She would have problems telling me a story as well, although if I sit with her and prompt her after every single sentence, and do all the writing, she would be able to pull something together.
Same here for my ds. FWIW, prompting was a strategy we used for a long time (still do sometimes) when he was in elementary school struggling with getting any ideas out at all. Repeated prompting him through was one of the tools that I feel helped him make significant progress in his ability to improve his written expression.
Her language comes across Ok, at least on a "sentence" level. I remember scribing a story with her and she said "the next sentence is 'they ventured further into the forest'". She was 8. That doesn't sound like a kid with a language issue, but she would not be able to tell me a story.
Same here for my ds - from the time he started talking, when he *does* talk, it is in complex sentences using advanced vocabulary that sound like a little adult talking. That's part of the reason it took us years to realize the significance of what he *wasn't* saying.
She did very little pretend/dramatic play when she younger either. She just couldn't seem to be able to organize a "story" even for play. She would carry her toys around the house, but never really play with them.
Our ds also didn't do any imaginary play. Since he was our oldest, I didn't really realize the extend of what he wasn't doing until I had my dds - and they were soooooo so totally opposite - they were pretend-playing all the time and so were their friends. DS did build things though, which is a different type of "imaginary" work altogether.
The school wants to do the WIAT writing cluster and I asked about language and they pretty much ignored me.
Don't forget that you can request testing in writing. I think you've already done that, but you can make a written request at any point in time. I'm not sure if this is exactly where you're at, but let's suppose you've made your initial request and the school is saying "we don't have any test for that" or "we don't have any concerns about language" - then turn in another written request that's a follow-up to the original, state what you understand the school to have said to you, and then state what type of testing you want to add on, and state the reasons. Speech/language eval is what you want for receptive/expressive language issues. The school can still say no, but they will have to be able to justify their "no", which you can then use when you disagree with them and seek an independent eval if it gets to that point.
I'm not sure if there is even a test that would pick up the issue because she is fine on a sentence level, or a few sentences. But ask her to "tell a story" and a wall goes up immediately.
Has she ever had an SLP eval? If not, you might be surprised at what it reveals. Our ds is of course a totally different kid who might not have anything in common with your dd (other than the above things lol!), but fwiw his initial SLP eval was at 10, and even though he appeared to be fine on a "sentence" level... he had huge issues with one of the CELF subtests - it was a test where you had to put two words together in a sentence type of test. He was able to complete the subtest, but his score on it was significantly lower than the other subtests, and his SLP observed that when he had to answer those types of questions it "was like a light went off and the elevator to the top was grounded" (or something like that lol!)... because it took him so long to answer.
Re the age-normed vs grade-normed issues - I wanted to ask - is the school insisting on age-norming for *all* of the tests they will give or only for fine motor or other tests that are looking at physical functioning? I think that it might be hard to argue against age-norming for the physical (OT/etc) type testing, and really that's probably what you do want to know (for your own info). On achievement/etc tests - anything that's looking at learned knowledge, she should be normed against grade level.
That said, there is another aspect to the physical functioning even if she's normed against age level for fine motor for instance, and doesn't meet the cut-off bar for services. If her handwriting (or whatever) is holding her back in her academics, you can still make a case for accommodations such as keyboarding even if she doesn't meet the bar for services. The key is to provide as much data as you can through testing and work samples showing that handwriting is preventing her from accessing her FAPE.
Gotta run - hope that makes sense!
polarbear
