The teacher frequently hands out a worksheet (color the pictures that start with A and write the words underneath), steps away, and comes back to find that he has not started it. This seems very predictable to me but when we met two weeks ago, it was her chief issue with his behavior and she has questioned whether he will be ready for the expectations of first grade.
FWIW your ds' WISC scores are very similar to my ds12's scores, and the gap between processing speed, specifically coding, and other scores is significant. In some kids it means nothing, but your ds' behavior when given a task to complete at school that involves fine motor skills is *exactly* what my ds used to do in K-2 before we knew he had fine motor challenges (dysgraphia and developmental coordination disorder) as well as an expressive language disorder that makes it difficult for him to literally get his thoughts out of his head and onto paper.
Did the school perform the WISC or did you have it done privately? Did the person who administered the test feel your ds performed to the best of his ability on coding or was he distracted? I'm guessing that his high scores on other parts of the test mean that he was on task and trying during his testing, and the subtest score in coding is accurate for his abilities.
This is all based on hindsight on my part, and also filtered through the lens of a parent with two 2e kids, but fwiw, I'd want more info about why the coding score is low, particularly since the area in school that seems to be an issue is performing on fine motor tasks. The types of follow-up information that were helpful for our ds were primarily tests given through a neuropsychologist - the Beery VMI (visual motor integration) and NEPSY executive functioning tests. He also had OT and Speech evaluations, but that was after we'd determined he had a fine motor disability and then later, after remediating and accommodating for handwriting realized he still had difficulty with putting his thoughts into writing.
We heard a lot of "he's just not trying", "he's not paying attention", and we also thought our ds was a perfectionist and that combined with being intellectually gifted and not appropriately challenged was causing the issues with writing. All of that could play into it for sure... but I wish we'd followed through on testing when ds was in K rather than not following up on it until 2nd grade. Although he wasn't evaluated due to behavior issues etc, he did have his first IQ test before entering K when he was evaluated for a gifted program, and he had that discrepancy in processing speed noted on the test... and the tester wrote it off as perfectionism.
Sorry I rambled a bit! One thing you could ask his teacher to try now is to have him give his idea orally and have her scribe when he has the writing assignment - you could try this at home too. If you haven't already done it, talk to your ds and ask him what's going on when he doesn't write things down in class.
In the meantime, advocate for more challenging work at school. If the school says he's not capable because he's not showing his knowledge now, ask for alternative ways for him to demonstrate his abilities.
Gotta run, I hope some of that helps!
polarbear
