Prince William County gifted screening and NNAT® guide.

PWCS calls its program Gifted Education and Talent Development. It serves identified students from kindergarten through 12th grade, following Virginia’s regulations for gifted students. The NNAT® (Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test) is a visual reasoning test built from shapes, patterns, and spatial puzzles, with no reading or math.

For a fuller overview of the test itself, see our guide to what the NNAT® measures.

What gifted services give your child in Prince William County

1. Time with a gifted education resource teacher: identified students get direct resource services, mostly in pull-out sessions, working with intellectual and academic peers. Lessons use advanced units from the Center for Gifted Education at the College of William and Mary, Vanderbilt University’s Programs for Talented Youth, and a math curriculum from the University of Connecticut, Northern Kentucky University, and Boston University.
2. A Differentiated Service Plan every year: each identified student gets a written plan showing how instruction is adapted in the classroom and in resource sessions. Elementary parents receive it in the first quarter, and progress reports come home at the end of each semester.
3. Identification in the right area: in kindergarten through 5th grade, students are placed in general intellectual aptitude or in a specific aptitude in language arts or math. Science and history are added in grades 6 to 12.
4. Services that continue through high school: in grades 6 and 7, gifted services can run during the Encore rotation, and students in grades 11 and 12 have credit-bearing course options or resource seminars, along with long-term planning with the resource teacher.

Practice preview

Let your child see the format before test day.

GateBuddy introduces the visual reasoning formats used on the NNAT® through short, age-appropriate practice with clear explanations.

• Built around the four NNAT® question types
• An explanation after every answer: what changed and what stayed the same
• Short adaptive sets plus full, timed practice tests
• A live view so parents can follow along

Try free questions

Real GateBuddy practice questions, one of each NNAT® question type.

How PWCS screens for gifted services

1. Every 2nd grader takes the NNAT3 online, given by the classroom teacher. All 6th and 9th graders take it too. Gifted resource teachers give it to 2nd through 5th graders who do not have a valid score.
2. Every 3rd grader takes the CogAT. Gifted resource teachers also give the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (KBIT-2R) in the first quarter of 3rd grade.
3. Referrals at any time: a parent, teacher, staff member, community member, or the student can refer a child in any grade from kindergarten through 12th, at any point in the school year. Email the gifted resource teacher at your child’s school to start. Written parent permission is needed before the evaluation begins.

In kindergarten through 2nd grade, every student also gets enrichment lessons from the gifted resource teacher. The Early Talent Development program gives extra support to young students who show strengths but are not yet identified, and they go through identification again later.

How PWCS decides who is identified

A school-level Identification and Placement (IDP) Committee reviews a profile for each student. PWCS says no single criterion decides eligibility, and it uses local norms so each child is compared with peers of similar experience and environment. The profile has four parts:

1. Aptitude tests: the NNAT3, the CogAT, and the KBIT-2R.
2. Achievement: a math and logic problem set, a controlled writing sample, and reading and math test data.
3. Reports and grades: reports from teachers and other staff, and quarterly grades.
4. Parent report and student work: a parent report form, a student response, and a portfolio of work.

The division’s gifted plan rates each part of the profile. For general intellectual aptitude in kindergarten through 5th grade, it calls for at least 7 ratings of Exceeds or Far Exceeds, including at least 1 Far Exceeds. Cases go to the committee within 90 instructional days of parent permission. Elementary committees meet in September, November, January, March, April, and June, and parents are notified in writing.

Parents can appeal within 10 instructional days of the decision. The Appeals Committee meets virtually each month from August through June, and the family presents new evidence, such as more work samples or outside testing results.

Second graders take NNAT3 Level C. It has 48 questions across four types: pattern completion, reasoning by analogy, serial reasoning, and spatial visualization. See the four NNAT® question types for examples of each.

Questions Prince William County parents should ask

1. What date is my child’s class taking the NNAT3 between October 19 and November 20?
2. When will the school share my child’s NNAT3 score with us?
3. What would make my child part of the pool considered for a full gifted evaluation this year?
4. If we refer our child, when is the next Identification and Placement Committee meeting?
5. If my child qualifies, how many minutes a week would they work with the gifted resource teacher?
6. What new evidence would help most if we decide to appeal?

Our broader questions to ask your school guide can help you turn those into one clear conversation with the office or program contact.

How to prepare effectively for the NNAT

The NNAT3 uses picture puzzles that look nothing like ordinary schoolwork, so the goal is steady practice with the format, starting as early as you can:

1. Learn the format first. Go through the four NNAT® question types and, after each practice question, explain the rule: what changed and what stayed the same. GateBuddy shows an explanation after every question that names the rule, and it can read instructions and explanations out loud, which helps a child who is still building reading skills or simply learns better by hearing it.
2. Practice 10 to 15 minutes a day, for as long as you can. Reasoning skills build like a muscle, a little at a time. A few weeks of practice helps, but months of short, steady sessions build much more. GateBuddy’s five-question sets fit on a school night.
3. Spend extra time on the question type your child finds hardest. GateBuddy’s practice sets do this for you: each set of five leans toward the question types your child has seen least and adjusts how hard the next questions are based on recent answers. You can also pick one question type and a level (easy, medium, or hard) to work on a weak spot.
4. Take full, timed practice tests: at least two, and more is better. A full test is where your child learns pacing and how to work alone against a clock, the way test day works. PWCS gives the NNAT3 online, so practicing on a screen helps too. Every GateBuddy plan includes eight full, timed, 48-question practice tests, so your child can take several along the way and still save the last two for the final few weeks as a dress rehearsal. While your child works on their own, GateBuddy’s Live View lets you follow along from your own phone: how many questions they have answered, the answer they just picked, and how many they have right so far. Your child gets the independence of test day, and you still see everything.