How is her writing? Dyslexia tends to be really apparent in writing. Not just in the spelling but the entire structure of the writing. It tends to be really disorganized and choppy structure.
Her ideas are very good and I'd say that overall she's again a very good writer for her grade level but not performing on par with her VCI. She won a regional writing contest last year as well.
Where I'd say she has problems in writing is with the mechanics of it. Punctuation is in the wrong place or missing, for instance. They've focused on mechanics and punctuation ad nauseum this year, but she still isn't totally fixing the errors she makes. It isn't atrocious, though.
Does she seem to have an solid phonetic awareness? Does she sound out words or memorize them?
I'd say that her phonetic awareness is good. She wrote things phonetically when she was younger and they made sense -- stuff like "I luv kats," when she was 4, for instance. She still misspells things but she does so phonetically. I do think that she is mishearing things at times, though, and has a few things that she consistently mispronounces (like pah-ler bears instead of polar bears). Another example was the other day when she was writing the shopping list while my oldest dictated what we needed. Kalamata olives became something like camalata olives.
There is no hx of ear infections or hearing issues, though, and her speech was very early and well enunciated. She was putting two words together by 5.5 months and really never used baby talk.
I know some of the traits of ADD and dyslexia can be similar with disorganization, planning, time management, etc.
To be honest, dd has pretty decent time management and isn't horribly disorganized or someone who has trouble with planning. Where she does have major issues are in attention to detail, misreading directions b/c she has a very divergent way of reading things and reads something totally different into it than what would be "obvious" to most of us, and in making simple errors like simple calculation errors or miscopying things.
Could she be tired from trying to focus and getting a headache from that?
Maybe; I'll ask her.
That seems rather unprofessional to me! Why would her sister even be mentioned in a report about her cognitive abilities?
That was my thought as well. It was in the context of family history -- something like "[dd] is the younger of two sisters..." and went on to state that she seemed to be less intelligent than her sister later in the report when it was opining on the reasons for her problems (anxiety due to parental pressure, trying to live up to a sister who was more able, and so on). I was really quite unhappy that this was in there. Honestly, dd11 may be more intelligent than her sister for all we know.
