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Last winter, DD10 was diagnosed with dyslexia and dysgraphia by means of differential performance on the WISC and the WIAT, as well as various spelling, nonsense word reading tests, and phenomic awareness tests. She learned to read quickly and painlessly in kindergarten, almost entirely by sight. Individual word spelling has always been ok, and her reading level was not tested since kindergarten (due to low ceiling for stopping). When she was fully assessed through the IEP process, she had sub-second grade level phenomic awareness, including no short-vowel awareness (0/5).

The school put her on an IEP at the very end of the school year last year. She's been doing 200 minutes a week of Wilson, plus she has push in services from an IS focused on writing.

The school is making noises along the lines of ending the Wilson remediation. She's flown through the levels, and after 45 days of services appears to be 80% through what is normally a 3-year program. For the decoding skills, she now ranks between 6th and 12th grade levels based on the test.

I'm thrilled she's done so well. She's looking forward to not having such a crazy schedule soon (she's got 9 teachers across two schools). My concerns are two-fold:

*I can't find much written on the effects of high-intensity, very short term remediation. I don't want to be back in an IEP meeting in 3 more years again discussing that DD can't sound out nonsense & unfamiliar words. (Any real words that might ever be found in fiction reading are read accurately and instantly by recognition. Evidently, this includes words like "prevaricate" and "piebald" on 11th grade lists, both of which she then defined.)

*If I were to have her do another neuropsych exam in a few years (say, before the official end of the IEP), how would I expect the results to look like? That is, supposedly the neuropsych exam picks up on the brain functioning and coordination differences of dyslexia. My understanding of the testing she was given is that it picked up primarily on the effects of the dyslexia and dysgraphia. If we've successfully remediated them, then she should be able to perform on the nonsense word reading and syllable segmentation tests.

Stated another way: I know that dyslexia is an effect of brain function and structure. The brain can be trained, but the fundamental functioning isn't changed. Therefore this is something to be remediated by not cured. Is there a testing difference between "remediated dyslexia" and "no dyslexia"?

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What does it take to move these skills into her writing? Her spelling in her written work is improving (not good, but I don't have to guess as much), but high frequency words are still hit or miss. Is this just a matter of time? Should Wilson be continuing at some level until the spelling in the midst of writing a message has improved?

Next IEP meeting is in January. I'm trying to think through everything to make certain that any gains are retained. To do that, I need to understand the metrics more fully.

I would go to www.dyslexicadvantage.com and post your question there. Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide might respond.

geofizz, those are great questions - and we aren't dealing with similar challenge so I don't have any answers for you, but one idea I have is do you have a local chapter of the national dyslexia association (I'm sorry I can't remember the name of the group). One of our ds' spelling tutors years ago was affiliated with the group, and I think they have chapters in every state; our local group is made up of parents and professionals. It's possible you could ask through a contact from that group what their experience has been.

Re what the neuropscych testing in a few years, although we aren't dealing with a reading challenge, I can tell you what repeated neuropscyh testing looked like for our ds12 with the severe written expression challenge. He had a diagnosis of Disorder of Written Expression from his first neuropscyh eval in 2nd grade, based primarily on discrepancy between the results of ability and achievement testing (typical WISC vs WJ-III achievement). When he was retested in 5th grade, he'd been working with an SLP for almost a full year on written expression, and he still could not independently write a paragraph without tons of support and prompting. His scores on the very narrow WJ-III subtest for writing that was key in the original diagnosis, however, went from way low to very high thanks to that full year of SLP work because it was part of the very basic first step toward writing remediation. Thanks to that one subtest improvement he lost his DOWE from the neuropsych. We had other test from the same time frame as well as a ton of classroom and home documentation that he clearly couldn't write, but we no longer have a piece of paper from a neuropsych indicating it's a problem (he still has his dysgraphia diagnosis from the neuropsych). Why am I mentioning any of that? Just that it's all quirky and a challenge staying on top of what is an issue vs what is a diagnosis and advocating through it all, so you have my empathy!

Best wishes,

polarbear

Great question. I can only speak for my own DD. She is MG, if that, but at the very least very bright. She took 3 years to reliably learn the alphabet. She started yr 2 not reliably able to say both the name and sound of every letter and unable to read. She had intensive intervention at school for 3.5yrs starting at the beginning of 2nd grade and was still receiving remediation at the start of 5th (though less).

At the beginning of 5th we had her assessed by a psych/speach team, they declared that "there's no question she's dyslexic", almost all her scores were now at least age appropriate. But key areas were not (nonsense words, phonemic awareness, etc), or were still well below her verbal IQ even if not much below age. And in their words "We can tell it's not natural, she can do it - but manually / laboriously. She tests like a dyslexic kid who's had intensive intervention". That was 9 months ago.

She's just had another round of assessments (don't ask). And her reading accuracy is now 18-20 months advanced, her reading comprehension 2+yrs advanced and her spelling is age appropriate (not in her writing yet, but it's getting better there too). This most recent assessment did not cover any of those finer grained tools for looking for dyslexia and there is no way in the world this evaluation would have lead to a dyslexia diagnosis, even though only 9 months ago a different team said "there's no question".

I think if she'd started that intervention at 10 instead of 7 she probably could have gotten through it in 1/3 of the time... but we'll obviously never know.

She moved schools half way through 5th to a public school, so lost all her support hours and I am not seeing anything going backwards literacy wise. I don't know yet if she will keep progressing as quickly without the support. I suspect she will. I think I have done more for her spelling than school has and that the other skills learned will not be lost because they are developed enough to progress somewhat independently given she now reads well enough to be using them constantly.

My feeling is that I would be scared to loose the support in your shoes but I am guessing that while she clearly needed to be explicitly taught those skills, she's gifted enough to take them and run with it. Yes her brain will always be different, but she's a gifted child and those gaps that didn't come naturally are being filled...

Thank you! It seems there's not much experience with our situation. Ahhh, more uncharted waters.

KJP, thanks for the tip. I'm awaiting permission to post at that site. Evidently it takes >24 hours for human being verification. It also dawned on me to contact DD's neuropsych with these questions, particularly what subsequent testing would look like.

polarbear, thanks, Ill follow up with the International Dyslexia Association. They have a branch here, that's hopefully more useful than their website.

Mumof3, so it sounds like what you're saying is that seeing the dyslexia through the testing process after effective remediation is a matter of experience and qualitative observations. I was wondering if that would be the case. When I took DS for a followup speech evaluation, the tester said she could see he had "therapized" speech.

Question: is the school suggesting that you end the Wilson reading program, or is suggesting that your child no longer needs any type of support or help such as an IEP or 504 plan? These are very different, and my reaction would be very different depending on the answer

My son also went through the Wilson program, and he went at 3 to 4 times the pace students normally do. I think that schools are not used to seeing students who have profound learning disabilities along with very high IQs, so that the remediation goes much quicker than expected. He went through the program at about seven or eight, and he is now 12 years old. He is a voracious reader, if it is something that he likes. For example he is currently researching papers online about antimatter. Some of them are on a college level, but he has no problem devouring not only the content but extrapolating on what is published. On the other hand, he still can't spell worth beans, and if someone wanted him to take a nonsensical test For spelling, I am sure he would fail it.

If the school is saying that they thinkm the Wilson Program is no longer doing enugh benefit for the amount of time it is taking away from the classroom, then I'd listen. if they are making noises that your child no longer needs continued support and accommodations in the classroom, I would fight very hard to keep whatever accommodations there are in place.

The discussion is just the one-on-one Wilson to go away. The other accommodations are staying put, as well as her writing in-class intervention.

DD is not missing any class for this. She's got a topsy turvy schedule. This is happening during 5th grade math time, and she then misses recess and half of social studies for her math period.

The more I read up on all this, the more I'm concerned that very short-term, intense interventions do not lead to lasting gains.

ABQmom, why do you think your son still struggles so much with spelling? This is the type of think I'm talking about. Your son did Wilson quickly, can read well, but is still struggling with spelling.

Geofizz, my husband is dyslexic and dysgraphic with an IQ somewhere above 185. He still can't spell. He's successfully founded three tech startups, is an EE and very articulate. But he can't spell.

Agatha Christie still can't spell, and she's a best-selling author.

Some things can be remediated, some will get less difficult with maturity, but you may find that some things can't be "fixed" - only worked around.

I find each year, my son does a bit better with some spelling, but especially when he is writing reports, I'll find the same word spelled a multitude of ways within a couple of paragraphs.

At some point the progress had hit a stand-still with Wilson, so we decide to focus on other things. I refuse to make him study for spelling tests, because it is crazy-making. He can regurgitate them all the night before the test and still score a 15% on the actual test. So, instead, we use the time to do something he will retain.

Each kid is different, so what I say may not hold true for your child. It has just been my experience that the spelling isn't going to get a lot better than it is.

For my DD10, I believe that her inability to spell comes from a lack of automaticity. When she writes, she may have the correct spelling and 2-3 other phonetically correct spellings of the same word in the same passage. She can't copy with any accuracy either. So, she could be asked to rewrite something, fix all of her spelling errors but then make errors in the words she previously spelled correctly. It has gotten better over time but never truly goes away. My husband is the same way. Spelling is still a challenge for him. Correct spelling is in his head but he can't always distinguish it from incorrect spelling that is phonetically the same.

There is a great passage about this in the Shaywitz book on Overcoming Dyslexia. I don't have it in front of me and my paraphrasing will not do it justice but here goes. Using fMRI technology, they figured out that dyslexics don't use the automatic word form area of their brain when they are reading/writing. Instead, they use multiple other areas of the brain to read/write. Their brains literally process language differently. This lack of automatic word form may be the root of their spelling issues.

This.