I've been to Hoagies and the Davidson Gifted Database. Thanks to acs and willagayle for more links.
Now that we have our testing information back, and we've finished the school's process, we are trying to decide how to move on. Here's some background information to put things in perspective.
SCHOOL: We are in a suburban district with an extreme emphasis on test scores. (Thank you No Child Left Behind.) Entrance to the gifted program is only through in-district testing. I�m not as familiar with the districts special needs programs, but I do know from a friend with an older child with mild dyslexia that most of her special ed focuses maintaining grade level skills. This child is quite bright, but because she is making �appropriate grade level progress� with little intervention, the district provides very minimal dyslexia support.
DS7: The arithmetic score on the WISC places him in the gifted range, but the full scale IQ does not because of the large spread in composite scores. And yes - the low was in processing speed.
(That�s why that link from acs was so interesting to me.) After a lot of reading/research/internet surfing on my part, I think that DS7 is a highly visual-spatial learner with weak auditory-sequential capabilities. (
http://www.visualspatial.org/ has been a great resource.) He�s also very sensitive and emotional in a stereotypically gifted sense. Although we need to pursue more testing for LD, right now he is burnt out on testing and we need to wait for a couple months before putting him through anything like that. I've found some research on WISC subscore variation and the relation to LD. I'm going to set aside time to read the reports this weekend. Our tester was clear that he doesn't have much experience in this area and didn't feel comfortable interpreting the test results for 2E issues, so I need to talk to someone else when we are ready to pursue LD testing.
SCHOOL ISSUE 1: DS7 has terrible handwriting, but it is legible enough to be considered low-end passable for a child his age. He regularly doesn�t finish writing assignments on time, often because he spends time drawing what he wants to write first. He gets things wrong because his use of upper and lower case is inconsistent. On the other hand, there is no actual handwriting practice or instruction in the curriculum, and he�s often given unlined paper for writing. For example, he will get a spelling word wrong because you can�t tell if he intended an upper or lower case P in the middle of a word, but he�s writing his spelling test on a blank sheet of paper. He brings home assignments that he has to rewrite, because they weren�t neat enough, but the last time he had any actual handwriting writing instruction was the first half of first grade, and he is now finishing 2nd. The bottom line is that he gets lots of negative feedback about how he writes, but no help improving it. We�ve had lots of suggestions from the school about working on his fine motor skills, because the consensus there is that fine motor skills are the root of the problem. (Along with an implication that he should just try harder to write neatly.) All the little finger exercises haven�t changed his handwriting a bit. The pediatrician says that his fine motor skills are just fine and I tend to agree with the doctor because of his ability to work with small objects such as Legos. We are going to start an OT-based handwriting program in a couple weeks and we�ve been working on keyboarding at home.
SCHOOL ISSUE 2: This one is a combination of learning style, boredom, and his response to frustration. As I�ve been trying to discover how to help address DS7�s frustrations, I�ve stumbled into some techniques that point strongly to his visual spatial tendencies. DS7 has had trouble with spelling. The visual spatial web site recommended a technique that involves drawing the word on a flashcard and then manipulating the picture of the word mentally. It was a major breakthrough. Unfortunately, his graded spelling homework involves standard drill-based techniques like writing sentences and copying the words. We�ve used a similar technique for math facts. The school�s philosophy is that if you practice your math facts enough you will eventually learn them. DS7 has not learned his facts this way because he needs a mental picture or a pattern, so he hates the drills and thinks he is stupid because he is frustrated. At the same time he is bored and frustrated because they �keep doing the same stupid problems again and again.� (If he sees a pattern, he knows the fact immediately. If not, he needs to find a mental picture to explain the fact.) DS7 has trouble with rote memorization, but he simply sees fairly sophisticated math concepts. He was asking about square roots recently, so I had him graph x squared and square root of x. He looked at the two pictures and said, �They are just rotated! They are opposite of each other! Look at the line of symmetry!�
The bottom line is that it seems like his school environment functions in direct opposition to the way he learns best. There is an emphasis on repetition, and the school is very proud of the way that writing is integrated into all aspects of the curriculum. All of this is leading to a frustrated 7 year old who hates school with a passion and is beginning to assume that anything the school asks of him is arbitrary and pointless.
I�m not sure anymore that advocating for my child within the local school system will be enough. I would need change the NCLB test-centric instructional environment because that drives a lot of the drill-based approach and the fact that grade level achievement is the most central concern for each child. The concept of being on target for grade level creates a dilemma � does a child really have a learning disability if he is working above grade level? (That was a rhetorical question. I suspect that my kid has something that interferes with his ability to learn, but that doesn�t mean the district will see it that way.)
I�m leaning more and more towards home schooling (my husband is not) because I can change his learning environment in a way the school probably cannot. I�m not sure an LD diagnosis will address the basic assumptions that underlie the entire curriculum.
