among young drivers who have less than five years of driving experience. Last winter 50 per cent of all fatal road accidents involved drivers with up to five years of driving experience and an additional 15 per cent were drivers who had between six to eight years of experience. The interim figures of the current year show that the massive advertisement campaign “fighting accidents” has resulted in some improvements but the truth is that the number of younger drivers involved in fatal accidents is intolerably high.

Question: The considerable increase in car sales is the reason behind the sharp increase in fatal car accidents.

• True
• False
• Cannot Say

Non-verbal reasoning involves the ability to understand and analyse visual information and solve problems using visual reasoning. For example: identifying relationships, similarities and differences between shapes and patterns, recognizing visual sequences and relationships between objects, and remembering these.

Non Verbal Reasoning Example

Identify the odd one out in the sequence:

Following the assessment, a stanine score is given. Stanine is short for ‘standard nine’.

A stanine score ranges from a low of 1 to a high of 9.

1, 2, or 3 is below average.

4, 5  or 6 is average.

7, 8, or 9 is above average.

Here is an example of a student’s performance stanines:

Using this data we can then flexibly group our students based on strengths and abilities. The photos below show the flexible groupings happening in 7 Maths during their Maths Enrichment Stations.

My thanks to our Instructional leader Ms Jenny Dove for her resources.

This article on College life meets The Archbishop’s Charter for Catholic Schools – Charter #2 & #6