Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Questions regarding acceleration meeting

I would try to bring the psych to the meeting if you can, and also would get a copy of the IAS manual if at all possible.

The other thing I'd do is to try to understand as much as you can about *why* his WISC showed such a large gap between FSIQ and GAI. I looked back through your previous posts and saw that your ds had a relatively low score on digit span and coding. If you have any info from the psych who did the testing that can give you some insight into why those subtest scores are low, it *might* give you insight into why your ds' scores on the school test were lower. For instance, my 2e ds had a relatively low score in coding due to fine motor issues. He scores low on timed tests - not because he doesn't know the answers, but because he can't write last enough to finish the test in the same amount of time a nt student can, so his scores look artificially low on timed tests.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Followup on the meeting -- we were partially successful. He scored 61 on the IAS and they agreed to accelerate him in Reading, but not Math. The timed math tests got in his way....he can do the calculations, he knows his math facts, but because he can't regurgitate the facts when a timer is involved, they will not accelerate. They are supposed to work with him to get him fluent, but they are still going to use timed tests to gauge fluency. What would you do in this case? Do you keep drilling and drilling on the facts at home until he CAN regurgitate them quickly enough for them, or do you fight them on their measure of fluency? Or do we possibly have further testing done to isolate exactly what the problem is with the timed math tests?

Second item - the teachers were saying that he gets in his own way by playing with supplies at his desk and clowning around instead of doing classwork. He apparently has missed a lot of recess this year because he had to stay behind to do the classwork. I tend to think he is doing this because the curriculum is not challenging him, how can you tell if misbehavior is due to lack of challenge or something else?

We have a followup meeting in 6 weeks, at which time I want to be able to refute their claims that DS is immature, I just need the ammunition to do that. I am also contacting DS psychologist to see what he would recommend.

Thanks for the input.

This is jmo, but I believe it's really most important to understand the *reason* for the slow fluency before trying to drill on something like math facts. It's possible that their idea of getting him fluent will work, but if there is a root cause behind the slow fluency type of tests, and you haven't defined what it is or understand what it is, you could waste a lot of time trying to get a student to accomplish something in a way that isn't going to work, and the only thing you'll come out with on the other side is one very frustrated student.

Your ds had a really large gap between GAI and FSIQ on his WISC, and he's got a relatively low fluency score on math achievement. That combination of scores could signal any of possibly 1000s of different things going on from simply not bothering to move quickly on a few subtests to challenges that can be defined as LDs and require remediation and accommodation. I wouldn't worry quite so much about not having been accelerated in math *yet* in school (our 2e ds was held back in math in early elementary for exactly the same reasons), because chances are with a highly capable student such as your ds, you'll be able to get him caught up and back to the level he is capable of working at.... once you *understand* why he scores lower on timed tests.

The tests our ds had that helped his neuropsych identify the issue causing slower scores on fluency/etc tests were: Beery VMI (visual motor integration), a series of executive function/etc tests (NEPSY), and several others that I can't remember the name of at the moment. The Beery VMI and one of the NEPSY subtests were key for our ds - because they identified an issue with fine motor processing. If we'd simply waited and hoped that our ds would eventually "speed up" it never would have happened because he wasn't physically capable of writing faster. Once we had accommodations in place (for math his primary accommodation is extended time, also has access to keyboarding) - he easily caught up and moved way ahead. Math is his thing - he's great at it. But if we hadn't identified what he was truly struggling with, he would never have been accelerated and would have been seriously depressed and frustrated. The worse consequence for our ds (prior to diagnosis) was that he had begun to truly believe he *couldn't* do things simply because handwriting was a challenge.

So - what's going on with your ds might be nothing, or it might be something. Just in case it's "something" I'd seek out further testing to determine why he had the large gap in GAI vs FSIQ on the WISC. I'd completely focus on that first, get it done, and then with the understanding you get from that, return with the info to his school and build a plan for math that makes sense in terms of placing him where he should be in terms of cognitive ability.


If you have a clue there might be a "something else" (which you have from his testing), then you do your best to understand the "something else". In our case, behaviors which we attributed to boredom with instruction really were, in part, due to our ds' "something else", and once we had accommodations in place to address the challenge, the problem behaviors disappeared.


It's a good plan to contact the psychologist, but rather than focusing on refuting claims of immaturity, I'd take the focus off of the school and put the focus on figuring out why there is a gap in processing speed etc. It's a subtle change of focus, but basically it helped me a lot in the elementary years to remember to focus my efforts on my child's needs not focus them on the battle with the school. Hope that makes sense!

Best wishes, and keep us posted!

polarbear

DD scores in the low average or below average range for math fluency (probably around the 20th percentile). I think it's a little better when she is fully medicated for ADHD but still not great. Since there is a large gap between fluency and conceptual ability and she also has slow writing, neuropsych called it slow processing speed. She tested around the 35th percentile on the WISC IV for processing speed, but then a year later was more like the 85th percentile (I'm wondering if that was an error since the school psych was incompetent and never gives kids the WISC IV). At any rate, the neuropsych said that she should be placed at the correct conceptual ability level and be given accommodations for the slow processing/poor fluency. He did not give advice to keep drilling on the fluency. Basically, it's probably never going to be quite normal because she is not retrieving the facts quickly enough from the messed up filing cabinets in her brain. She has documented executive functioning deficits/ADHD. I'm not sure what he would say about a kid who has no other evidence of a disability. It is possible that he will improve if he practices enough. DD improves with practice, but she tends to lose most of the gain after a short period of time has gone by. The school has her accelerated to 6th grade math (she should be in 4th grade based on her age). In the past she was actually accelerated higher, but I wanted her moved down because she was way too slow and it was making her anxious. I think there needs to be a balance between meeting the needs of the giftedness and addressing the disability or weakness. It's easy enough to say "let's just make accommodations" but you can't learn something like Algebra properly if you are cutting out 80 percent of the practice or test questions.

BTW, DD constantly fidgets with everything she can get her hands on and it tends to drive teachers crazy because it looks like she's distracted by these things that she's fidigeting with, but DD claims it actually helps her to focus. The other day she came home from school and her jeans were covered with drawings (in pen). She must not have had paper on hand to doodle on.

In terms of whether misbehavior is caused by boredom or something else, it could be either. DD has a really hard time getting work done in class because of a combination of focus issues and anxiety. Have you noticed this behavior at home, when he does homework? If he is able to complete the work quickly at home, then there is something about the school environment that is causing things to go awry. I do think it's a legitimate concern on the part of the school, and I also think that boredom is unlikely to be causing the problem unless he is finishing everything really fast and then doesn't know what to do with himself. It doesn't sound like that's the case and I suspect he may still be clowining around even if given more challenging work (of course I know next to nothing about him, but it's just a gut feeling based on what you said). It could be that the processing issue with math facts is causing him to lose focus with math, and that perhaps the somewhat chaotic environment of a classroom is making it worse. That's what I think is going on with DD at any rate.
I think it is worth it to think about this issue and whether it is going to cause a problem if he is accelerated with no accommodations. If he is just slow when a timer is involved (maybe because the timer stresses him out?), but you think he actually is fluent with the facts otherwise, then that shouldn't be a problem and I would push the school on that.

Exactly what I had been thinking, but could not put words to. Thank you!


Makes perfect sense. We had been debating which was better - take the fight to the school or delve further into the reason for the processing delay. I have been reading every thing I can get my hands on, and can't seem to find anything that definitively fits, except possibly poor EF. But I am not a trained expert, and probably read just enough to make me dangerous! :-)

Thank you so much for the remider of where our focus should be -- on DS.

It is actually the opposite...they give him the classwork and he clowns around and plays with stuff then when they force the issue he dashes off the work very quickly, and accurately.

Recently he lost recess because they told them to draw a picture of something interesting that happened in the book the teacher just read with the class "Ramona Quimby" DS did not draw anything and got no credit. When I asked, he said he couldn't think of anything interesting in the book. I asked what was his favorite Wimpy Kid book, he immediately replied and told me what interesting thing from that book he would have drawn. He read that particular Wimpy Kid book on vacation in July.

He doesn't fidget with the stuff on his desk, he plays with them like they are toys. He has quite an imagination, and lives in his pretend world too much sometimes. Occasionally we have to ask him "is this in "DS World" or in the real world?".


That is exactly what we think...he can do the math when no timer is involved. It's the cut and dried regurgitating of math facts that he cannot do when timed. Interestingly, I recently asked him a math problem in story form and he answered it immediately. I asked him the same thing as a math facts equation and he cold not answer it. When I explained to him that it was the same answer,,,he was shocked.

Seems odd. So if you gave him a sheet of math facts like 8+6, 7-4 etc (without a timer but telling him to work quickly), would he be able to answer each question within a couple seconds and stay focused on it?

If he's not fidgeting with stuff on his desk but actually playing with it, I think it makes sense to remove as much as possible from his work space.

If I understand correctly, he can do the math problem quickly and accurately -on paper- if in the form of an application problem, but not if in the form of a naked computation. Is this the situation? That is, is the difference in computational speed and accuracy (aka fluency) evident regardless of response medium (paper or oral)? Because if it is, then I would not be too quick to dismiss a possible second exceptionality, even if he has no fine motor issues per se. If, on paper or orally, he can quickly and accurately solve math problems when they are in context, but not when they are in isolation, that may be reflective of a learning style which is highly contextualized, so that meaning is essential to the most efficient operation of his cognitive and academic skills. The anecdote about Ramona/Wimpy Kid would tend to support this hypothesis.

This kind of profile not uncommonly features relative weakness in basic, automatic skills, like math facts, handwriting, and spelling. Which, of course, include the dysgraphic class of exceptionality. It may be that he will eventually develop strategies for injecting meaning into fundamentally rote tasks, which will help with the Ramona/Wimpy situation, and possibly begin to see the intrinsic meaning in mathematics, which will help with raw computations.

Obviously, if the response medium (oral vs paper/pencil) is the primary correlate with his fluency, then fine motor skills would be a direction to look.

Not exactly. He can do ANY type of problem, whether an application or a naked computation, quickly and accurately (95.5 % accuracy) on homework and classwork papers. He does not do nearly as well on timed tests. His school uses Xtra Math and his one day pull out program uses Sumdog. Xtra Math shows he is not yet proficient in single digit addition, Sumdog shows him at second grade second month in math. Whether he can do them verbally or not depends...and I haven't figured out on what. I have verbally quizzed him on single digit addition and subtraction in the car, and he does it relatively quickly. However recently I tried a story problem and then the same problem via naked computation, and he could not do the computation. (I was giving the cats treats, I told him that each cat gets 5 treats, and I had given each cat 2. How many total treats do I still need? He answered immediately with "6". I asked him what is 5 + 5 -2 -2 and he could not figure it it out.) Don't know if that points one way or another...

Oh yes and then there is the math homework he assigns to his grandmother every day...most recently he has found worksheets online on mean, mode, median and is having her complete the worksheets for him to correct. Thank goodness she is a good sport, she does her homework and he checks it! :-)

Tonight we send an email to his psych asking for further evaluation to figure this out...DH and I can read articles and post on bulletin boards all we like, but it's akin to throwing a dart at a dart board....we don't necessarily know what would be significant to mention. One thing that is clear from the advice we have gotten here, is that it's clearly time to bring the professional back in! And please understand I am not criticizing the advice received, it has provided the clarity needed to know that going back to the psych for more testing is the right thing to do. I have diabetes and can usually adjust my insulin levels myself to keep my sugars where they belong, but sometimes I need to consult the doc to have her adjust the levels. This is one of those times to have the doc adjust the levels.

Mrs. P

I would agree that a good look by your local professional is called for.

I'll just throw in one more twist: it may be that the process is -too- quick and automatic for him to break down into steps. The solution may be so obvious to him that he can't "show his work". I think a discussion on this phenomenon has been held elsewhere on the forum.

Oh, and if you've watched him play Sumdog, you know that this is partially a test of video game playing skill. Whichever skill (math or gaming) is poorer determines your score. I'm not familiar with Xtra Math.