If your fourth grader scored more than 280 in MAP-R, what does s/he read at home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My fourth grader scored 288 in MAP-R. He mostly reads nonfiction books and feels it is getting harder to find books in the library.

Please share the books your kids at a similar level are reading in any genre. Thanks.

I don't understand this. There is no rule that kids have to read at their reading level, so there are far more books at the library accessible to kids who read well than kids who don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My fourth grader scored 288 in MAP-R. He mostly reads nonfiction books and feels it is getting harder to find books in the library.

Please share the books your kids at a similar level are reading in any genre. Thanks.

If you don't mind sharing, what is your DC's lexile range?

Some books (non fiction) that I found useful when DC was at that age, off the top of my head - Art of construction, The man who mistook his wife for a hat, Jon Krakauer's books, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors. You might want to check them first to see if the content is suitable for your DC. For example, "Alive" has a part that talks about cannibalism. When DC was in grade 5, they had no problem handling it, but YMMV.

Also use this website: https://hub.lexile.com/find-a-book/search

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Just get him a library card and turn him loose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's an insanely high score -- I just went and checked my kid's MAP from 4th grade and it was 237. He has an IQ in the 140s, went to the CES program in MCPS, taught himself to read before K, spent 5-10 hours a day reading in grade school, etc. So 280 is insanely high.

But here are some suggestions of non-fiction books he liked at that age and thereafter:

the Wright Brothers biography
Oh Ranger! (NPS rangers memoirs)
Guiness Book world records
Randall Munroe books (What If?)
A Walk in the Woods
National Geographic Book about National Parks
a really thick encylclopedia type book about North American Animals (can't remember the publisher)
Atlas Obscura
Steve Sheinkin history books
Basically anything and everything about mythology, so we bought many different reference books about different types of mythology -- greek, norse, egyptian, native american, etc. Some of those stories are pretty rough though!

Also, my kid wasn't into them, but maybe the James Herriot All Creatures Great and Small series, or The Right Stuff.

I think the trick is just to figure out what your kid is interested in, and then find good books on those topics -- for my kid, it was mythology, travel, nature, and weird science.

Also, if you want to branch out from non-fiction, both Historical Fiction and Science Fiction are natural next steps. The Martian might be a good pick if he likes science. There is some REALLY great middle grades historical fiction about there -- the Nathan Hale books will be too easy for him, but that's okay, because they are fun and informative and he can chat about them with his fourth grade friends. If he likes baseball, tehre is a great series about historical baseball players. (Babe and Me, Jackie and Me, etc.)

IN general, I wouldn't push him into adults books too soon on the fiction front, because the middle grades literature is really fantastic now, and there is a lot of great stuff. Once you get into YA stuff, it's mostly crap. And there's honestly not that much really good "adult" literature that is relatable and appropriate for kids. I prefer a lot of the cleverly written middle grades books to a lot of "adult" fiction (which tends to be depressing and very cynical nowadays). If he skips the middle grade books, he will have missed out on some really fabulous literature and themes that are developmentally appropriate for his age. Look at the stuff that is geared to kids in 4th to 8th grade and you'll find it (or start another post and we can recommend a bunch of different series.) If you want to find stuff that is slightly more challenging, look to some of the older books, or books that are British, as the syntax and vocab will be somewhat different (e.g., the original Paddington books, Secret Garden, E. Nesbit books, etc.).

I really appreciate sentiment because I think sometimes parents want to push their kids to reading advanced books but the kids are not necessarily emotionally old enough for the material. And there is just so much good thought-provoking and interesting middle grade fiction out there! I really like the Stewart Gibbs moon base alpha books.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My fourth grader scored 288 in MAP-R. He mostly reads nonfiction books and feels it is getting harder to find books in the library.

Please share the books your kids at a similar level are reading in any genre. Thanks.

I don't understand this. There is no rule that kids have to read at their reading level, so there are far more books at the library accessible to kids who read well than kids who don't.

Except if this child is a super genius there is no way this is their MAP score.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My fourth grader scored 288 in MAP-R. He mostly reads nonfiction books and feels it is getting harder to find books in the library.

Please share the books your kids at a similar level are reading in any genre. Thanks.

What is the kid's Map-M? If it's as high, I suggest start looking at SAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My fourth grader scored 288 in MAP-R. He mostly reads nonfiction books and feels it is getting harder to find books in the library.

Please share the books your kids at a similar level are reading in any genre. Thanks.

I don't understand this. There is no rule that kids have to read at their reading level, so there are far more books at the library accessible to kids who read well than kids who don't.

Except if this child is a super genius there is no way this is their MAP score.

Yeah, if that MAP-R score is real, you should be talking with the school and gifted experts because it would be far outside of the norm. Here’s a report from MCPS a few years ago correlating MAP and PARCC scores which shows the minimum and maximum MAP score (M and R) for 3rd through 8th graders in MCPS that year. See table 5 — no max score even comes close to 288. The max was 272 for an 8th grader. So the OP’s kid would be a serious outlier if this is true.

[Anonymous]

That report is from the samples, not from all the MCPS students. So it is possible that the max score in the report is not really the MAX.

[Anonymous]

My 4th grader got a 230 something (can’t remember exactly—236 I think), and they don’t actually read books outside of the William & Mary books assigned at school and whatever library books they read at school when killing time. They do read a lot of content online related to their hobby/passion along with news articles (most short).

I was a bookworm as a kid, but I hated most of the classics. I read garbage. Shrug.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That report is from the samples, not from all the MCPS students. So it is possible that the max score in the report is not really the MAX.

It's at least 10,000 kids per grade in the sample (see first column in Table 5) --- all kids who took spring MAP-R and PARCC ELA that year. It's possible there's a kid who took MAP-R but not PARCC and isn't in the sample group, but the general idea still stands that a MAP-R of 288 in the spring of 4th grade would be an extreme outlier, both on the national norms (5.5 standard deviations above the mean using current norms, or one in 10 million) and within MCPS (4.6 SD above the mean using the data in that report, which is from 2014-15, or ~5 in a million).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That report is from the samples, not from all the MCPS students. So it is possible that the max score in the report is not really the MAX.

It's at least 10,000 kids per grade in the sample (see first column in Table 5) --- all kids who took spring MAP-R and PARCC ELA that year. It's possible there's a kid who took MAP-R but not PARCC and isn't in the sample group, but the general idea still stands that a MAP-R of 288 in the spring of 4th grade would be an extreme outlier, both on the national norms (5.5 standard deviations above the mean using current norms, or one in 10 million) and within MCPS (4.6 SD above the mean using the data in that report, which is from 2014-15, or ~5 in a million).

I agree it's rare but I don't buy that MCPS is that much higher than the national norms based on the charts they've published. What are you looking at that indicates otherwise? The data in my child's map report shows the district average as being maybe 2%-3% higher than the national.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That report is from the samples, not from all the MCPS students. So it is possible that the max score in the report is not really the MAX.

It's at least 10,000 kids per grade in the sample (see first column in Table 5) --- all kids who took spring MAP-R and PARCC ELA that year. It's possible there's a kid who took MAP-R but not PARCC and isn't in the sample group, but the general idea still stands that a MAP-R of 288 in the spring of 4th grade would be an extreme outlier, both on the national norms (5.5 standard deviations above the mean using current norms, or one in 10 million) and within MCPS (4.6 SD above the mean using the data in that report, which is from 2014-15, or ~5 in a million).

I agree it's rare but I don't buy that MCPS is that much higher than the national norms based on the charts they've published. What are you looking at that indicates otherwise? The data in my child's map report shows the district average as being maybe 2%-3% higher than the national.

Yeah, in general I don't think there's a ton of difference between MCPS and the national norms, but I did the calculations by looking at the mean and standard deviations shown in the MCPS report compared to the ones reported nationally for the MAP tests.

For 4th grade spring MAP-R, the national 2015 mean/average (which would have been in place at the time of the MCPS report) was 205.9 with a standard deviation of 14.92 (data taken from here).
The mean from the MCPS report was 210.0 with a standard deviation of 16.78.
So the averages are just a few points difference, but with a wider standard deviation in MCPS, so when you get ~80 points above the average (as the OP claims), that makes a difference.
(I'm a scientist who likes data and clearly I have spent too much time over the past decade that my kids have been taking MAP tests in trying to interpret their scores!)

Still doesn't change the fact that it is an incredibly rare score and, if accurate, something the OP should be discussing with the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That report is from the samples, not from all the MCPS students. So it is possible that the max score in the report is not really the MAX.

It's at least 10,000 kids per grade in the sample (see first column in Table 5) --- all kids who took spring MAP-R and PARCC ELA that year. It's possible there's a kid who took MAP-R but not PARCC and isn't in the sample group, but the general idea still stands that a MAP-R of 288 in the spring of 4th grade would be an extreme outlier, both on the national norms (5.5 standard deviations above the mean using current norms, or one in 10 million) and within MCPS (4.6 SD above the mean using the data in that report, which is from 2014-15, or ~5 in a million).

I agree it's rare but I don't buy that MCPS is that much higher than the national norms based on the charts they've published. What are you looking at that indicates otherwise? The data in my child's map report shows the district average as being maybe 2%-3% higher than the national.

The test generally goes to 300. So, that's generally what a high schooler who is at a high level would get, not a 4th grader. OP hasn't come back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 4th grader got a 230 something (can’t remember exactly—236 I think), and they don’t actually read books outside of the William & Mary books assigned at school and whatever library books they read at school when killing time. They do read a lot of content online related to their hobby/passion along with news articles (most short).

I was a bookworm as a kid, but I hated most of the classics. I read garbage. Shrug.

High five for Christopher Pike and Sweet Valley High

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just get him a library card and turn him loose.

Seconded.