Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional High reading level but low comprehension???

Hi all,

Sorry I haven't been here in a while.

Things have been so much better for DS9 at the new school, however I've realised that while he is no longer refusing to do classwork/avoiding work etc as he was at the old school and before we discovered some visual issues, I feel like we are still missing something.

He reads really well - he has done so since kindergarten, but before we found the visual issues, would often skip or replace one small word for another (and for the, leave out an/a/he etc), and had problems with keeping his place. This has all improved drastically since getting glasses and doing some visual therapy.

However - we still have a reading level of (I could have interpreted this incorrectly, but it seems to be) about a 7th grade level (he is finishing 3rd grade now [we're in South Africa]); BUT his comprehension is really poor (I'm not even sure I can say I feel this is at grade level).

His school runs a "reading bingo" challenge offering various levels - i.e. level one has them read a book with at least 85 pages, a Dr Seuss book, a book of poems, a joke book, etc, and then increases to reading Dahl, Diary of a Wimpy kid type stuff and so on.

The most recent level has one of the items as a book with at least 350 pages. We got him one of the How to train your dragon series books with 400 odd pages and he claimed to have finished it in about 3 days - when pushed a little (he reads fast, but not quite that fast) he admitted that he had skipped all the pages with text only...

Surely this isn't normal?

We suspected dysgraphia last year, but he did the edublox programme (old name was audiblox), and his handwriting improved to match grade level. However, his writing ability is also not what I'd call a match for his reading. By this I mean when he's asked to write a paragraph, he seems to have no idea how to do this, even though he's read many of them, and has been taught how, if the instructions say the paragraph must be at least 5 sentences, he will simply write 5 unrelated sentences.

I do realise that all kids are going to have strengths and weaknesses, however, I don't feel that that is the case here - there is just too big a gap, and to me, if reading is really strong, shouldn't it follow that comprehension and tasks like paragraph writing should be similarly good?

Please, if you have any ideas or can point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it!

(Just want to add that while he has done much better at the new school, he has not been skipped/accelerated etc, and the only extension he has really done is the reading bingo. I think the teacher is open to offering and helping with extension, but I think something is keeping him from tackling this. There is definitely a discrepancy between demonstrated potential and performance. We are going to be homeschooling next year and want to skip him in the areas where it will best serve his needs - at the same time we don't want to do this if it's just going to frustrate him due to perhaps 2e issues we don't know about.)

What grade is he in? A nine year old could be anywhere from third grade to fifth grade (and that makes a big difference).

Does the school do any regular achievement testing? If not, I think that you should pursue some academic testing. DD was tested twice at age 9 on two different writing tests. She didn't write more than a few sentences within the time limit and on the second test (the TOWL) it wasn't even enough words to be scored. The test is scored based on her age and at age 9 they would expect several nicely put together sentences (and that would probably only be average).

hi blackcat,

He's in third grade now - at the end of it, our school year finishes in December.

I've spoken to the OT who worked with him on his SPD, but she says the main reason for doing the type of handwriting assesment you're describing would be to get extra time in tests, which wouldn't really be of benefit now as we're going to be homeschooling.

Besides dysgraphia, is there anything you might suspect?

Given SPD (how was this diagnosed?) and a comprehension issue, I'd want a full workup with a reputable neuropsychologist. There are many things that can contribute to comprehension issues, including weak language processing, weak social skills, weak inference skills, and so forth. You want an expert to figure this out for you.

Would you think dyslexia is a possibility, based on what you've seen? Looking at the reading level/ comprehension gap, one possibility might be that he is not decoding in the usual way, but rather is using other strategies and compensatory mechanisms. These can get the job done, and in a kid with high verbal skills and a good memory, can get the job done surprisingly well. However, for most people, by-passing decoding is inefficient and exhausting, using up all the available cognitive resources: there's no automaticity. So it may mean they can read OR they can think about what they're reading, but they struggle to do both at the same time. Can you see if his comprehension is much better when he is read to, vs. than when he reads himself? That might help differentiate a bit whether the block is in his reading or elsewhere.

You mentioned a number of reading issues that have improved since the VT. Do you still see a lot of skipping small words, and replacing big ones with logical but incorrect alternatives? These are common habits for dyslexics too, who seem to be particularly challenged by those small meaningless words, and whenever possible would rather guess a larger one from context/ first letter than attempt to decode. Another check would be spelling, which tends to remain abysmal even in dyslexics who are excellent readers.

I have a 7 year old with Aspergers who scores pretty high overall in reading. For example on the WJ iii Achv. test his broad reading is a 139. But his Passage comprehension was a 112 and Writing samples a 116.
A poster here was able to explain and validate how this can be common occurance with kids on the spectrum.

His Broad math -160 and written language- 145 are DYS levels,but my sons overall higher level language skills are only upper Average/High average. My sons reading fluency is very high though.

An achievement test of some sort would be very helpful for you to get a better understanding of his comprehension.

I also have a 7-year-old with Asperger Syndrome who reads aloud very fluently (and is an amazing speller), but struggles with tests of comprehension. More testing is probably warranted, whether or not that testing might result in accommodations.

With writing, it's not necessarily a handwriting issue, it could also be that he just doesn't know what to write or how to get the words on the paper. The evaluator who assessed DD claimed it is because of impaired executive functioning ability and ADHD.

Thanks so much for all the replies, there's a lot of food for thought here.

The SPD was diagnosed by an OT after doing a SIPT assessment and after we'd filled in a sensory questionnaire. He had quite serious modulation issues, but after about a year of OT with a great therapist, she graduated him as she said he was soaring through every challenge she was setting him and there didnt' seem to be anything problematic that needed more work. He did The Listening Programme for auditory processing while he was in OT.

The mystery here is this:
He decodes very well (phonics are really strong)
He spells very well (will write out spelling words 2-3 times in a week as part of the set homework, he doesn't study for the weekly test, and still gets 95-100%)
His verbal score pulled down the non-verbal - think verbal was 128, non-verbal was 136, overall was 132.
We did suspect a possible expressive language issue - however we are a bilingual family, and this seemed to resolve itself? When he was still in OT he would often just say "Never mind" as it just seemed to be too hard for him to put words together to express himself. He says ummm a lot, and he used to describe a word instead of using the word and then go Oh! YES! when we supplied it for him. Once on the way to OT he said a string of words that made no sense whatsoever, then sighed and gave up. This did improve a lot when I told him I'm happy for him to take a breath and think through what he wants to say, I can wait. This is much better now.
I did wonder about stealth dyslexia - the visual assessment basically resulted in us being told he is working about 3 x harder than he should be - but there has been a definite improvement in terms of losing place, replacing words, skipping etc. It still happens on occasion, but generally when he's not wearing his glasses/is tired.

Blackcat what you say in terms of he just simply doesn't seem to know what to say/write rings true with me. I often feel like he has the vocabulary department of his brain, but the writing/planning part of his brain doesn't seem to be working together with the vocab? I don't know if that makes sense.

My nephew has been tested and has Aspergers. DS did a number of austistic-type stuff when he was younger, but a lot of it seemed sensory related (eye-contact, not liking hugs).

Maisey and ElizebethN - the pattern you describe seems pretty familiar.

My question would then be - did getting the diagnosis help you in terms of helping them? I'm not hunting a diagnosis for diagnosis' sake, I more just want to know if there's something that we can look at and go ok, so we need to really work on building x and y, we have to explicitly teach these skills, he will probably always need help with b and c, type thing. I just want a better picture so that I can help him not be frustrated by - well, life - unnecessarily.

Platypus, we've been told he's a dual processor, so he tends to fiddle a lot while being read to, which makes it hard to know whether he's really listening, but I'd say that when he is listening, the comprehension is about the same as when he reads the story himself?

Thanks again for all the replies, I really appreciate it!

It is possible to have more than one thing going on. There may well be an expressive language issue here.


Often an SPD diagnosis by an OT shows you an incomplete picture. I'd want someone to evaluate for autism spectrum disorders as well as a full range of testing regarding reading comprehension and language fluency.

Not knowing what to say or write can be a language disorder, a social skills disorder, or both. Knowing exactly what skills are missing is vital because it tells you what to work on. I'd say to pursue the testing.

ITA. I'll also add that it can be a confusing and difficult issue to see. Our now-high-school ds has an expressive language disorder, but we didn't really notice signs of it until he was first diagnosed and accommodated for dysgraphia, as well as matured enough to be able to tell us when he was struggling with output (he started telling us about it around 4th grade / 9 years old). He was diagnosed at 10 years old with the expressive language disorder, but even that diagnosis has changed a bit over the years after working with an SLP on some of the basics, then other pieces of the challenge-puzzle become apparent. I am a huge proponent of having a neuropsychological or some type of global assessment when you suspect issues like this. The diagnosis is just one part of the eval - the important thing is you'll come out of it (hopefully) with a much better understanding of what's going on with your child, as well as recommendations for a path forward to accommodate and remediate. It's not the end of the testing phase necessarily either - for instance, if the neuropsychologist feels there may be a reading-related issue, he/she may recommend further testing by a reading specialist. The key though is, when you go to those other follow-up specialists (such as the OT), you won't be going there "in the dark" with just a guess, you'll be going to the appropriate professional for evaluation/help.

In your OP you mentioned your ds "read" a large book by skipping pages with all text, and asked if this has happened with other people here. My dd who has a reading challenge did this - especially in 3rd/4th grade when the other kids in school were starting to read "big" books and she wanted to look like every other kid. The Warrior books were really popular then, and she'd check out a new book every week when her class went to the school library. She's in 6th grade now, has had years of reading tutoring and help, and *still* will say she's read a book when she's really not even looked at most of it. Reading challenges can be very tough, and if there is one, you need to figure that out early on. As the years go by in school, there's so much potentially lost in terms of vocabulary development that happens for children who aren't keeping up with reading comprehension. Plus by the time they are in middle school the ability to read well plays a key part in all their work.

Best wishes,

polarbear

That is exactly what a full evaluation will give you. I started to type something like this yesterday, couldn't make it "sound right," and deleted the whole thing in favor of what I did post. But the idea that he shouldn't bother getting diagnosed because the accommodations that he would get don't apply in a homeschool setting is wrongheaded. The point of testing isn't to get accommodations, it's to understand how to teach the kid so that he can reach his potential.

I would second seeking a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation. If I am understanding correctly, most of the diagnostic information you have comes from OTs. As much as I love the OTs I've known and worked with, honestly, it's a field rife with diagnosis and treatment protocols that are, shall we say, not evidence-based. And, of course, the concerns you have are much wider than those falling within the expertise of an OT.

ElizabethN - I don't think I put that well/properly. It was meant in isolation for 1 thing - getting a handwriting evaluation done, the sole purpose of which seems to be to see if a child requires extra time to complete tests - seems not to hold much benefit in a homeschooling environment.

On the contrary, getting a full evaluation to give us the big picture is exactly what I'm looking for - I don't want us to start homeschooling and to end up feeling like we failed because we were missing a whole lot of info on DS that would allow us to make the accommodations that will be necessary regardless of how he's being educated.

You also need to understand that things are very VERY different here (in South Africa), just in terms of knowledge/awareness, even among the professionals - I have asked teachers about my concerns numerous times, I asked the psych he saw for school related anxiety (and who just wanted him on Ritalin even though she herself said the evaluation didn't indicate a strong likelihood of ADHD). There is very little in place here in terms of support and processes, and to be honest, I wasn't even aware we HAD any neuropsychologists, and apart from people on this forum, no-one has ever recommended we see one. (It turns out we do have neuropsychs - there are 42 registered with the association here - that's for a population of about 40-odd million).

So please don't think I'd just write everything off because we're going to homeschool, that's not at all what I meant. BUT, I did need to ask whether those of you who'd been through the evaluations had found them useful and meaningful enough to recommend them. He has been evaluated by an educational psychologist who said tests indicated sensory issues, and referred us to an OT who then did the SIPT etc. He's also seen what I'd call reading specialists at edublox, who did an evaluation on his reading, and worked with him on the areas they thought problematic. He's been for a full visual assessment and we've gotten glasses and done visual therapy. He's done TLP for auditory processing. He saw another psych for IQ tests, and yet another for the anxiety last year. None of these specialists seemed to pick up on anything they felt needed further investigation, and none of them advised us to do further checks, or to see anyone else.

I do think a lot of this has to do with simply not having experience with gifted kids - if he's (just about) coping with some grade-level stuff, and way above grade level on others, why on earth would we be concerned - that's basically the impression I get when I try ask someone here about this.

aeh, I appreciate your input - it's not that I'm only going to the OT with all this the whole time, it's just that my daughter is in OT now and I remember discussing possible dysgraphia with her when my son was still in OT, but at the time she said she could only test from age 9, so we didn't get there. Since he is now 9, I asked her about it again, and this was when she said the main purpose would be to ask for extra test time.

Thank you all for your advice, I appreciate it.

Sorry, this juxtaposition just made me laugh and I had to point it out.

Good luck to you!

I also suggest a full neurosyc workup if you can figure out a way to get one done. My two kids both have language processing disorders with varying degrees. DS16's (my gifted child) is only expressive language. While my older DD was diagnosed with an LD in language processing and struggles with both reading & writing. She would do what you describe as skipping/replacing small words and her comprehension was very poor. (Neither kid has handwriting issues.) But her decoding skills were right on grade level. DS on the other hand seemed to do great until 6th grade when he started to get 'stuck' when trying to write essays and didn't understand how to get the information in his brain out on paper. Evaluation and working with trained professionals have helped. It was a bit startling to realize my second child who seemed so advanced at a young age had some of the same challenges his sister did.

I have one suggestion for working with comprehension that comes from the professional who I hired to work with my daughter. Comprehension is best worked on with short non-fiction texts. Articles from a newspaper or magazine, 1-3 paragraphs taken from larger text. (These texts can then be at the child's reading level.) Non-fiction tends to be more concrete.

Have your son read fiction books at a level his is comfortable and work up. Clearly he is not ready for a book with too many pages without pictures so I'd back off on that until he is ready. It's just going to turn him off reading.

How about you try "The Invention of Hugo Cabret". It's a great book and it's "long" but still has many pictures and not too many on each page. And it's a Caldicot Medal winner.

As to is this part normal. I believe this a common asynchronicity in early/gifted readers. Teacher & parents tend to see reading level and say.. OK my kid should be able to read Harry Potter. But while my DS could read the "reading level" for HP in 1st grade he was NOT ready for that level of book. And it's why he spent most of K/1st reading non-fiction.

Reading level often is calculated basic on complexity of the words/vocabulary. I bet he finds Hugo Cabret an easier read even though they have very similar reading interest levels and reading levels. My experience was when you tested my son against short passages my son read extremely well he just wasn't ready for the task of reading quietly long stretches of just text. I don't think this is that unusual.

As I said in my previous post I would back off a bit on the "length" requirement of his fiction reading. Just make it fun. Has he tried the Geronimo Stilton books? They were a huge hit with my daughter when she was in 3rd grade. And I believe the use of multiple fonts per page helped. And Graphic Novels are an excellent choice. It's an area of books for children that's really growing and I think it particularly helps with kids like this.

Edited to add. Do you read with your child? I read with both my kids until they were older than your son. By K we were chapter by chapter reading a book together nightly before bed. (Often something 2-3 grade levels above their solo reading.) This is a great way to teach how to comprehend a longer book and I'm surprised how many parents stop reading to their child once they can read to themselves.

Good Luck

ElizabethN - Lol. I'm really "lucky" in that of the 42 neuropsychs, half of them are in our province, so chances of getting to see one (for us) are better than average. haha. But - if I hadn't had you all point me in that direction I wouldn't have ended up getting that million to one chance, you know?

bluemagic - his best friend is reading all the HPs, and loves to play at "dueling", so he keeps starting and trying to read it, but then I think his eyes just get tired - his first comment when he opened book 1 was that the text was way too small. (I saw recently that they've brought out an illustrated version of book 1, and this is on my Christmas list for him).

Reading the larger books is not something I've pushed (except where it's for the reading bingo for school, but for those we generally take him to the library or a book shop and let him pick a book that he wants to read that meets the criteria - it was just this time he wasn't with me, but he loved the movies so I thought he'd enjoy it, and he seemed to, but did the weird skipping thing) - he's gone through a number of Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, but I also think he's been skipping pages there, I don't think he's read the whole book.

It also now makes me wonder about the Roald Dahl's he's read, though I have to say that with those his comprehension seemed somehow better? Maybe the grade level/text size was just the right combination at the time?

He begged for a science textbook at a homeschooling expo we went for, which we got for him as it was layed out really nicely, almost like Ripley's / Guinness book of records with small chunks of info that he's enjoyed reading because he can read 2 paragraphs and get something from it and not feel he has to finish the chapter.

But I'll definitely use your tip in terms of building comprehension, thanks so much!

Oh - yes! I read with the kids every night as part of the bedtime routine, have done since DS was tiny. I will confess this has generally fallen away at the moment for DS as we've gone through a patch of longer homework/busier days/later bedtimes etc, so probably for the last month he's been reading on his own while I get the girls settled into bed, then we've just been doing prayers and a song... I'll revive this.

For homeschooling next year I very much want to let him go with his interests at whichever level he wants - as long as he's reading and enjoying it (which, for the most part, he seems to be), I'm not really phased about reading level - not in terms of my child HAS to be reading at X level by Y time type thing. More just a "why is my child reading at this level but struggled with comprehension and paragraph writing at this level?"

Thanks so much for all the input and advice... I'm trying to track down a neuropsych not too far from us, but will also ask for recommendations with the Mensa-associated psych who did DS's IQ assessment.

It might be worth seeing if an electronic version, where he can choose his font size, makes a difference. It really helps my DD with both reading and writing, though I couldn't tell you if it's due to her dyslexia, ADHD, visual processing or something else entirely. Just know she's much happier with 16 points than 10.

I am so much happier with 16 pt....the bigger the better!

Platypus, I've tried him on eBooks before, but it seems to be that there's just too much text - maybe it's that it's all together/too close together and there's not enough white space to give his eyes a break?

The mystery continues - I'd been reading a chapter or so of HP1 to him each night last week - over the weekend he said he couldn't sleep and then finished the book... after checking in with him and doing a comprehension exercise (multiple choice so low-stress and quick), he admitted to skipping most of the last three chapters. He's desperate to watch the movie though, and because I know he's really sensitive, I wanted him to have the self-filtered version his imagination creates from reading before dealing with the movie graphics. But I think the temptation was too great and he just wanted to be able to watch the movie...

The thing is now I'm not sure if the comprehension level was better because he's interested, or because it's multiple choice and it's providing the vocabulary he may not otherwise have been able to piece together himself?

In general though, I do feel his comprehension was better for this than it's been in some time.

So. Hmm. Still not sure. I've been referred to someone to ask who we should see as it seems the neuropsychs here deal mostly with brain injuries and not much in terms of global assessments/evaluations as described here.

Just out of curiosity--how do you know that he has a high reading level? From your description, I was wondering if you are choosing things for him to read that are just too challenging for him. Have you tried checking his comprehension on easier books?

My DS is nine and in 3rd grade. I really do think reading and comprehension can be at two very different levels.
Comprehension is complex-- it requires patience, an understanding character development, following a plot arc, *and* in our case, the biggest hindrance as a 2e learner-- the ability to coherently explain either verbally or in writing what the book was about.
It's the reason that teachers recommend a bandwidth for "true" comprehension that seems far below what a child reads for enjoyment.

Cammom that makes sense to me. I do think there is some kind of 2e going on. He has to write a speech for school, and when he climbed into the car with hubby after school yesterday, he was excited about it, had planned out what he wanted to look up and talk about, and once home he went straight to the computer, got his pen and paper ready to make notes, and found a site that actually was a great resource for the topic he'd picked.
Then the wheels fell off - right at the point when he needs to start reading, extracting meaning, and writing what he understands. Instead, he will sit and write out word for word everything he’s reading on the web page. And we’ve realized that his behavior from this point (which always follows the same pattern), seems to be an effort to sabotage everything until we call it a night – and he hasn’t had to do much in terms of writing/understanding the material. We always feel so impressed with his motivation and work ethic, but then he hits the same point and something just isn’t working, and it’s amounting to a lot of frustration – I think especially his side, which he’s then showing by slowly balking more and more until he simply refuses to do anything further - and will also push every button so that we aren't focused on the work being done (or rather, not done?).
Please don’t misunderstand. We are peaceful parents, we support and guide where he needs or asks for it, we’re not peering over his shoulder, criticizing and correcting him on everything he does. We offer a lot of encouragement, and we help where and when he needs it or asks.

Flyingmouse, Schonell put his reading age at 11y 6m, when he was 9y 1m. I've tried various other reading assessments over the years (there's also that San Francisco one I think? Sonlight's only goes up to grade 4 and he zipped through that when in 2nd grade) and they invariably place him between 2-3 years ahead. I’ve checked in with him maybe once a year since he started reading, just to try see what I can try offer that he might find less boring than the school readers he was getting.
While I will confess to trying to steer him away from Diary of a Wimpy Kid (which I don’t like), I’m actually just really happy that he enjoys reading, so I usually just get him what he’s into as and where I can. Right now he’s begging for HP2 so he can take it with him on an overnight school camp they’re going on this week. This is not at all directed or pushed from my side – his first thought on waking is HP, and his last before we say sleep tight is where I think we could get the second book (my collection is patchy – I have books 1, then 5-7). So I don’t feel I’m pushing him or only putting stuff in front of him that I feel is appropriate, or that my expectations are off…