If you submitted work samples and got into AAP, can you share what you submitted?

[Anonymous]

My child is an advanced reader, great storyteller, loves to dance, sing and perform. None of these things she does well can I submit on a piece of paper. She likes puzzles and legos and we were told not to submit these. She is also a great speller and good at math but nothing that is outside of the box thinking in math. She did do well on her NNAT (140), VALLS (719) and math iready (452) and reading iready (560 in first grade). We did not get cogat score back.

If you have a child who is in AAP and you submitted work samples, could you please share what you submitted?

[Anonymous]

If you search this forum there are many, many threads on this topic.

[Anonymous]

If she’s a great storyteller or performer, can she write and/or illustrate an original text?

I submitted pictures of a book my kid wrote as one of the things.

[Anonymous]

First kid we didn’t submit any samples at all. Second kid, we submitted 1 writing and 1 math. Writing was just the kid’s description of an animal but details like the animals features, food source, life cycle, and habitat. It was a real animal and the impressive thing for us personally was that it was done purely from memory. Math was a bit more “advanced “ showing kid’s understanding of materials taught in class and applied it to more challenging problems (e.g., learned addition of 2 digit numbers in school but use it for 3 or 4 digit numbers at home)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:First kid we didn’t submit any samples at all. Second kid, we submitted 1 writing and 1 math. Writing was just the kid’s description of an animal but details like the animals features, food source, life cycle, and habitat. It was a real animal and the impressive thing for us personally was that it was done purely from memory. Math was a bit more “advanced “ showing kid’s understanding of materials taught in class and applied it to more challenging problems (e.g., learned addition of 2 digit numbers in school but use it for 3 or 4 digit numbers at home)

Forgot to say they were both in pool with great GBRS from their teachers which I believe is key

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child is an advanced reader, great storyteller, loves to dance, sing and perform. None of these things she does well can I submit on a piece of paper. She likes puzzles and legos and we were told not to submit these. She is also a great speller and good at math but nothing that is outside of the box thinking in math. She did do well on her NNAT (140), VALLS (719) and math iready (452) and reading iready (560 in first grade). We did not get cogat score back.

If you have a child who is in AAP and you submitted work samples, could you please share what you submitted?

It doesn't make sense to ask for this as you don't know if the child was admitted because of or despite the work samples.

[Anonymous]

Two kids: pictures of a board game my older child made at home during the pandemic with a paragraph they wrote describing rules along with a poem they wrote in school that was kinda Shel Silverstein like, second child I sent a poem they wrote about volcanos in class and another silly poem they wrote about lions, also an exercise they'd done with their AART that was "creative math" something like 5 fingers plus 5 fingers equals two hands and some stuff they'd built with cardboard boxes, along with description of why they'd built it the way they did.

[Anonymous]

DC was avidly into Prodigy game at the time. Parent Interface had numerous graphical representations of child's progress; Questions answered, % correct, types of curriculum, and progress towards completing grade materials. We took these snippets for one page to show math proficiency (performing well into 4th grade materials).

DC also was asked to write a multi-page paper, which we shrunk and fit only 1 page describing why he liked the game. It turned out to be more along the lines of what motivates my child (competition), which we also leaned into in the parent write-up, emphasizing need for peers.

We thought our case was borderline and assumed he'd be recommended for math only. Test scores (134 but predominantly quantitative strength), and 3s in writing (89% iReady)/4s in Math(99% iReady).

I'd like to think the discussion on peers and competition likely swayed the review committee members, as the school samples and GBRS were underwhelming.

[Anonymous]

Stories with advanced vocab

A science journal which I thought nothing of but the teacher explained background about it that made it stand out

A math paper that was marked wrong but when you looked at it for more than a second, you understood what the kid did. The kid was right and showed kid was an out of the box thinker.

A note my kid passed me while I was on the phone.

[Anonymous]

Writing: exerpt from his book of planets, 1 drawing page (sun and planets as book cover) and two writing pages (about earth and another planet I can't remember) condensed into one PDF page. On the pdf page I explained this is excerpt from his book of planets.

Math: two math puzzles condensed into one page. One puzzle is "white house is next to green house, pink house is not next to white house, green house is .... where are all the houses".

Another puzzle is "an elephant balance out 3 horses, one tiger balance out 3 dogs, 2 tigers balance out one horse. how many dogs balance out an elephant." (not the actual puzzle, the numbers and animal names are different, I am just paraphrasing. )

The puzzles are presented with intermediate steps shown, one puzzle with bad handwriting and eraser marks etc I had to type up his solution on one corner for clear viewing, of course I didn't change any words, merely typed up neatly.

We did probably 5 math problems and 2-3 writing samples and decided what ultimately to use. Submitted referral early and AART provided feedback on how many pages is allowed to condense.

[Anonymous]

PP - The puzzles seems to be great work samples . May I know where you got these puzzles from ? . Any website or books ?.

[Anonymous]

The school will also submit work samples. Our school had the kids do a math problem. My kid said they were asked to "show their thinking" and that there were lots of answers that could be right.

That math iReady isn't very strong, sorry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP - The puzzles seems to be great work samples . May I know where you got these puzzles from ? . Any website or books ?.

PP: the white house pink house was actually from the teacher's weekly newsletter, it usually have some weekend activity.

The zoo animal puzzle was from googling "math competition 2nd grade". I know people here freak out when I mention "math competition for second grade", my kid was not doing it. I just browsed the questions online and pick an appropriate ones. I tried probably 4-5 and picked the best sample.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The school will also submit work samples. Our school had the kids do a math problem. My kid said they were asked to "show their thinking" and that there were lots of answers that could be right.

That math iReady isn't very strong, sorry.

That is 98th percentile math.

[Anonymous]

For math puzzles check NRICH Maths out of the UK.