Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment reading test scores - not sure what to do.

We just had DD8 do some testing with Langsford Learning Centers specific to reading. For years we've been concerned that she just didn't seem to be "getting it," though the teachers/school have not been.

The results were interesting. Many of the comprehension type scores were up in the 90th-99th percentile. But many of the ones related to reading mechanics were closer to 50th-60th - with spelling at 42nd. (More specific scores at bottom.)

Langsford thinks perhaps her "right brain" skills (comprehension) have been so strong that she has not needed to develop her "left brain" skills (phonetic processing, phonological awareness, word ID). They think they could help - but it is a lot of time and money.

For us it is obvious that she despises reading to herself, struggles with it, and refuses to do it. (She loves being read to.) Lately I've been offering to occasionally do the reading for her for some math websites, science activities, etc - and I've been blown away with her abilities in these other areas when the reading piece is taken away.

I want to find a way to help her, and to get her to at least be willing to read. Obviously, she is at or above grade level even in her lowest scores, but there is a mismatch with her high scores. Any ideas or feedback or comments are welcomed!

Thanks,
Susan

Scores - Langsford does a combo of multiple normed tests that help them direct their tutoring:
Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization Test-3: 61st percentile
Rapid Digit Naming - 63rd
Rapid Letter Naming - 75th
Woodcock Reading Mastery Test Word ID - 59th
Woodcock Reading Mastery Test Word Attack 74th
Gray Oral Reading Test - Fluency 63rd
Rate 75th
Accuracy 63rd
Wide Range Achievement Test-3 Spelling - 42nd

Gray Oral Reading Test Comprehension 98th
Diagnositc Achievement Battery-2 Story Comprehension - 95th
Expressive Vocab 93rd
Detroit Tests of Learning Oral Directions 99th
Diagnostic Achievement Battery 2 Math Calculation 95th

Was she taught 'nonsense' words as part of her learning to read? I'm curious because both my kids were tested in pronouncing nonsense words as part of their evaluations in reading. I'm assuming it helps to isolate their understanding of phonetics... perhaps that might help her?

I don't know if she was taught nonsense words, but she was definitely tested on the nonsense words. That's one of the things she did not do very well on. She just doesn't have a good grasp of English language rules/spelling - at least not compared to her oral comprenhension. (Probably because she hates to read so she doesn't see the words very often!) :-)

Right this second (though I change my mind every half hour or so) I'm thinking that we should just try to find ways to address this on our own this summer, as opposed to a formal "program." But I feel incredibly underqualified...how in the world do we help her?

Amy, do you know if there is a system or program for teaching these nonsense words? Or maybe we just need a basic phonics program....

England is just introducing a phonics screening test for all children at ?6 ?7 I forget, and it involves reading nonsense words (presented as being the names of aliens, IIRR, to persuade children not to give the closest real word instead of decoding them phonetically). This has been criticised in the popular press, but yes, my understanding is that it's an effective way to test phonic understanding, and thus identify children who might currently be able to read adequately for their age because they've memorised a lot of sight words, but who will struggle later.

And yes, a good phonics programme is what's needed - but also, you need to be prepared for it maybe not to work easily, because if a bright child hasn't worked out phonics on their own by the time they can read pretty well, it is possible that it may be a sign of dyslexia.

The whole point of this test is that you can't guess the word or recognize it based on visual memory. You have to "sound it out" so you need to know phonics. As mon stated, it is one type of screener for dyslexia.

Your daughter sounds a lot like my DD and her scores are somewhat similar to DD's. DD has high IQ scores, middling language arts achievement scores and rock bottom spelling scores. Unlike your child, my DD also has significant issues with writing. Our educational tester diagnosed DD as HG with dyslexia and dysgraphia. She recommended testing through Lindamood Bell and an evaluation by a pediatric optometrist.

We asked the school to evaluate her for dyslexia. Their results were inconclusive. They said that she was not appropriate for Orton-Gillingham reading instruction because her decoding skills were strong. Since we didn't trust the school completely, we had her tested through LMB and they used a similar testing battery to Langsford. When we reviewed the results, the salesperson from LMB questioned whether their program was appropriate for us. At most, she recommended one of their short sessions (a few weeks) to tighten up her phonemic skills.

I took DD to my optometrist first because I knew that she wasn't going to try to sell me something that I didn't need, i.e. expensive vision therapy for DD. She found that DD had significant tracking and convergence problems that the school never noted. She referred us to a vision therapist.

We opted to pay for VT and address phonemic awareness at home. I know that some people question the validity of VT. For my daughter, it significantly helped her tracking issues and decreased her headaches which she never realized she had until they were gone. VT decreased her reluctance to read but DD still had/has issues with her reading.

At home, we also did a lot of guided oral reading (check out the Sally Shaywitz book Overcoming Dyslexia for a detailed description). After a very intense summer, when DD tested at school, she read with 100% accuracy but slightly below average for speed. Her teacher thought she was slowing down too much to maintain her high accuracy.

A few years later, DD reads at least two years above grade level but not at the level one would predict based on IQ. She reads without protest but is not a voracious reader like her siblings. She still has many characteristics of a "stealth dyslexic."

I don't know whether Langsford is the magic key for your DD. It sounds like she may benefit from tightening up her phonemic skills. You may want to get her eyes checked too. You also may want to read the Eides' books Misdiagnosed child or Dyslexic Advantage if this rings a bell with you.

master of none is correct about nonsense words - they aren't a skill that's taught, they are used as a way of testing a specific type of reading skill that is useful in diagnosing reading disabilities.

Susan, I don't know what the answer is for you re is the learning center investment worthwhile, but both of my daughters struggled with reading. I'll tell you a little bit about both, since each touches on your situation but in two different ways. To summarize before I bore you with the details, both daughters had different issues that impacted their ability to learn to read, but in both cases it was really important to understand not just what areas they were struggling in but *why* they were struggling - what was causing the lag in those areas. Although the challenges they both had/have showed up first in learning to read, reading wasn't the challenge, it was a different skill that was called upon in the process of learning to read. So that's my potential gotcha for entering into a program to remediate reading skills - are you sure you're addressing the real challenge.

My dd10 was identified in first grade of being at risk for a reading disability by the school and referred to a multi sensory learn-to-read program. We chose to send her to a private summer school program and she was given most of the same tests you've listed above as part of her intake into the program. I don't remember anything about her specific scores, except that they indicated she needed help and one note from the tester that she copied from the board in a very odd manner as well as a note that she was easily distracted by noise - much more so than the typical child. Her teacher felt she made progress that summer (we saw a tiny bit of progress but it was very very slow), and her teacher also noted that our dd was an auditory learner much more than a visual learner. That was probably the most helpful piece of information that came out of all the work dd did that summer, but it didn't occur to us at the time to wonder *why* she was an auditory learner. The next year in 2nd grade back at her regular school she was struggling even more and we eventually took her in for a full neuropsychological evaluation, where we learned that she was having some rather severe difficulty with her vision (her eyesight was 20/20, but she had double vision, one eye shutting down to deal with it, troubles with tracking, and extreme lack of peripheral vision). She went through a year of vision therapy to address those issues and by the third month her reading ability just took off like wildfire.

Our dd8 also struggled with reading, but she's HG+ (older dd is MG), and was doing so well in school overall that it wasn't until 2nd grade that her teacher saw what we were worried about at home - her reading ability was lagging far behind what we all thought she should be able to do based on her verbal communication skills. We didn't have any concerns outside of reading, so instead of taking her for a neuropsychological assessment we consulted with a reading specialist who administered cognitive/achievement testing as well as dyslexia screening tests. What we learned was that the challenge for dd8 wasn't reading but was a large discrepancy between her overall cognitive abilities and one intellectual ability which severely impacts her associative memory - so even though it seems like she learns by visual means, she doesn't remember things she learns visually in any reliable way. It was recommended that she use audiobooks for school as well as remediating spelling using auditory programs rather than relying on visual learning.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thank you, thank you for the stories! We are actually also getting a full neuropsych eval - we weren't able to schedule her final day of testing until mid-June, and realized that would be too late to get into many summer reading programs, so have coordinated with the psychologist and Langsford to do this separate reading-specific eval with no overlap. I'll be very interested to get that in late June. (BTW - I think Langsford is somehow associated with Lindamood Bell.)

Langsford felt that dyslexia was NOT an issue, because none of her scores were "low enough." I think she is a very strong auditory learner also. (At least, on that test at langsford she was in the 99th percentile.)

We did have her vision checked last year, wondering if that could be a problem. They didn't find any issues, but I have read that for some things you need to go to a specialist to have the eval done.

Knute, I'm wondering what you did to "tighten up" phonics at home? Any book or workbook or system? I was just googling phonics programs, but many seem targeted to much younger kids.

I love the ideas and book suggestions and will absolutely check those out. And maybe a specialist in developmental vision issues?

I appreciate the input!!
Susan

Sorry that I don't have a specific program to recommend. I went to the reading specialist at our school. She pulled materials from a bunch of sources and gave me an inch high stack of copies with exercises to try at home.

One thing I'm learning about hanging around this board is that this is generally a red herring. Yes, most kids with dyslexia will have much lower scores. However, a child with a ton of verbal firepower under the hood can compensate quite well. It's not until they get older that the neurological gaps start to show themselves.

The profile you posted looks quantitatively quite similar to my DD's reading profile, given as part of a neuropsych exam, which identified dyslexia and dysgraphia.

As of Monday, DD is on an IEP for reading (phonics), spelling and writing. The goals are very high because her reading ability and comprehension are at a high school level despite her middlingly average scores 4th grade levels for things like decoding and spelling.

The way it's been explained to me is that there are two parts of the brain that have to coordinate to read and write -- the message part and the mechanics part. For kids wired like DD, these don't operate in parallel well. She needs to use them in sequence. Because she has such strong verbal skills, she's just dropped using the mechanics part, inferring meaning for unfamiliar words. At the moment, we're now doing the equivalent of patching the dominant eye to train the lazy eye --giving DD a ton of the mechanics where the meaning has been stripped to give the mechanics part exercise and training.

In practice, this will be done with a lot of phonics with multi-sensory approaches to get her to focus on these mechanics. Once she's learned them, then we teach her to use them together with her skills to infer meaning. When it comes to writing, the plan is to teach her to write for meaning first, and edit for mechanics second (including, for instance, the writing of mathematics). Because of this need to sequence, she's qualified for extra time on tests, including state standardized tests.

I'm piping in to second the "stealth dyslexia" idea. My DD had rapid digit/letter naming in the 16th percentile but still reads above level...though in K she was reading at grade 3 and now she's finishing grade 3 reading at grade 5.

It's more or less a coincidence that this has been coming out from a university study she was in over a period of three years. You can see the scores going down, but she's still fine. They can get super high comprehension scores, in my understanding, from all the words they've learned to memorize and from context clues (these are really smart kids!)

We gave the school the university scores and they said they couldn't comment on them. For the rapid naming and any areas that had to do with "nonsense" the school said DD probably just refused to do them because she wouldn't have liked "nonsense". The university folks said "no way".

Now that she's working with more difficult words that you have to break down/sound out (this week were "dis" words like discouraging, discontinuing) you can really see the lack of skills. But since they've never done phonics (I used to do it with her when I homeschooled her but have been leaving her alone the past two years because the words have still been all ones she already knows) it's hard to know if that's part of the problem.

Her teacher DOES NOT say the spelling words when they are given to her group, the teacher writes them on a white board and they copy them down. The teacher doesn't say them, put them in a sentence, or break them down. We get some very, very interesting interpretations of words/spelling if DD can't quite copy them down quickly enough. The teacher gives her a "star" after supposedly reviewing them. I would think that step is the time to realize the fact that DD didn't get it, and to work with her. They just let her do this, and if i don't work with her at home, she just gets it wrong on the test.

Once word this week does not exist and I did a little playground survey of other moms to ask them what they thought. Between the odd spelling and her handwriting there was mostly head-shaking. Notes and conversations about this with the teacher have been going back and forth for a couple of months. We're going to seek outside advocacy after testing is complete, since she'll have this teacher next year for a loop.

Then at home there is hair-pulling, crying, and arguing, then we use the dictionary, and finally we get them all pounded out. She practices them with breaking it down, spelling, sounding, etc., and some drama (she likes to have the letters, words and their meanings discussed and maybe dramatized...I guess that's her multi-sensory idea) then she gets 100% on the spelling test.

So I guess the point of this very long post is to support the idea that they can have those markers for dyslexia, have learned to read, and can get so far with their compensation skills. It just takes longer for the whole thing to catch up with them.