Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Does this look like an LD?

My six year old first grade son recently had a homework assignment for math. The homework was to describe a button. The sheet asked "What are some words that describe your button? List as many as you can. My son wrote
it is a SRCOL no sides. it has no coners. ti has 4 hols. it is bLue.

My question is does this seem developmentally appropriate for a first grader? BTW, my son scored much higher on PRI than VCI. 114 on VCI, and 137 on PRI, and some people have told me that a huge spread like this can be a red flag for LD's. I'm still debating whether or not we need to see a neurologist.

I wish I knew. Is there any way to get into the classroom and see what the other kids are doing? What does the teacher say? On the plus side that. Is a lot of writing. At that age my son would have writtem: Round. Blue.
Love and mor love
Grinity

From what I have read his writing looks "normal." Now, if he has been writing that same way since the beginning of last year, I would be a little concerned.

I had very similar concerns about my daughter's writing in grade one. I was continually told that it was age appropriate. Still, it niggled at me that it was not in keeping with her 'so called' abilities. Another big flag was that she fought writing tooth and nail (I'm talking tantrums). She has recently been diagnosed with stealth dyslexia and dysgraphia and both of these diagnosis took two years of parental pushing to obtain. She did 'okay' enough that no one was as concerned as we were. My advice: if you are concerned, have a writing assessment done by a psychologist who has experience with gifted children. Learning disabilites are harder to diagnose in GT kids. DD's VCI and PRI scores were above the 99%ile. She had a spread only with WMI 34%ile

For example, on DD's CTOPP her phonological awareness score was in the 58th%ile and pseudoword decoding was in the 73rd%ile. Not too alarming, unless you compare it to her GORT-4 scores that showed she read at a grade 5 level as a grade 2 student. She so obviously is NOT reading, but has rather memorized the shape of every word she has ever come across. An average child could have the same CTOPP scores with little concern, but the sheer difference between how well she reads paragraphs versus how well she can read individual words that she is unfamiliar with is very apparent and a red flag that many pychologist dismiss.

This year, in grade 4, her writing assessment showed 16%ile for contextual conventions (mechanics of writing) and >99%ile for story composition (ideas and context). When you compare these two scores there is a frightening difference that highlights her struggles.

Learning disabilites can't be diagnosed with an IQ test alone. My DD has had two further assessments and is going for another in January. We are determined to name and label every single challenge she has so that we can advocate for her accomodations to the best of our ability. I wish that I could go back to grade 2 and have started pushing for diagnoses much sooner. We were thrown off track by the GT diagnosis and lost some valuable time being reassured by her teachers that everything was fine.

Um, wow, Kathleen'smum. Your description of your DD's struggles are nearly identical to DD9's -- high reading (we have no grade level, but ">99%ile" by grade), mixed CTOPP scores with nonsense syllable reading at 25%ile. She is being evaluated this afternoon, but it's not clear that testing will be today.

We've also suspected issues since first or second grade, with deteriorating writing skills after kindergarten, which is when she learned to read. I have been reluctant to pursue this with the school until this year because we were pushing for math acceleration. Because the process was contentious (I think I still bear the scars of the experience) I had been trying to see what traction we could get at home working on these skills.

I'd also been slow to pursue much because no descriptions of various LDs seem to fit DD. She lacks many of the so-called hallmarks for dysgraphia. She also started in another program within the school, and I had been thinking that the writing weaknesses were a result of a poor fit to that program for grades 1-2.

Now the school is under the gun on LD services (close scrutiny from the state), and DD's math placement is obviously right and feels secure. We're doing our own testing now so that I have my own independent understanding of DD's issues.

I know this isn't answering the OP's question. That's not far off from what DD would have written in first grade. There's a lot of content in what's written, but I think if I were to do it again, if I didn't see improvement into second grade on the use of capitals and getting the i-t order right, yeah, would have pursued it sooner.

I think the key is when did the child start learning to write and how long have they been writing? If they learned the same time as the rest of the kindergarten students, there might not be an issue. If they've been writing since they were 3 or 4, I would look into a LD.

It seems appropriate to me for a 6 year old. Our school doesn't do any real spelling work until third grade!
I feel spelling is important, so I make 10 spelling words a week for each of my kids- we flip through them quickly each day. They both have like photographic memories. They both stopped spelling like that.

In answer to your main question "Does this seem developmentally appropriate for a first grader?" my answer is yes. My DS6 is in 1st grade, and what your DS wrote looks like 1st grade writing when there's no teacher prompting them to remember their capitalization and grammar. On its own, I don't think your DS's writing looks like a learning disability at all. However, similar to other posters, if it's out of context compared to your DS's other abilities, perhaps it's indicating something.

My DS6, and most of his classmates, would likely write something very similar to what your son wrote. DS6 still spells phonetically, although is starting to remember more of his recently learned phonics rules and is starting to spell a little better.

The first grade teachers at our school request that parents don't correct spelling on homework as long as the children are spelling phonetically. SRCOL is a phonetic spelling for circle, especially if the "R" family phonics rules are new to your DS or haven't been taught yet (er, ir, ur and or, ar); same with when "C" makes the k vs s sound. May be plenty easy to read, but not so easy to recreate in one's head from scratch.

We suspect some kind of LD with our DS6 because his reading abilities lag so far behind his other abilities. He's reading "above level" for his grade level, but it doesn't match the fact that the rest of his abilities are 1 to 2 years ahead. We did dyslexia testing on Monday, and have no official results, but the tester thinks it's likely not dyslexia and is rather related to his lower processing speed (which we know from IQ testing) and possibly working memory. My point in saying this that, even if your DS's writing sample is developmentally appropriate for 1st grade, it may not be developmentally appropriate for *him.* If your parent gut is telling you something's up, keep exploring it.