I used to come on the forum all the time for my dd who is now 12 and doing well at a private school.She just got her first B+ (not all A's) ever. But I have another DD and I spoke of her a little. She is now 9.5 and in forth grade. She is struggling in school. I thought she might be dyslexic despite her love of reading. Her reading levels are DRA 38 but she DRA 38 in first grade. She is still reversing letters and numbers and at the recent PPT I was told she was starting to fail unit tests. I have known she wasn't working to potential since second grade. It was first grade when her report card showed that she was bad with time management. But her skills were all advanced. Now in fourth grade, she is still struggling to finish and her skills are behind especially with writing, math facts and long division. I knew something was wrong. She is in her second round of vision therapy and her teacher does all kinds of things to help her. She has her write the amount of time it will take to complete homework and time herself. She has her do only half of writing intensive homework. She has her use word prediction software at school.

Anyway, I requested testing from the school in September. They said no. I requested again in December. They said yes. I got the results today.

I will post them below. I have a meeting to discuss these results soon and I am wondering if you wonderful people (who helped me get through my older daughter's stuff) can help me to form questions for the staff when I go to the meeting. I would like to go informed. I have ZERO experience with LD's and all this. Oh, no dyslexia..

VCI SSS 49 Composite score 138 Percentile 99 Very superior

Verbal Subtest Score Summary
Similarities SS 16 Percentile Rank 98
Vocabulary SS 15 Percentile Rank 95
Comprehension SS 18 Percentile Rank 99.6

PRI SSS 43 Composite Score 127 Percentile 96

Perceptual Reasoning Score Summery

Block Design SS 10 Percentile Rank 50
Picture Concepts SS 13 Percentile 84
Matrix Reasoning SS 15 Percentile 95
Picture completion SS 15 Percentile 95

WMI SS 24 Composite Score 110 Percentile Rank 75

Working Memory Score Summary

Digit Span SS 13 Percentile Rank 84
Letter Number Sequencing SS 11 Percentile 63


PSI SSS 13 Composite Score 80 Percentil Rank 9 Low Average

Processing Speed Score Summare

Coding SS 6 Percentile Rank 9
Symbol Search SS 7 Percentile Rank 16

Full Scale SS 129 Composite Score 122 (interpret with caution) Percentile Rank 93 (interpret with caution) Superior. (interpret with caution)


She was also given the Woodcock Johnson III Test of Cognitive Abilities, Normative Update (WJCOG)

ss(90%) RPI Percentile
Cognitive Fluency 81 78/90 10 Low average
Retrieval Fluency 79 84/90 8 Low
Decision Speed 84 77/90 15 Low average
Rapid Picture Name 88 74/90 21 Low average


They have recommended her for the gifted program and also to be considered for special ed.

Consider assistive technology strategies to provide her with alternative means to produce her ideas within her writing.

Given her difficulty with processing speed, tasks should be presented to her in a linear sequence, rather than simultaneously. Clear and concise instructions should be provided to her for classroom tasks and it may be beneficial to have her repeat directions verbally.

Assign estimated task completion times to help focus her energy. It may be beneficial to shorten the assignments so she can complete tasks within time allotted.

It is recommended that she be considered for the gifted program.

She is happy and sweet and likes school. She is sometimes annoyed by her classmates. She says her reading books are very stupid, but plugs away anyway. She seems to me to be starting to think she is not smart. She has dropped some interests like running for student council because she was worried she wouldn't be able to catch up on missed work. She is polite, friendly, quiet but talks a lot..no attention concerns.

Also she loves minecraft and building things at home. She also reads too much. If that is possible. I really appreciate you all looking at this and helping me decipher it's meaning. Especially the WJIII scores. I don't understand them at all. I would also like any insight or advice on how to proceed. What should I ask. Is one thing more important than another. DD is worried about leaving for gifted program (twice a week) for fear of falling behind. Also what on earth kinds of things would she do in a special ed program? Work on her processing speed? I don't think you can do that..can you? Thank you so much in advance!

As introductory LD information for parents, several resources are listed in this post on another recent thread.

Hugs... I've been there. Getting testing done is always a mixed bag and can be a lot to take in.

First I am not an expert here. Hopefully aeh will put in her 2-cents it's always useful. But from my perspective there needs to be a bit more testing to identify the reading problems. You can tell from this that she has processing issues, but my guess is she needs a few more subtests to tease out what is going on.

My DD20 was diagnosed with a language processing LD back in 2nd grade. She in now a junior in college and doing OK although writing essays is always going to be a weakness and she will always be slower at reading. My DD isn't gifted and doesn't have dyslexia or ADHD. But I have found that some people will lump all reading/language LD's under the dyslexia umbrella. Her language processing issues did make her seem distractable in the classroom. The best way to describe her reading problems is if you asked her to read out loud she would skip all the small words that change the entire meaning of a sentence. Missing the work 'not' really changes a sentence. It's also always made multiple choice tests hard. Her reading was really slow and she wasn't comprehending what she was reading. So while her reading looked on track K and the first half of 1st grade because she had no problems decoding individual words. Her reading skills fell off dramatically once she was expected to read larger chunks of text. One test that made her LD really 'pop' was a oral test asking her if she could repeat back sentences.

I'm not suggesting this is what is going on with your daughter. I honestly can't really interpret the results except to notice the very low processing speed number. But I would expect the school to have done more subtests beyond the WJCOG.

The above accommodations sound useful. But I would suggest more look at the reading component. I'd have to look through all my daughter documents to figure out what all the sub-tests she ended up getting over the years. What we did for her included getting a private educational therapist, and she had an IEP for 2nd-11th grade that included resource help at school. This help varied throughout the years and was sometimes more useful than others.

Good Luck.

I may have time for more later... As a teacher I can tell you that Special Ed(as an educational term) includes gifted programming. It's comprehensive for any service that is outside the typical educational environment.

But as for the processing piece, yes, time management, comprehending/ internalizing directions, and written output are all things that can be worked on. Definitely have them give instructions step by step, and written as well as verbally so she can refer back as needed, if she likes having a "to do list" or agenda for the day (or task) let her have or create one, let her dictate her writing into a speech to text computer program if writing slows her down - she's a talker - use a "time timer" clock and start having her plan when she needs breaks and how long they should take. She's at an age when she has some metacognitive awareness about her learning process but not full autonomy about what she needs to do; a little more empowerment in the work stages may feel good and allow her to internalize some self-management skills.
My kiddo is gifted and a slow processor too, but in 1st grade. Maybe we can check in later... I hope this helps. If not, ignore it, trust your gut more than anything.
Good luck.

I was under the impression from the results that the only reason she was scoring low on the reading test was because of her processing issues. At home she reads way above grade level. She can't write very well though. That's when she reverses and is slow. Her reading is fast and her verbal (and I assume) reading comprehension was her highest score. So I think the dyslexia idea of mine has been knocked out. I do wonder in the processing could inhibit the scores of the perceptual scores a bit. If you would have asked me before, I would have said her gift was in spatial reasoning. She build things all the time. She is always noticing patterns and symmetry. It says on the report that the reversals may be to do her visual perception which is why she is in vision therapy. ..What kinds of tests should be done in addition. I don't think they plan to do anymore.

Indigo, Thank you for the link.

I wasn't very good at parsing the above scores. I didn't catch that the reading test was on of her best. But what I was trying to say that there are more 'reading' issues than just dyslexia. Have you figured out why she is not testing well in class. Is she running out of time? Could it be the way they test her? On a computer or on paper? The test for LD's is usually done one-on-one with an adult and it might have something to do with the setting?

I'm not quite sure in this case what sub-tests. They are lot of different ones for different reasons. When both my kids were tested (my DD through school and my son privately) they started with the above tests but did many different sub-tests to tease out the details.

When you say she is having problems writing do you mean hand writing. Would working on a computer help?

Im told she is way better writing on a computer, but writing at all is slow. I think this might be why she tested low with reading. I dont know though. Are there more tests in processing to figure out why it is so slow? Could it be due to her vision processing. She sowed severe deficiencies in certain areas of visual perception - especially shape recognition. Do the vision perception differences make the processing score low or visa versa? Might vision therapy help? Are there tests I should ask for specifically? There may be more results coming. Im not sure I have them all.

sydness,

I don't see any individually-administered NRT in achievement in your summary. Did they give her subtests from the WJIII Achievement? Or any other instrument, like the WIAT or KTEA? I would like to see
1. word attack data, like the WJ Word Attack, KTEA Nonsense Word, or WIAT Pseudoword Reading, or the reading cluster from the PAL-2.
2. oral reading fluency testing, like the WIAT, KTEA, or PAL-2, or the GORT-5, specifically to see how accurate her word calling really is, not just how quickly she zips through it (speed vs accuracy)
3. phonological processing testing, like the CTOPP/CTOPP-2
4. in-depth writing testing, such as the PAL-2 writing cluster or TOWL-4
5. OT testing to look at/rule-out possible motor reasons for her low speed.

Her cognitive profile is pretty clearly a marked relative weakness in processing speed (not restricted to motor speed, either), consistent across the WISC and WJ speed/fluency tasks, in the context of likely overall Very Superior ability. Perceptual Reasoning did take a little hit via a probable low estimate in Block Design, which is a timed motor task, in addition to perceptual reasoning.

What you report about classroom concerns lines up with this, as all of the items you name involve automaticity, which is in the same category as cognitive fluency and processing speed. Although her high-level thinking and problem solving are excellent, she appears to have difficulty storing and/or retrieving rote symbolic information (such as letter/number formation, math facts, and possibly irregular spellings). Dyslexia has not necessarily been ruled out, as she may be reading using memorized whole words, without a solid phonetic grounding for decoding novel vocabulary. With her high verbal ability, oral vocabulary, and voracious reading habits, you might not discover this until she starts taking say, biology, chemistry, or ancient history, when phonics skills suddenly become important. How's her spelling? Is it noticeably discrepant from her reading or speaking vocabulary? That's usually a tipoff that we should be looking for compensated or stealth dyslexia.

You should also be looking at the differential diagnosis with dysgraphia.

Vision therapy may help her tracking and convergence, but I'm not so confident about the reversals. That usually has more to do with encoding letters/numerals as images, rather than symbols, which is more of a dyslexic brain phenomenon, where these symbols are being processed with a greater visual>verbal bias than in the brains of NT readers.

Oh my! I have not received the rest of the WJIII! I will be sure to request it. Thank you!

Her spelling is bad. Functional, but bad. She usually has all the letters, but often in the wrong order. Especially if there is a "silent letter."

Funny you should say about her reasoning skill being high, but symbolic skills lacking. I was baking with her the other day. She loves it and I always have her do the fractions for doubling the recipe. The weirdest thing is that we have been doing this for years and she still can't READ the fraction. She doubles 3/4 and says she needs one cup and a half but then she can't, for the life of her remember what the 1/2 cup looks like. Can't read it for anything! Boy I know something is wrong. I really hate being right about this stuff. I have suspected dyslexia since she was around 4 or 5. But it really seems silly to say it out loud because she loves to read. She read all Harry Potters in first grade. She reads books she likes around 5 times, often picking up an old book and re-reading her favorite parts. How could she be dyslexic? I will get the rest of the WJIII scores and post for you. Will you tell me where to go from here to see if she has dyslexia?

My third edit and I have noticed many spelling errors in my original post. I don't often "see" my mistakes. I do proof though. Maybe she gets her troubles from me?

Oh, and yes, she did have and "in depth" motor skill assessment and gave her some pencil grips. I did not receive the report but I assume it was fine since the IQ/achievement said nothing about it. She walked at 11 months and rode a two wheeler at 4...

We have something in my house we call "4th grade onset dyslexia." The kids, of course, would always have been dyslexic, but it's 4th grade that things hit a wall, testing is done, and --we're super lucky -- IEP with Orton Gillingham tutoring begins.

You describe a kid not dissimilar to my two. At the qualifying meeting for DS9 a few weeks ago, the key quote of the meeting, from the reading specialist was, "well, he reads at a post-high school level, but he's not so secure on the alphabet."

We went through a lot of "a ha" moments with my DD 3 years ago when she was in 4th grade. It was a painful year for all. Many hugs.

Be careful here. It's really easy to see smart kids who read well, and then view the written product as sloppy and lazy. I'm not sure that's what is behind the comment, but tread very lightly. DD got a lot of "well, if you're so smart, why can't you..." comments from teachers. It started to rub off on us, and DH and I started with similar mindset. The fact of the matter is, that she was working just as hard as she could, and sloppy and the appearance of lazy was the consequence of her brain trying to do way more than it could handle -- too few skills were automatic. Apologies if my comments are misdirected. This is a tough age for a girl's self esteem.

In parallel with finishing the dyslexia evaluation (as aeh says, both my kids' diagnoses are based on differential performance between verbal IQ and academic performance on phonological processing skills), have you ruled out ADHD? I might suggest it's wise to have some clarity on these issues *not* being ADHD if this is the case, making it clearer to everyone involved that evidence-based instruction for kids with dyslexia is the right path for her.

OK, this is awesome. Fabulous. Wonderful. A school that, in one fell swoop, say "twice exceptional." Our district does this, and people are starting to move into this suburb from outlying areas just to get their 2e kids served. It's rare.

First -- your daughter is already aware of her 2eness at some level by expressing these worries. I would, in the absence of any other information, suggest you urge her to try it. First, it will bring her into contact with peers. Second, it can work on self esteem (or inoculate the self esteem in light of also starting special ed). In a school that recognizes 2e, the gifted teacher will also likely have some experience to bring to the table that the regular ed teacher does not.

As for what services will look like -- they will be what she needs to work on her goals. It's the individualized part of IEP. I'd suggest, though, that you need more clarity on the dyslexia part (as aeh is suggesting) to know exactly what's needed. An IEP can be tailored to teach specific compensatory skills that are needed to adapt to a low processing speed, as well as Orton Gillingham intervention to make the orthographic code more automatic in reading and writing.


You need levels and a baseline for high frequency words, for phonetic words, and for nonsense words.


I do the same thing, and I have a colleague who also struggles with similar issues. We both have kids with "4th grade onset dyslexia."

Get the report. Monitoring improvement for a kid achieving so well requires subtle reading of a lot of data. Even if it's nothing, document it and keep track of it. If you continue to have concerns, you need a baseline from which to work.

Finally, since I'm seeing bits of my DD in your descriptions -- when we got the neurospych report, and again when we'd finished the IEP, I took her out for chocolate cake, and we went through the data. 4th grade was terrible for her self esteem on so many levels, we've done a lot of work to communicate clearly and consistently: You are smart. You have the ability to learn. You can work hard and learn, but some of how you learn needs to be different from other kids. At the start, adults will teach you these new learning skills. Once you've learned them, the hope is that you can use them when you go on in school.

I had laid out the testing to her as a process of hypothesis testing -- her brain is wired in a way that learns differently than teachers teach; she can't learn certain things; she just needs to work harder and she'll learn eventually. (Certain hypotheses were less than genuine...). I walked her through the results to show her how the psychologist evaluated each hypothesis: "This verbal score means that you process words and their meaning better than 998 of a thousand kids, but this other score means that in a group of 20 kids, you might be the slowest to process the information." I explained that the doctor suggests that this would be really frustrating for a kid, particularly one that is so smart that she's aware of how others are experiencing the world. I walked her through the nonsense words bit, and explained that other kids actually pull apart each letter and sound when reading so that they can assemble a word from the sounds. It was stunning. She looked at me and asked "how would anyone do that?" It was revealing. It motivated her to cooperate with the OG tutoring and other intervention, and considering the cognitive skills, OG intervention lasted just a few months, and the gains have been retained.

Certainly. Collect testing reports for anything that she has had already. You can request additional testing through the public schools. Alternatively, you can take what you have to a neuropsych, and obtain additional testing. Either way, you will want both to present your suspected concern (stealth/compensated dyslexia), and be open to other possible exceptionalities (e.g., ADHD, DCD/dysgraphia). Make sure subsequent evaluators have access to prior testing, so they have better context, and don't unnecessarily duplicate/invalidate testing.

I'll be happy to look over any other data you find.
The early milestones you report are gross motor and mostly lower trunk in nature. Fine motor and upper body tone/coordination is a different animal. I wouldn't too easily assume that it was truly fine, as, if the OT didn't have the cognitive data to compare, he/she might have assumed everything was okay because it was at least 85--which would be okay if her cognition were uniformly 100, but isn't so fine if PRI numbers are well above average.

Your responses were very helpful. I had the meeting today. They are not allowed to give me their opinion as to weather I should seek more/outside testing.

The did give me the WJIII results though...The seem fine to me.

Broad Reading 123 94%
Letter word ID 122 94%
Reading Fluency 123 94%
Passage Comprehension 114 83%
Reading Vocabulary 127 96%

Broad Written Language 125 95%
spelling 116 86%
writing fluency 120 91%
writing samples 124 95%
editing 119 89 %


Broad Math 114 82%
calculation 117 88%
applied problems 114 83 %
quantitative cocpts 130 98 %

oral language Ext 128 97%
story recall 120 91%
understanding directions 113 80%
picture vocabulary 123 93%
oral comprehension 125 95%

academic skill 124 95%
academic fluency 117 87%
academic applications 123 93%
academic knowledge 87%


She also had the occupational therapist test her.

BOT -2

Fine motor precision 20 above average
fine motor integration 14 average


Beery
Visual perception 101 average


Therapist said she has beautiful handwriting in isolation but is inconsistent and forms some letters from the bottom. She said many times that teaching her to write would be frustrating and a waste of her time and that she should focus on text to speech or typing.

Dysgraphia was mentioned, but no further test were indicated.

I asked about word attack and the test was not given.

So, she is starting 45 minutes, twice a week in the gifted program with is group, research projects and presentations.

She is also starting one on one special education to help her organize her writing and math help.

She will be seeing a person to help her use assistive technology for writing as well.

She will be given extra time on state tests.

The psych said she would check on her from time to time to make sure she is coping.

Should I be looking into anything else?

My hunch is that these scores do not indicate dyslexia.

I asked the team if they suspected any further disability and they were not allowed to answer and the teacher said she has to turn her back...I think she did suspect...because why not just say... she is confident. Anyway, I'm wondering what your thoughts are..

Again, she reverses letters, doesn't know left from right. Cant track. and seems to have hit a level block in reading and writing. Can't finish anything when timed.

She was diagnosed with "specific learning disability."

Thanks so much for all your expertise.

Other things I would request.

Does she get extra time on in-class tests? (Not just the state tests.)

How well does she type? What about being allowed access to a computer to type anything that requires a lot of writing.

She is in 4th grade. Perhaps a modification that allows her to type answers to 'homework' worksheets where there is a lot of writing. I can remember my kids having assignments in 4/5th grades that were huge packets of filling in answers on worksheets based on the social studies or science texts. And I could imagine this type of assignment could take hours for your daughter and get very frustrating. Maybe someone could scribe her answers? Maybe she could do only every other problem & the teacher could provide her a key so she could study for tests.

Can you get homework/seatwork assignments shortened. I don't know about your school but I remember a lot of busywork. In math as well.. One accommodation I got out of my DD's 5th grade teacher was that she could do every other problem of the math homework.

I wouldn't worry about the 'forms some letters from the bottom'. IMO it is an outdated idea that letter should be formed from the bottom and unnecessary. As to knowing left from right, is she strongly handed? My husband is ambidextrous and because of this is not very good with telling right from left because of it.

Those WJ scores are pretty good in general. I think it is clinically significant that the OT emphasized that handwriting should not be her avenue, despite average and above test scores. Her clinical sense is telling her that there are struggles not captured by the test scores. (And her Beery VMI is a bit low, considering how well she did on the WISC-IV PRI--though it matches Block Design.) None of the tests given address phonological processing, phonetic decoding, or phonetic spelling (the subtests from the WJ that would have were not given: sound blending, word attack and phoneme/grapheme knowledge, respectively).

They are in an awkward position wrt recommending further testing, as that would be tacitly acknowledging that their initial eval was inadequate, which, on some level, it was. OTOH, the team clearly feels that she is dyslexic and/or dysgraphic, because they gave her the special ed classification of SLD, which pretty much is IEP language for dyslexia, dysgraphia, or dyscalculia. (Those terms are rarely used in IEP documents. Instead, they are named Specific Learning Disability-basic reading skills, written expression, or mathematics (reasoning or calculation).) So, in that sense, the eval was adequate--because it resulted in the appropriate services for writing and math.

I would still like to see the phonological processing, decoding, and encoding testing. Ask the school first. They might do it (or they might not have the right assessment tools, which might be another reason they are hesitant about additional testing).

But great that she is getting both support and advancement. Good place to start from.

Well, Thank you for your amazing insight. I am still getting my head around this. On one hand, I am so thankful to the school for identifying her as both gifted and LD. I know that not all schools consider the gifted part. I am so thankful that they are including her in the gifted programing. On the other hand, I feel like the term "specific learning disability" might not be specific enough. They are allowing for more time, allowing and encouraging her to use type her assignments and pulling her out for direct instruction in writing and math. I really think I aught to be thrilled! But they have not addressed her reversals or her left/right confusion. I did 2 level of All About Spelling with her last year when I homeschooled. Maybe I will just be happy about what they have offered, not ask for more dyslexic specific testing and work on the third All About Spelling book with her during the summer. The school really does seem to be doing their part. I do suspect the classroom teacher has more information than she is sharing. She is very factual and wont talk much. I think she probably things dyslexia and can't say. I'm sure she has seen it before. In fact, this teacher is the former gifted teacher. Earlier in the year, she told me that the program wasn't that great in elementary school. But to make sure we get her in by middle school. Again, thank you so much for th information. I guess I am still thinking..

If they were to do dyslexia-specific testing, and she were identified, the intervention ideally would be some version of Orton-Gillingham or Wilson reading, which is the basis for AAS's home program.

Specific Learning Disability doesn't really get more specific than SLD with an academic area appended to it. There are eight:
oral expression
listening comprehension
basic reading skills
reading fluency
reading comprehension
written expression
math calculations
math reasoning
IEP software I've seen doesn't usually have a field to put the category of SLD (though it may be in the IEP somewhere, just not an obvious place).

Dyslexia, in IEP language, would be "specific learning disability in basic reading skills". Unless the phonological processing and basic decoding of unknown words testing are done, and reveal personal or normative deficits, this classification would not be supportable based on your existing testing. The primary intervention that is not likely to be available without the classification is OG reading instruction, which would be ideal to have throughout the school year, but which, yes, you could cover through supplementation with AAS.