Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional The dyslexic brain post remediation

Last winter, DD10 was diagnosed with dyslexia and dysgraphia by means of differential performance on the WISC and the WIAT, as well as various spelling, nonsense word reading tests, and phenomic awareness tests. She learned to read quickly and painlessly in kindergarten, almost entirely by sight. Individual word spelling has always been ok, and her reading level was not tested since kindergarten (due to low ceiling for stopping). When she was fully assessed through the IEP process, she had sub-second grade level phenomic awareness, including no short-vowel awareness (0/5).

The school put her on an IEP at the very end of the school year last year. She's been doing 200 minutes a week of Wilson, plus she has push in services from an IS focused on writing.

The school is making noises along the lines of ending the Wilson remediation. She's flown through the levels, and after 45 days of services appears to be 80% through what is normally a 3-year program. For the decoding skills, she now ranks between 6th and 12th grade levels based on the test.

I'm thrilled she's done so well. She's looking forward to not having such a crazy schedule soon (she's got 9 teachers across two schools). My concerns are two-fold:

*I can't find much written on the effects of high-intensity, very short term remediation. I don't want to be back in an IEP meeting in 3 more years again discussing that DD can't sound out nonsense & unfamiliar words. (Any real words that might ever be found in fiction reading are read accurately and instantly by recognition. Evidently, this includes words like "prevaricate" and "piebald" on 11th grade lists, both of which she then defined.)

*If I were to have her do another neuropsych exam in a few years (say, before the official end of the IEP), how would I expect the results to look like? That is, supposedly the neuropsych exam picks up on the brain functioning and coordination differences of dyslexia. My understanding of the testing she was given is that it picked up primarily on the effects of the dyslexia and dysgraphia. If we've successfully remediated them, then she should be able to perform on the nonsense word reading and syllable segmentation tests.

Stated another way: I know that dyslexia is an effect of brain function and structure. The brain can be trained, but the fundamental functioning isn't changed. Therefore this is something to be remediated by not cured. Is there a testing difference between "remediated dyslexia" and "no dyslexia"?

Next Question:
What does it take to move these skills into her writing? Her spelling in her written work is improving (not good, but I don't have to guess as much), but high frequency words are still hit or miss. Is this just a matter of time? Should Wilson be continuing at some level until the spelling in the midst of writing a message has improved?

Next IEP meeting is in January. I'm trying to think through everything to make certain that any gains are retained. To do that, I need to understand the metrics more fully.