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I'm just curious if anyone has had this specific set of characteristics - our dd8, was recently screened by a reading specialist. Previous IQ testing showed a marked weakness in associative memory (the type of memory that is used when learning to associate symbols with language). Her current reading evaluation shows a scattering of abilities/levels - so I won't try to remember all of them right now, while I don't have the eval in front of me (I'll try to post them later). The one that stood out, however, was a very low score on sight/symbol knowledge. She didn't do very well on the GORT either, but nothing low enough to send of fire alarms with the screener.
I have the Dyslexic Advantage packed away at the moment (I've read it previously re my older ds).... but I'm just curious - does this sound like anything anyone here has dealt with or something that might go along with stealth dyslexia? Her screener actually gave her a dyslexia diagnosis, but I'm not sure she fits what is considered a typically dyslexic profile based on the other test results. She's testing at grade level for comprehension at school... which isn't what we would expect given her IQ, her drive, and her achievement in other subjects.
ps - her current teacher thinks she's unmotivated, trying to manipulate everyone into thinking reading isn't easy for her, and also thinks I'm a helicopter mom. I have been holding back from screaming at someone over that for the past 3 weeks since our last conference, so I just thought I'd mention that here among parents who've btdt, and also felt occasionally like yelling at a teacher lol! Thanks for letting me vent
When my DD was 8, the teacher interpreted her issues as lazy and sloppy. Sadly, to some extend, so did we as her parents. Her reading had always scored way above grade level. Her writing, including spelling, conventions of writing, and flow were barely at grade level in 4th grade, having consistently fell from 1st into the 4th grade.
DD scored in the 25th percentile for phonological processing (CTOPP) at school when she was 9. They took this as "no problem here", despite a rapidly spiraling child. A lot of this was that the person making the evaluation knew little about the rest of DD's performance.
We had an outside evaluation. Her diagnosis was based on the differential between her verbal processing (>>99th percentile) and spelling (40th percentile), spotty performance on reading comprehension (varied between grade level to above the level they were able to test), and below level phonological processing.
The school accepted the diagnosis on the spot, and she received Orton Gillingham at the school. That evaluation placed her at very basic levels for letter sounds and phenome segmentation. She evaluated significantly above grade level on everything after 4 months of OG, with spelling now 3+ grade levels above present levels.
Thanks so much for your reply geofizz! The thing that has me puzzled (a tiny bit, I think I'm less puzzled after re-reading the reading specialist's detailed report).. is... dd8 scores well on the CTOPP - not outstanding, but she's way above average on phonological awareness, and average (right around 50th percentile) on phonological memory and rapid naming awareness. She hasn't been through a neuropsych eval, but based on what our neuropsych told us when she saw ds, and based on what the educator that dd8 saw previously for a dyslexia screening, she would have to have deficits there to be considered dyslexic. Of course, they aren't counting discrepancies vs IQ as "deficits", just thinking in terms of the CTOPP scores by themselves.
SO - her CTOPP wasn't all that remarkable other than showing an actual strength in phonological awareness. Her GORT scores, otoh, are low - 25th percentile for fluency and comprehension, and her overall reading quotient from the GORT is at the 23rd percentile.
The really low score was on the WIST - sound/symbol knowledge was 5th percentile. That's a test where she's given a progressively harder list of letters and then letter combinations and has to tell what sound the letter(s) make (can be multiple sounds)... she got very few of these past the basic one-letter sounds, and didn't even get all of those. And she's in 3rd grade, and she started trying to learn to read on her own when she was around 4. She's had some very explicit instruction in this sound-symbol relationship at school in 2nd grade... argh. I'm not sure why it is so difficult for her. The other tests were "higher" enough than the sound-symbol that if I didn't know her, I'd be tempted to wonder if she simply didn't try on this test or checked out or something, but the reality is that she stumbles on letter-combos while she's reading to us over and over and over again unless it's a word she has already committed to memory and knows well. Her spelling is also really *really* a mess. She can ace a spelling test but has to study for it with some fairly extreme effort, and a day later she can't spell the same words.
It's encouraging to hear your dd benefitted from OG - I am not sure which program the reading specialist recommended for our dd - she told me when I met with her but she didn't include the name on her report. The reading specialist is also planning to administer another comprehension test before dd starts working with a tutor, so she may change out programs... not sure at this point.
Polarbear - if you have a child who is struggling or has known learning difficulties, it's your job to be a helicopter mom. If you were down there having a hissy fit because she wasn't picked for the best part in a play or wanted a teacher to give her better grades she didn't earn because of your ego, that is being a helicopter parent. The truth is that likely none of us here like being so intensely involved in our child's day to day activities as school, but being a helicopter parent is the only consistent source of support some of our kids have.
As to the dyslexia, I think my kiddo's symbol scores were really low. His speech therapist and special Ed teacher used the Wilson Reading Program, and it made an amazing difference.
DD's IS doesn't quote test names in the report, but DD's initial OG evaluation looks comparable to the WIST. She also bombed on several consonant sounds, and only got 2/5 short vowel sounds when they started.
We were also seeing the same issue with spelling tests. We hit on a routine to get the 12-word list learned in the 7 days we had it, and I was sending email requests to the teacher to please get the lists to us on time. A fire drill would send her off kilter to being unable to learn the list. Post OG, DD seems much more 'normal' in her ability to learn the list, though little of it sticks after the week unless the word lists are build on underlying meaning -- prefix and suffix lists have been effective.
Where these two kids sound different is that DD's oral reading score has always been quite high. No one was able to explain why DD couldn't decode anything and yet was reading easily and fluently.
On the teacher, for DD, these issues started cropping up in third. The teacher was wonderful. I've been dropping less-than-subtle hints that I want ds to have the same teacher next year. I love this teacher. And yet, she missed it entirely. In 4th, the teacher was less than great, and issues became severe. She was supportive in affirming that DD's skills were incongrous, but that DD seemed stressed. The undercurrent was one of us as parents putting too much pressure on her. The outside report showed the diagnosis and explained a lot of what DD was encountering and struggling with in the school day. The report was well written, and pretty much gave everyone in the school a "pass" in having missed the problem because she had compensated so well.
I'm still surprised they gave us an IEP (DD consistently scores "Advanced" on state tests...), but it was so beneficial. It also got us a perfect teacher placement for 5th grade. At times I felt silly to persist, but in retrospect, seeing where we are now, it was totally the right thing.
My son had superior scores on phonological awareness (95%), high average on phonological memory and average at rapid naming. But he got low average 16% on segmenting non-words and 25% on rapid color naming. My understanding is the difference is really the problem.
Also - he barely passed his TPRI screening, but then got 100% on the actual TPRI test. That should have been a clue to us, but the teacher was not concerned. Now I know better. I would be on this early if I were you, too.
Have you gone through this slide show? I hope the link is okay (I'm at work and can't access various things online...)
My DD on the CTOPP private testing has 16th percentile for both the rapid naming areas and 30-somethings for the phonological awareness (I can't remember what those are called) Two schools we have given this data to either rejected it (public) or completely ignores our communication (current private).
Her writing isn't as bad as some kids with these issues, but for her IQ/effort it's pretty painful to read, takes a long time, and her ideas don't come out. She has all the caps/lowercase/punctuation errors as classic, even when she'll score 90%+ on a quiz at school when they have to do multiple choice for knowing the rules.
Her reading comprehension is outstanding but she also has amazing visual learing abilities. She doesn't appear to have an ability to sound out words the way you'd teach a kid (when she encounters a word she hasn't seen), she makes wild guesses, does word substitutions, and skips over words.
She like other posters' kids is heading in a downward direction when you see her scores (as well as fatigue) from year to year. She's going to be going through a program this summer to re-teach things and hopefully help the writing for the next grade.
I hope this makes sense. I'm really rushed. good luck
p.s. her verbal/performance on WISC has huge gap and IQ and performance gap is too much of a descrepancy to consider acceptable. Similar to your DD's school, my DD's schools aim for attitude/motivation and seem to consider frustration to be more of an emotional disturbance and not based on the fact that she is dealing with these ridiculous gaps. I haven't strangled or screamed at anyone yet (though have become tearful at meetings unfortunately - it's hard to love my DD and have all these "professionals" be so dense about understanding these obvious gaps all her young, important years of early schooling so aggravating!!!!)
