It's late here so what I have time to write might not make much sense lol! But fwiw, my ds has a similar profile in terms of dip in processing speed with a low coding score (his dip is a little larger/lower); he has a diagnosis of developmental coordination disorder with fine motor skills are impacted, and dysgraphia. So here are a few jumbled thoughts for you -
"This kid HATES to write and will really work to get out of it, but when she did it, she can do it like a TENTH GRADER?!?!?!" -
It's important to remember that this type of achievement testing measures very specific skills in each subtest. I think the subtest you're referring to is the sentence composition - I'm not familiar with the WIAT (we've always had the WJ-III) but, I'm guessing it's probably a test where she's given a few words or pictures and told to make a sentence out of them. It really isn't a test of the full depth of what makes up "writing" and "written expression". My ds has always scored extremely high on this type of writing achievement subtest, yet he has a severe challenge with generating written expression - he can create simple sentences out of a string of discrete pictures, but when he was the same age as Butter if you gave him an open-ended writing assignment and he's years behind grade level if he could even get started.
It's helpful also to remember that the grade level indicated on achievement tests of this type doesn't mean you could plop the child with this score down in the middle of that grade of that type of related class and they'd be fine - it's a statistical measure that tells you that compared to the sample of students in that grade that the test is normed on, your child is performing at that level relative to the rest on that one specific task.
Our ds' achievement test scores were also very scattered like your dd's are. It helps to make sense out of them to group them by response type and prompt type - was the question asked orally or did it require reading etc and was the response oral or written, did it require handwriting or circling, and was the subtest timed. You may find a really strong pattern emerges where time and handwritten response subtests fall lower in scores than the others - which would fit in with the lower score on coding (which is a timed "handwritten" test).
Last thing about the achievement tests - your dd's scores are all very strong in spite of the scatter. I am sorry I can't remember what you've written specifically about her situation in school in the past - if she's happy and doing well, then having that dip in processing speed might not mean anything really - it could be just that she's a perfectionist. However, the psych seemed to think there was a fine motor component - did he follow up with any other testing that shows it as fine motor? Our ds had tests that included things like finger tapping, visual motor integration etc that helped to define his dip in processing speed as fine motor related.
You mentioned whole-word reading - that's how our ds learned to read to. FWIW it might be worth reading a bit about stealth dyslexia and see if it fits your dd at all. The testing profile might fit - our ds fits both the testing profile and the Eide's description stealth dyslexia.
Re acceleration - we didn't grade-skip our ds, and for him, that was a good thing in early elementary *because* of the impact of his fine motor issues. It definitely wasn't ideal - I wish in hindsight I'd advocated much more strongly for him to have grade-level acceleration in the subjects that he is strong in (math/science/reading). However... his writing skills were troubling for him even in with same age peers and we needed to deal with that first and foremost at the time. We did, however, do our best to after-school him in math and science so that once we'd figured out how to help accommodate his handwriting challenge and helped him bring his written expression skills up quite a bit, he would be ready to accelerate and he's essentially doing that in secondary school although he's still technically at his peer-age grade level he's been able to move up in subject areas where he is strong. One thing that is still a bit of a difficulty though is the processing speed - he's smart for sure, but he works slowly, even using his laptop etc. So even though he's able to handle subject matter way ahead of grade level, handling the homework and classwork demands of higher level classes hasn't been all that I'd want it to be for him - he's spending much more time on homework each night than his classmates simply because getting what he knows out of his head is a slow process!
Re loving arts/crafts/sewing etc - you can do all those things and more and still have fine motor challenges. Our ds loves to draw and also make clay model figures. His drawings are amazing - the type of detail that makes full-grown adults go "Wow!". His clay models are so tiny and full of detail that old folk like me need a microscope to see everything he includes - and it's all very realistic, very true to life, very much in proportion etc. Yet his handwriting is a mess. The thing is, they are all very different processes. My ds would tell you that when he draws, he's drawing what he sees as he goes, but when he uses handwriting he has to remember how to make each letter - and that takes a ton of concentration for him.
Our ds did go through almost a year of handwriting OT and it helped a lot. If you can't get OT through your school district, see if you can get it covered under your medical insurance. If you can't do that, consider paying for an OT eval and asking for suggestions of things you can work on at home to help with fine motor skills.
We were not able to get OT through our school district. To qualify for OT, you have to have an IEP and a need for Speech services too. Crazy! DS did eventually qualify for an IEP under Specific Learning Disability (it took quite an extended period of advocating and we heard over and over again "we've never had kids with test scores like these" etc).. but he has a diagnosis from the private provider, and he clearly needed individualized instruction in writing so we just dug in, read up on wrightslaw etc, talked to our local advocates and went through the process.
You don't have to have an IEP to get accommodations such as keyboarding and extended time - routine accommodations such as those can usually be put into place via a 504, and that process can happen very quickly when you have a professional's eval report.
Don't worry too much about trying to figure out everything your dd will need right away - start with the obvious basics that have either been suggested by the psych who did the testing or things that you've seen that you think your dd needs. Then as time goes by you'll probably find what works, what doesn't, come up with other or different ideas etc, and you can put them into place as you go.
One more random thing - this just popped into my head and may not be worth even asking, but you mentioned your state is a low performer in terms of standardized tests (I think that's what you meant?) Do you think there's a chance that her processing score dip and fine motor issues that the psych is seeing might be related to simply not having been taught the proper way to hold a pencil, things like that, lack of instruction?
Sorry that got so long - I hope some of it made sense!
polarbear
