Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment I was right. I wish I wasn't though.

I used to come on the forum all the time for my dd who is now 12 and doing well at a private school.She just got her first B+ (not all A's) ever. But I have another DD and I spoke of her a little. She is now 9.5 and in forth grade. She is struggling in school. I thought she might be dyslexic despite her love of reading. Her reading levels are DRA 38 but she DRA 38 in first grade. She is still reversing letters and numbers and at the recent PPT I was told she was starting to fail unit tests. I have known she wasn't working to potential since second grade. It was first grade when her report card showed that she was bad with time management. But her skills were all advanced. Now in fourth grade, she is still struggling to finish and her skills are behind especially with writing, math facts and long division. I knew something was wrong. She is in her second round of vision therapy and her teacher does all kinds of things to help her. She has her write the amount of time it will take to complete homework and time herself. She has her do only half of writing intensive homework. She has her use word prediction software at school.

Anyway, I requested testing from the school in September. They said no. I requested again in December. They said yes. I got the results today.

I will post them below. I have a meeting to discuss these results soon and I am wondering if you wonderful people (who helped me get through my older daughter's stuff) can help me to form questions for the staff when I go to the meeting. I would like to go informed. I have ZERO experience with LD's and all this. Oh, no dyslexia..

VCI SSS 49 Composite score 138 Percentile 99 Very superior

Verbal Subtest Score Summary
Similarities SS 16 Percentile Rank 98
Vocabulary SS 15 Percentile Rank 95
Comprehension SS 18 Percentile Rank 99.6

PRI SSS 43 Composite Score 127 Percentile 96

Perceptual Reasoning Score Summery

Block Design SS 10 Percentile Rank 50
Picture Concepts SS 13 Percentile 84
Matrix Reasoning SS 15 Percentile 95
Picture completion SS 15 Percentile 95

WMI SS 24 Composite Score 110 Percentile Rank 75

Working Memory Score Summary

Digit Span SS 13 Percentile Rank 84
Letter Number Sequencing SS 11 Percentile 63


PSI SSS 13 Composite Score 80 Percentil Rank 9 Low Average

Processing Speed Score Summare

Coding SS 6 Percentile Rank 9
Symbol Search SS 7 Percentile Rank 16

Full Scale SS 129 Composite Score 122 (interpret with caution) Percentile Rank 93 (interpret with caution) Superior. (interpret with caution)


She was also given the Woodcock Johnson III Test of Cognitive Abilities, Normative Update (WJCOG)

ss(90%) RPI Percentile
Cognitive Fluency 81 78/90 10 Low average
Retrieval Fluency 79 84/90 8 Low
Decision Speed 84 77/90 15 Low average
Rapid Picture Name 88 74/90 21 Low average


They have recommended her for the gifted program and also to be considered for special ed.

Consider assistive technology strategies to provide her with alternative means to produce her ideas within her writing.

Given her difficulty with processing speed, tasks should be presented to her in a linear sequence, rather than simultaneously. Clear and concise instructions should be provided to her for classroom tasks and it may be beneficial to have her repeat directions verbally.

Assign estimated task completion times to help focus her energy. It may be beneficial to shorten the assignments so she can complete tasks within time allotted.

It is recommended that she be considered for the gifted program.

She is happy and sweet and likes school. She is sometimes annoyed by her classmates. She says her reading books are very stupid, but plugs away anyway. She seems to me to be starting to think she is not smart. She has dropped some interests like running for student council because she was worried she wouldn't be able to catch up on missed work. She is polite, friendly, quiet but talks a lot..no attention concerns.

Also she loves minecraft and building things at home. She also reads too much. If that is possible. I really appreciate you all looking at this and helping me decipher it's meaning. Especially the WJIII scores. I don't understand them at all. I would also like any insight or advice on how to proceed. What should I ask. Is one thing more important than another. DD is worried about leaving for gifted program (twice a week) for fear of falling behind. Also what on earth kinds of things would she do in a special ed program? Work on her processing speed? I don't think you can do that..can you? Thank you so much in advance!

As introductory LD information for parents, several resources are listed in this post on another recent thread.

Hugs... I've been there. Getting testing done is always a mixed bag and can be a lot to take in.

First I am not an expert here. Hopefully aeh will put in her 2-cents it's always useful. But from my perspective there needs to be a bit more testing to identify the reading problems. You can tell from this that she has processing issues, but my guess is she needs a few more subtests to tease out what is going on.

My DD20 was diagnosed with a language processing LD back in 2nd grade. She in now a junior in college and doing OK although writing essays is always going to be a weakness and she will always be slower at reading. My DD isn't gifted and doesn't have dyslexia or ADHD. But I have found that some people will lump all reading/language LD's under the dyslexia umbrella. Her language processing issues did make her seem distractable in the classroom. The best way to describe her reading problems is if you asked her to read out loud she would skip all the small words that change the entire meaning of a sentence. Missing the work 'not' really changes a sentence. It's also always made multiple choice tests hard. Her reading was really slow and she wasn't comprehending what she was reading. So while her reading looked on track K and the first half of 1st grade because she had no problems decoding individual words. Her reading skills fell off dramatically once she was expected to read larger chunks of text. One test that made her LD really 'pop' was a oral test asking her if she could repeat back sentences.

I'm not suggesting this is what is going on with your daughter. I honestly can't really interpret the results except to notice the very low processing speed number. But I would expect the school to have done more subtests beyond the WJCOG.

The above accommodations sound useful. But I would suggest more look at the reading component. I'd have to look through all my daughter documents to figure out what all the sub-tests she ended up getting over the years. What we did for her included getting a private educational therapist, and she had an IEP for 2nd-11th grade that included resource help at school. This help varied throughout the years and was sometimes more useful than others.

Good Luck.

I may have time for more later... As a teacher I can tell you that Special Ed(as an educational term) includes gifted programming. It's comprehensive for any service that is outside the typical educational environment.

But as for the processing piece, yes, time management, comprehending/ internalizing directions, and written output are all things that can be worked on. Definitely have them give instructions step by step, and written as well as verbally so she can refer back as needed, if she likes having a "to do list" or agenda for the day (or task) let her have or create one, let her dictate her writing into a speech to text computer program if writing slows her down - she's a talker - use a "time timer" clock and start having her plan when she needs breaks and how long they should take. She's at an age when she has some metacognitive awareness about her learning process but not full autonomy about what she needs to do; a little more empowerment in the work stages may feel good and allow her to internalize some self-management skills.
My kiddo is gifted and a slow processor too, but in 1st grade. Maybe we can check in later... I hope this helps. If not, ignore it, trust your gut more than anything.
Good luck.

I was under the impression from the results that the only reason she was scoring low on the reading test was because of her processing issues. At home she reads way above grade level. She can't write very well though. That's when she reverses and is slow. Her reading is fast and her verbal (and I assume) reading comprehension was her highest score. So I think the dyslexia idea of mine has been knocked out. I do wonder in the processing could inhibit the scores of the perceptual scores a bit. If you would have asked me before, I would have said her gift was in spatial reasoning. She build things all the time. She is always noticing patterns and symmetry. It says on the report that the reversals may be to do her visual perception which is why she is in vision therapy. ..What kinds of tests should be done in addition. I don't think they plan to do anymore.

Indigo, Thank you for the link.

I wasn't very good at parsing the above scores. I didn't catch that the reading test was on of her best. But what I was trying to say that there are more 'reading' issues than just dyslexia. Have you figured out why she is not testing well in class. Is she running out of time? Could it be the way they test her? On a computer or on paper? The test for LD's is usually done one-on-one with an adult and it might have something to do with the setting?

I'm not quite sure in this case what sub-tests. They are lot of different ones for different reasons. When both my kids were tested (my DD through school and my son privately) they started with the above tests but did many different sub-tests to tease out the details.

When you say she is having problems writing do you mean hand writing. Would working on a computer help?

Im told she is way better writing on a computer, but writing at all is slow. I think this might be why she tested low with reading. I dont know though. Are there more tests in processing to figure out why it is so slow? Could it be due to her vision processing. She sowed severe deficiencies in certain areas of visual perception - especially shape recognition. Do the vision perception differences make the processing score low or visa versa? Might vision therapy help? Are there tests I should ask for specifically? There may be more results coming. Im not sure I have them all.

sydness,

I don't see any individually-administered NRT in achievement in your summary. Did they give her subtests from the WJIII Achievement? Or any other instrument, like the WIAT or KTEA? I would like to see
1. word attack data, like the WJ Word Attack, KTEA Nonsense Word, or WIAT Pseudoword Reading, or the reading cluster from the PAL-2.
2. oral reading fluency testing, like the WIAT, KTEA, or PAL-2, or the GORT-5, specifically to see how accurate her word calling really is, not just how quickly she zips through it (speed vs accuracy)
3. phonological processing testing, like the CTOPP/CTOPP-2
4. in-depth writing testing, such as the PAL-2 writing cluster or TOWL-4
5. OT testing to look at/rule-out possible motor reasons for her low speed.

Her cognitive profile is pretty clearly a marked relative weakness in processing speed (not restricted to motor speed, either), consistent across the WISC and WJ speed/fluency tasks, in the context of likely overall Very Superior ability. Perceptual Reasoning did take a little hit via a probable low estimate in Block Design, which is a timed motor task, in addition to perceptual reasoning.

What you report about classroom concerns lines up with this, as all of the items you name involve automaticity, which is in the same category as cognitive fluency and processing speed. Although her high-level thinking and problem solving are excellent, she appears to have difficulty storing and/or retrieving rote symbolic information (such as letter/number formation, math facts, and possibly irregular spellings). Dyslexia has not necessarily been ruled out, as she may be reading using memorized whole words, without a solid phonetic grounding for decoding novel vocabulary. With her high verbal ability, oral vocabulary, and voracious reading habits, you might not discover this until she starts taking say, biology, chemistry, or ancient history, when phonics skills suddenly become important. How's her spelling? Is it noticeably discrepant from her reading or speaking vocabulary? That's usually a tipoff that we should be looking for compensated or stealth dyslexia.

You should also be looking at the differential diagnosis with dysgraphia.

Vision therapy may help her tracking and convergence, but I'm not so confident about the reversals. That usually has more to do with encoding letters/numerals as images, rather than symbols, which is more of a dyslexic brain phenomenon, where these symbols are being processed with a greater visual>verbal bias than in the brains of NT readers.

Oh my! I have not received the rest of the WJIII! I will be sure to request it. Thank you!

Her spelling is bad. Functional, but bad. She usually has all the letters, but often in the wrong order. Especially if there is a "silent letter."

Funny you should say about her reasoning skill being high, but symbolic skills lacking. I was baking with her the other day. She loves it and I always have her do the fractions for doubling the recipe. The weirdest thing is that we have been doing this for years and she still can't READ the fraction. She doubles 3/4 and says she needs one cup and a half but then she can't, for the life of her remember what the 1/2 cup looks like. Can't read it for anything! Boy I know something is wrong. I really hate being right about this stuff. I have suspected dyslexia since she was around 4 or 5. But it really seems silly to say it out loud because she loves to read. She read all Harry Potters in first grade. She reads books she likes around 5 times, often picking up an old book and re-reading her favorite parts. How could she be dyslexic? I will get the rest of the WJIII scores and post for you. Will you tell me where to go from here to see if she has dyslexia?

My third edit and I have noticed many spelling errors in my original post. I don't often "see" my mistakes. I do proof though. Maybe she gets her troubles from me?

Oh, and yes, she did have and "in depth" motor skill assessment and gave her some pencil grips. I did not receive the report but I assume it was fine since the IQ/achievement said nothing about it. She walked at 11 months and rode a two wheeler at 4...