*Thinking Out Loud* - Tired of Tests

Poor M. In order to get the materials she needs for her 'school' year next year, she's had to do some extensive testing so we could place her in the right grade level. She did well with Math and has placed in Grade 2 first semester which is good because Math is our current struggle to find good material to work with that she likes, so after 6 - 25 question tests we're gonna set her up with Grade 2 Math, I'm good with that.

Roll on to the LA stuff and that's another story. She's ready to start test #10. Reading Placement Assessment 6A. The A's seem to focus on reading passages and answering questions so that's the comprehension part, where the B tests seem to be a short sentence and fill in the blanks. (This is not a brag or exaggeration its a genuine concern!) What worries me is that from what I'm getting from the material they're already testing her for Grade 6 Language Arts and I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that. This kid loves her books, she loves to read.... its a great excuse not to go to bed sometimes! LOL! We're going to follow out the testing and see what they suggest, but I can already guess that she won't be enrolling in the Language Arts program, because I think Gr 6 material just wouldn't be right for a 7 yr old.

So where to go from here? I haven't totally cast out the idea of the LA program we're looking at, but I'm not looking as favourably at it either. I'm leaning toward a hodge podge of things for this area, and thus my research begins for what to do now! Its not an insurmountable challenge, I'm actually quite pleased in that my gut has been right so far with this area! Woohoo....

The duck line up looks like this now.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Option 1: - K12 Language arts (Grade ?)

Option 2: - Light Hodge Podge mix. This would end up being:
READING: access to all the books in the library to read for pleasure focusing in the gr K-5 range. Introducing more non-fiction books into the repertoire and asking for her to summarize some of what she reads. Including more study of Poetry, and Sayings - maybe on level with Baltimore Curriculum Project as our backbone! mental note: We need a book journal so she can review the books and decide if she'd read them again! :) Loose Leaf Review Sheet
WRITING: This will concentrate on both handwriting and improving it so that she is writing in the right instance (Capital or small - I've learned that she knows how to do it just chooses not to unless forced!) We'll also focus on some creative writing - both by hand and on the computer. Prompted writing starts, daily journalling. She writes an awesome story, and we can also use this time to develop her imaginary world of "Greena." We just need to focus on paragraph writing. (maybe mine will improve too!)
SPELLING / VOCABULARY: Spelling is already above level, so we'll just focus on words that we don't know from stories... for this I've found a site that has vocabulary bookmarks. So maybe we'll use those and focus on just expanding the vocabulary!
GRAMMAR: English for a Thoughtful Child - which seems to encompass more than just Grammar. I think this will also be in the backbone of things we do as well... as I think there is a logical grammar component. I've had the book for years and just haven't managed to study it in detail yet.... (this month's to do list!)

Options 3: - ?? (hoping not to have to come up with something!) LOL!

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I think I'm actually ready to branch on in the LA area by myself and getting more into this plannng business!