I am not familiar with the ETCH, but fwiw, these were my dysgraphic ds' most recent Beery VMI scores. He has fine motor dysgraphia associated with developmental coordination disorder:
Beery VMI 114 SS 82nd percentile
Visual Perception 109 SS 73rd percentile
Motor Coordination 82 SS 12th percentile
I didn't have time to look at Elizabeth's link, but I think the slight variation in ranges of percentiles may be a function of the child's age when they took the test - an 80 SS for a 11 year old might be a different percentile than an 80 SS for a 6 year old.
FWIW, my ds, with a similar range Motor Coordination score to your ds, struggles tremendously with handwriting and can't rely on it at all to show his knowledge. Yet he has what looks like legible handwriting - so we had a tough time demonstrating why it was an issue when he was in elementary school - especially since there were a lot of kids in early elementary with handwriting that looks completely messy with reversals etc - who aren't dysgraphic
Some of the things that are important to keep in mind or consider for your meeting:
* How much time does it take your ds to use handwriting relative to his peers? There are two parts to this question - the simple act of handwriting that doesn't require thinking, and what happens re time when he is putting together thoughts such as writing a paragraph or story etc. You can time how long it takes him to "just write" and compare the letters per minute to same-age peers - have him write the alphabet from memory, lower and upper case, and time it. Then google "letters per minute + 1st grade (or whatever grade)" and you'll find some typical ranges to compare handwriting speed to. You might also want to repeat this exercise by having him copy something and time that - because copying is sometimes very difficult for dysgraphic kids and requires accommodations. These two tests will give you not only time data but also written samples showing how well he copies and how well he writes the alphabet - does he have reversals? Does he know all of his caps/lower case consistently? etc.
* Watch him while he writes. Does he have an odd pencil grip? Does he rub his wrists, take lots of breaks? Does he seem easily distractible? Does he seem to have to stop and think how to form his letters? Does he form them consistently (same way every time)? The OT eval should have included observations of all of this, but it's good for you to have watched and have an idea too.
* If the school staff doesn't mention it, ask if they considered or ruled out dysgraphia - and if they didn't consider dysgraphia or don't think it's a possibility, ask what they *do* think is the cause of the fine motor challenge. If they don't have an answer, request an evaluation for dysgraphia. If they tell you it *is* dysgraphia, you need to consider - do you want accommodations for keyboarding etc. The issue with dysgraphia is that children don't develop true automaticity of handwriting (they essentially are rethinking how to draw each letter every time they write it), hence every time they rely on handwriting they are using up so much working memory getting the letters down (even if the letters look great) that they don't have left-over working memory for the next order of thinking in writing (punctuation, grammar, capital letters etc) and very very little working memory left over to actually think about the content of what they want to write. OT can help some dysgraphic children with reducing hand pain and giving them legible handwriting, but it can't take away the basic neurological disconnect that prevents the automaticity of letter-forming, so if your ds *is* dysgraphic, you need to be thinking through if/when etc re keyboarding etc.
* I would take examples of his work with you to the meeting - if you don't have a comparison, have him write something at home and then have him tell you something similar verbally. If he can keyboard, have him give you a writing sample with keyboarding. Hopefully you will have a much more cooperative school staff than we did, but we frequently found when advocating for our ds that the school staff would bring the absolute best (or very contrived) examples of ds' handwriting to prove that there was not an issue. Having my own set of handwriting examples (from ds - some were from his schoolwork, others from home), helped illustrate the true picture of his challenges and bring the focus of the meeting back to actually helping ds instead of proving there wasn't an issue.
Good luck with your meeting!
polarbear
