Thanks, Polarbear. Those are excellent points. I have an older child who is dysgraphic and he presented so differently. That child actually had pretty handwriting in the younger grades because he was a decent artist and essentially drew his wrting. It wasn't until late 2nd to early 3rd grade when the writing demand multiplied that his handwriting fell apart. It was so clear that he had trouble getting his thoughts on paper and always needed extra time to complete any writing tasks.
With my younger DS, while he is not a prolific writer like his twin, substance-wise his academic writing is probably a little better and he is usually one of the first ones done in class. On the other hand, punctuation and capitalization can still be hit or miss. Even on the English section of the Explore, his rhetorical skills was 100%, but the usage/mechanics pulled the English score down a bit.
I am considering the private evaluation route, but I would have to pay 100% out of pocket due to the way our insurance works and the fact that we already had huge medical expenditures for his brother this year.
I could "force" an IEP meeting, but unless I have independent assessment to contradict the school OT's opinion, we would be dead in the water. I have to figure out whether this is worth the expenditure at this point in time.
This time, the OT actually time DS' handwriting and typing speed. I will try to double-check her, but basically she indicated that the typical handwriting pace for a 4th grader is 34-70 letters per minute. DS' copying speeds was in the mid 70s and dictation was 123. His typing speed was a litte below the copying speed due to correcting mistakes. the funny thing is that I was never worry about his speed, just everthing else.
As for his pre-algebra teacher, we don't have issues now because he meets with DS one-on-one one day a week and DS works independently the other four days. His teacher was concerned for when DS goes back into a regular middle school classroom. DS is not actaully slow with the math writing plus his teacher lets him get away with not showing his work for a large portion of the assignments. If he had to write out everything, then the assignments could take longer than optimal.
I just don't know. It would be easier if it were clearer.
