We have something in my house we call "4th grade onset dyslexia." The kids, of course, would always have been dyslexic, but it's 4th grade that things hit a wall, testing is done, and --we're super lucky -- IEP with Orton Gillingham tutoring begins.
You describe a kid not dissimilar to my two. At the qualifying meeting for DS9 a few weeks ago, the key quote of the meeting, from the reading specialist was, "well, he reads at a post-high school level, but he's not so secure on the alphabet."
We went through a lot of "a ha" moments with my DD 3 years ago when she was in 4th grade. It was a painful year for all. Many hugs.
I have known she wasn't working to potential since second grade.
Be careful here. It's really easy to see smart kids who read well, and then view the written product as sloppy and lazy. I'm not sure that's what is behind the comment, but tread very lightly. DD got a lot of "well, if you're so smart, why can't you..." comments from teachers. It started to rub off on us, and DH and I started with similar mindset. The fact of the matter is, that she was working just as hard as she could, and sloppy and the appearance of lazy was the consequence of her brain trying to do way more than it could handle -- too few skills were automatic. Apologies if my comments are misdirected. This is a tough age for a girl's self esteem.
Now in fourth grade, she is still struggling to finish and her skills are behind especially with writing, math facts and long division. I knew something was wrong. She is in her second round of vision therapy and her teacher does all kinds of things to help her. She has her write the amount of time it will take to complete homework and time herself. She has her do only half of writing intensive homework
In parallel with finishing the dyslexia evaluation (as aeh says, both my kids' diagnoses are based on differential performance between verbal IQ and academic performance on phonological processing skills), have you ruled out ADHD? I might suggest it's wise to have some clarity on these issues *not* being ADHD if this is the case, making it clearer to everyone involved that evidence-based instruction for kids with dyslexia is the right path for her.
They have recommended her for the gifted program and also to be considered for special ed.
OK, this is awesome. Fabulous. Wonderful. A school that, in one fell swoop, say "twice exceptional." Our district does this, and people are starting to move into this suburb from outlying areas just to get their 2e kids served. It's rare.
DD is worried about leaving for gifted program (twice a week) for fear of falling behind. Also what on earth kinds of things would she do in a special ed program? Work on her processing speed?
First -- your daughter is already aware of her 2eness at some level by expressing these worries. I would, in the absence of any other information, suggest you urge her to try it. First, it will bring her into contact with peers. Second, it can work on self esteem (or inoculate the self esteem in light of also starting special ed). In a school that recognizes 2e, the gifted teacher will also likely have some experience to bring to the table that the regular ed teacher does not.
As for what services will look like -- they will be what she needs to work on her goals. It's the individualized part of IEP. I'd suggest, though, that you need more clarity on the dyslexia part (as aeh is suggesting) to know exactly what's needed. An IEP can be tailored to teach specific compensatory skills that are needed to adapt to a low processing speed, as well as Orton Gillingham intervention to make the orthographic code more automatic in reading and writing.
Her spelling is bad. Functional, but bad. She usually has all the letters, but often in the wrong order. Especially if there is a "silent letter."
You need levels and a baseline for high frequency words, for phonetic words, and for nonsense words.
My third edit and I have noticed many spelling errors in my original post. I don't often "see" my mistakes. I do proof though. Maybe she gets her troubles from me?
I do the same thing, and I have a colleague who also struggles with similar issues. We both have kids with "4th grade onset dyslexia."
Oh, and yes, she did have and "in depth" motor skill assessment and gave her some pencil grips. I did not receive the report but I assume it was fine since the IQ/achievement said nothing about it.
Get the report. Monitoring improvement for a kid achieving so well requires subtle reading of a lot of data. Even if it's nothing, document it and keep track of it. If you continue to have concerns, you need a baseline from which to work.
Finally, since I'm seeing bits of my DD in your descriptions -- when we got the neurospych report, and again when we'd finished the IEP, I took her out for chocolate cake, and we went through the data. 4th grade was terrible for her self esteem on so many levels, we've done a lot of work to communicate clearly and consistently: You are smart. You have the ability to learn. You can work hard and learn, but some of how you learn needs to be different from other kids. At the start, adults will teach you these new learning skills. Once you've learned them, the hope is that you can use them when you go on in school.
I had laid out the testing to her as a process of hypothesis testing -- her brain is wired in a way that learns differently than teachers teach; she can't learn certain things; she just needs to work harder and she'll learn eventually. (Certain hypotheses were less than genuine...). I walked her through the results to show her how the psychologist evaluated each hypothesis: "This verbal score means that you process words and their meaning better than 998 of a thousand kids, but this other score means that in a group of 20 kids, you might be the slowest to process the information." I explained that the doctor suggests that this would be really frustrating for a kid, particularly one that is so smart that she's aware of how others are experiencing the world. I walked her through the nonsense words bit, and explained that other kids actually pull apart each letter and sound when reading so that they can assemble a word from the sounds. It was stunning. She looked at me and asked "how would anyone do that?" It was revealing. It motivated her to cooperate with the OG tutoring and other intervention, and considering the cognitive skills, OG intervention lasted just a few months, and the gains have been retained.
