So if I'm getting the picture clearly, his spontaneous oral language expression is strong in many areas, but weak in organization, fluency, and elaboration, and perhaps in speaking to the audience. His scaffolded oral language expression (when you provide accommodations and prompts) is good. His spontaneous written expression is limited. I think this is what you want to convey to the school, or help them to document on either a norm-referenced instrument, or a widely-accepted rubric.
Oral language expression is best with strangers or people where he feels like he should perform (hence the multiple speech evals where the recommendation was for me to get my own hearing checked...) -- so he's actually really good at speaking to his audience.
As things get complex -- generally reserved for just us -- he tends to leave out transitions, starting telling us something from the middle. He responds easily (though with irritation) when prompted to tell us the presuppositional information. In the apraxia diagnosis stage a year ago, he has a scaled score of '3' on coherence on the CCC-2 that I filled out; an '8' on the form his 2nd grade teacher did. This was a time when we'd hear about black holes and ancient history. His teacher would hear that he had pancakes for breakfast. His 3rd grade teacher and the gifted teacher observed nothing notable last year, while I hear that he spoke to them at length on the obsession-of-the-week.
Up until now, I've been working on the hypothesis that the leaving out of the small words at age 5 (and all but nouns on initial round of speech therapy at age 3) was trying to work around the (then undiagnosed) apraxia. He was simply trimming everything he could.
I'll add OWL LD to the list of hypotheses. Thank you. Honestly, my 2e parenting philosophy is one of symptom/frustration whack-a-mole.
Hopefully the TOWL and CTOPP phoneme reversal will elucidate more. In the meanwhile, I've ordered AAS. Thank you again for your time and thought.
