Hi,
LONG...
I am really not sure of I should be posting here or not. I am conscious that I might just be worrying too much, however I thought I would ask your opinions'.
Dd (just 5) was tested on the SB5 at 4y 3m. Her scores were FSIQ 144, with a non-verbal score of 150. Her verbal score was 134 (I think, I don't have the figures in front of me), however she didn't complete two of the verbal subtests (test fatigue - she refused). Despite her being so young, the tester (who only serves gifted kids, so very experienced) felt her score was an underestimate. This is borne out by what she does at home (she's yet to start school). She reads at a 4-5th grade level, including comprehension (assessed using the DORA online assessment mentioned elsewhere on this site a few weeks ago, but also reflected in what she does read when she chooses to, which is not often). She is currently doing a maths work book for 9 yos with no trouble (and this despite the fact that mostly she spends her day playing.) She's not terribly interested in academic stuff as a rule, other than science, so she hasn't had much practice at either compared to what I read about. I'll be curious to see how things progress when she starts school next year.
What worries me is that she seems to display some symptoms that I (in a very uneducated fashion) associate with dyslexia. She writes her numbers backwards - not just writing an individual number back to front, but she will write 51 for 15 for example, on a regular basis. When I have gently pointed out that they are around the wrong way, she will say 'but it doesn't matter while we're home mum' (I mentioned it will be important to write numbers the right way at school if she can). In fact I would say she rarely gets them the right way round. Her letters have gotten better with practice and she does do a lot more writing than maths, so perhaps it's just a practice thing.
The other symptoms that I have noticed are that she will often substitute words while reading, using words that use a different combination of the letters contained in the text or substituting a word that 'looks' similar. She knows her phonics, but is reluctant to sound words out and often skips letters and sounds when she does. She will often read a word perfectly on one page and then be stumped by it on the next. Familiar words on their own can confound her. She can seem to read some very complex words without issue, but struggles with easier ones. She often writes b and d around the wrong way and puts the stroke on her y's and p's on the wrong side.
Her spelling is not great, assessed at barely a grade 1 level on the DORA test (great for someone who has not yet started school and who doesn't practice much, but well below her reading level). She tends to spell phonetically, but often leaves out vowels. I was a bad speller - so maybe it's just genetic!
She hates maths facts and struggles with them (again, me too), but gets more abstract concepts seemingly immediately (though as I understand it, that is not uncommon for gifted kids anyway).
Having said all that, her hand writing is very good. She picked up phonics easily, but struggles to apply it. She misses most punctuation, but picks up some without fail (I.e. quotation and exclamation marks).
She has great motor skills, gross and fine. She is great with rhyming and her reading is for the most part pretty fluent. I don't pick her up on a lot of her mistakes (she is super perfectionistic, so I tend to praise what is correct rather that draw attention to errors). She's (surprisingly, given how much any other error upsets her) unfazed by these errors. So I am not sure if perhaps it's just that she isn't interested in this level of detail at the moment and/or perhaps I haven't taught her enough to enable her to complete these things correctly. Or if it is somethings that is more of an issue.
Any thoughts?
