Gifted Bulletin Board

Welcome to the Gifted Issues Discussion Forum.

We invite you to share your experiences and to post information about advocacy, research and other gifted education issues on this free public discussion forum.
CLICK HERE to Log In. Click here for the Board Rules.

Links


Learn about Davidson Academy Online - for profoundly gifted students living anywhere in the U.S. & Canada.

The Davidson Institute is a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted students through the following programs:

  • Fellows Scholarship
  • Young Scholars
  • Davidson Academy
  • THINK Summer Institute

  • Subscribe to the Davidson Institute's eNews-Update Newsletter >

    Free Gifted Resources & Guides >

    Who's Online Now
    0 members (), 239 guests, and 35 robots.
    Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
    Newest Members
    streble, DeliciousPizza, prominentdigitiz, parentologyco, Smartlady60
    11,413 Registered Users
    March
    S M T W T F S
    1 2
    3 4 5 6 7 8 9
    10 11 12 13 14 15 16
    17 18 19 20 21 22 23
    24 25 26 27 28 29 30
    31
    Previous Thread
    Next Thread
    Print Thread
    Joined: Jul 2009
    Posts: 22
    B
    Branwen Offline OP
    Junior Member
    OP Offline
    Junior Member
    B
    Joined: Jul 2009
    Posts: 22
    hello all,

    My dd7 is in 1st grade at a gifted school. Finally a great fit for us after 3 years of moving around!

    That said we just had parent teacher conferences and her teachers see a big disconnect between her abilities and what is happening reading and writing. They even asked me if she ever had phonics instruction? It is always a struggle. She loves books but doesn't want to read aloud. Cannot blend or find her place and hates the easy readers. She is always looking for a more complex story. Her spelling is also off, no vowels and sometimes she places letters in the word where the sounds don't belong.

    She does have visual tracking issues and was doing therapy for this but we haven't seen much improvement other than she does seem to have an easier time finding her place and doesn't fatigue as much. So I am wondering if this is a learning style issue.

    Does anyone have any tips for a VSL kiddo with reading and spelling?

    Thanks!

    Joined: Sep 2011
    Posts: 3,363
    P
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    P
    Joined: Sep 2011
    Posts: 3,363
    Your dd's challenges with reading and spelling sound very much like my dd7 who is in 2nd grade. I think there may very well be literally 100s of different reasons that this type of thing happens, but fwiw, this is what we've just found out re our dd (she has recently completed an educational eval - ability vs achievement + dyslexia screening. We found out that she has a disrepancy in associative memory vs her overall intellectual ability. It's a significant discrepancy - almost 3 SDs. The impact of having a relatively weak associative memory meant that when she learned the alphabet, learned to read/spell words etc she didn't remember things easily that related to the skills needed for reading. We (parents) thought it seemed like she had trouble with phonics, but her testing showed her phonemic awareness is actually incredibly high - so that was a surprise!

    FWIW our older dd had trouble learning to read to, very similar, and in her case it was a vision issue - she had extreme double vision and one eye was shutting off, plus tracking issues. Vision therapy really helped her though.

    We went back and forth trying to decide whether or not we should have both dds privately evaluated and ultimately were very glad we did - for both. DD7 did go through an eval by her school's reading specialist but they felt everything was "fine" since she her reading achievement tests were all at grade level. Oddly enough, they weren't all on grade level in her educational eval!

    Best wishes,

    polarbear

    Joined: Dec 2010
    Posts: 37
    R
    Junior Member
    Offline
    Junior Member
    R
    Joined: Dec 2010
    Posts: 37
    Being VSL adult I can tell you that phonics still doesn't make sense to me. I just learned to read by doing. however, spelling I finally excelled in by visualizing the spelling list. I still do that today.

    Rocky

    Joined: Dec 2010
    Posts: 37
    R
    Junior Member
    Offline
    Junior Member
    R
    Joined: Dec 2010
    Posts: 37
    Sometimes with more success than others.

    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 471
    7
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    7
    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 471
    My eg/pg son (now 6) just finished 2 years of vision therapy over the holidays; he was born a VSL but born with torticollis (head tilting) and visual processing deficits. I can say it took us 6-8 months before we noticed much improvement, but then the developments started to come fast and thick.

    Our behavioral optometrist told us that my son was operating a couple of grade levels above his age after examining his eyes, but it didn't really hit until the rapid developments and reading kicked in. Still, I can attest that the vision therapy takes a lot of time, patience, and effort. You've got to be diligent about doing those vision exercises, which I know can be a bugbear and rather challenging.

    Being a VSL too, having a son who's VSL and been through vision therapy, I can say some of it takes time. Like Rocky mentioned, phonics doesn't always work as well with VSLs as sight words. The problem, of course, is that sight words can only take you so far unless you create your own visual method or aids. I've seen people create their own math flash cards with animals or other things in the background of numbers to assist with remembering.

    Like Rocky, I excelled at spelling by visualizing it. Yes, I still do that today too.

    My eg/pg son self-taught himself to read, but he didn't really master the phonics until he was comfortable reading out loud to us. Instead of browbeating about phonics, last spring/early summer (after 1 1/2 years of vision therapy) I grabbed books like Fly Guy and other easy readers to encourage him to READ, anything to get him to read. I believed that if I just got him excited and motivated about reading, I could deal with the phonics later (I'm a librarian and former teacher, by the way). Around August, after my son had easily mastered Fly Guy and started to feel more comfortable with sight words and easy readers and reading out loud to us, I went back to phonics. There's some FREE phonics lessons/materials online, which will visually help. Within a month or two, my son was pretty good with the phonics and wanted to read Magic School Bus. Well, over the holidays he's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and now reading at a 4th grade level - quite a magical leap it seems.


    Joined: Jan 2008
    Posts: 1,689
    W
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    W
    Joined: Jan 2008
    Posts: 1,689
    My dd is 7, grade 2 and is VSL. And sight reading was early but reading progression was not a straight progression and her comprehension was definitely mixed. But when I think she is just above grade level, she comes home with more complex books because she got bored and read everything at the level she was reading.

    I think I was similar. Being VSL, the math is just so easy and farther ahead. Strategy and problem solving is way ahead too. But the reading catches up.

    Joined: Dec 2010
    Posts: 1,040
    A
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    A
    Joined: Dec 2010
    Posts: 1,040
    Here's a useful rule of thumb I've been advised by professionals to use to help determine whether what I am looking at is a learning style issue or a sign of an actual learning disability:

    A learning style preference is an area of relative strength that makes learning in that way more enjoyable. A learning disability is an area of relative weakness that makes learning in that way difficult (or impossible), and requires an increased level of effort that may create fatigue, extend the time needed for mastery, and/or diminish the quality of the learning and/or the associated work product.


    Moderated by  M-Moderator, Mark D. 

    Link Copied to Clipboard
    Recent Posts
    Testing with accommodations
    by aeh - 03/27/24 01:58 PM
    Quotations that resonate with gifted people
    by indigo - 03/27/24 12:38 PM
    New, and you'd think I'd have a clue...
    by astronomama - 03/24/24 06:01 AM
    For those interested in astronomy, eclipses...
    by indigo - 03/23/24 06:11 PM
    Son 2e, wide discrepancy between CogAT-Terranova
    by astronomama - 03/23/24 07:21 AM
    Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5