Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Advice on this profile

We just recently had our 7-1/2 year old daughter tested due to suspected LD. Her school performance in math and writing has always been an issue. She also has difficulty with a slow work output. Her NNAT score, 107 and her bombing the COGNAT also didn't match up with what we saw at home. Our oldest is a DYS, and our middle child is also identified as gifted.

Testing was as follows:
WISC-IV

VCI 130
Similarities 18
Vocabulary 15
Comprehension 12
(Information) 16

PRI 129
Block Design 12
Picture Concepts 17
Matrix Reasoning 15
(Picture Completion) 15

WMI 83
Digit Span 7
Letter-Number Sequencing 7

PSI 85
Coding 8
Symbol Search 7

FSIQ 114
GAI 135

She was diagnosed ADHD inattentive moderate (although tester recommended further screening to rule out CAPD. Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia.

My question is for those with children of similar profiles. Are your kids successful in a gifted classroom? What has been the ideal educational setting and accomodations for your child?

For anyone who child has Dyscalculia....where did you begin in terms of helping your child? This one in particular is overwhelming for me.

Thanks for any assistance or thoughts!

Forgot to add. Also given WIATT III.
Reading 108-113
Math 80-104
Written Language 72-102
Oral Language 87-127 (low was sentence repetition, high was expressive vocab)

My 2e ds doesn't have exactly the same profile, but he is dysgraphic as well as having a challenge with expressive language and *yes* he's been very successful in a gifted classroom. The key, for *any* classroom he's been in is to first, understand what the case of the challenges are, and second, do everything you can to remediate what can be remediated and put appropriate accommodations in place for what can't be remediated. You're still at the beginning of the process for your dd - you know something's up, you have your first set of data, and you have referrals for further testing to rule in/out dysgraphia etc. Keep moving down the path - get the testing done, follow the advice of the evaluators for remediation and accommodations. Push for what your dd needs at school. Figure out for yourself (and with her input) what school/classroom fit are best for her.

FWIW, my ds has always been much happier in gifted classrooms. He's challenged no matter *what* classroom he's put into, but having to move slowly through curriculum, listen to other students ask questions that he knew the answers to already, all of those things made the part of school that should/could be happy and successful for him pure drudgery. He was much better off learning how to overcome and live with his disabilities in a classroom that met his intellectual needs.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Polarbear: Thanks, that is encouraging to hear your experience. I sometimes find myself questioning putting her in gifted classes because some things are so challenging. On the other hand, she can learn rapidly in her areas of strength.

Portia, no visual processing issues...but possible auditory processing problems that we are looking into further.

My DD11 has a similar profile but also had PRI in the basement. I'm not sure how many others here have the math issue. If you search you will see a couple of threads I started using the term "math disability" rather than Dyscalculia since that's the wording that has been used on her evaluations. (Along with dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia, visual processing and most recently added CAPD. Previous evaluator labled ADHD-inattentive, with attentional skills below the first percentile. We rejected that diagnosis and everyone - teachers, subsequent evaluators, service providers, etc agree that attention is actually an area of strength. Chalk it up to anxiety and a computer test that relied on all her various areas of weakness...) I don't think there is a ton of btdt experience on the board other than me but hopefully aeh will be along to provide expertise.

The go to strategy for math disability is Touch Math but it didnt work for my DD. She remained basically stagnant for a couple of years. Last year a 2E specialist reevaluated her and I started over making sure to turn over every rock, seek out every diagnosis, and see exactly what could or couldnt be remediated. As a result she is in the best place we have been on this journey. So buckle up - you are in for a wild ride.

At 7 I think you need to focus on remediation. It is most important to spend time and energy in the yournger years getting her to function as well as she can. In later years the gifted side will drive your decisions but for now she needs to find ways to function. For my DD this has meant placement in a special ed school where she is able to receive a ton of services - OT for the dysgraphia, Wilson for the dyslexia, Camelot for the math disability, speech and counseling. Her needs were just too much for a public school setting.

We didn't have access to a gifted classroom but during second grade in the public she was given twice daily "enrichment/anxiety breaks" to listen to high level audio books but nothing was done to incorporate it into her actual curriculum. Third grade at the special ed school she was placed in an 8th grade reading comprehension group, by 4th grade she was doing a HS literature curriculum 1-1 with the reading teacher. She would love gifted peers but this is working for us.

My DD relies completely on AT - the ipad is the best thing that ever happened to her. Voice to text, text to voice, writing with her finger instead of a pencil, audio books, math apps, etc. I can't even imagine if she was born before this was available.

At our IEP meeting following newest eval 2E specialist said that while basic computation is just about impossible for her she believes DD will eventually be labeled gifted in math because of her understanding of high level concepts. I couldn't wrap my brain around this - math disability making it impossible for her to develop any kind of automaticity regarding any basic math facts but eventually may be deemed gifted in math? Really? See my comment above about buckling up... Spec Ed school staff spoke up to say that no one really knew much about math disabilities or had much real life experience dealing with it. Lots of discussion about further testing to try to figure out what to do but no one was able to identify an appropriately experienced evaluator to properly assess her. Instead I pushed for a strategic intervention starting at the most basic level to plug any holes that she may have developed. It seems to be working. She may never gain automaticity but she is more comfortable with math now and she is making progress.

I hope some of this may help. Feel free to ask any questions.

I was kind of assuming this thread was more concerned with btdt, but since Pemberley tossed it to me, I'll happily weigh in...

OP, your DD's profile looks to me very much like she has significant weaknesses in the areas associated with automaticity--phonological/auditory working memory is weak, visual-motor processing speed is weak. These are both associated with cognitive processes involved in acquiring reading and calculating fluency. (I'd be very interested to know how those WIAT-III scores actually break down by subtest.) Speed also likely affected one of the PRI subtests (block design).

Essentially, what happens is that individuals with automaticity weaknesses struggle to make the transition from consciously working through basic skills (applying phonics to decode words, counting out single digit addition/subtraction problems), to smoothly and efficiently applying those basic skills to solve higher-level problems (reading comprehension, higher level math problem solving).

As a second grader, most of her peers are still in the earlier stage, which is probably why the achievement scores are largely in the Average range (though, of course, even Average is well below expectations for a child of her cognition). I'm guessing the low score in Written Expression was Alphabet Writing Fluency? Her lowest Oral Language scores was an auditory memory task.

In the reasoning areas, which are her strengths, she did the best in the two concept formation tasks (VC-similarities & PR-picture concepts), which is a good sign for her higher level thinking and reasoning skills in both verbal and nonverbal domains. This suggests that basic skill remediation (or bridging with accommodations, if that proves to be warranted) should pay off well in terms of accessing comprehension and problem solving abilities. OTOH, if basic skills do not reach automaticity (or appropriate scaffolding is not provided), it is possible that these higher level abilities will not be identified or developed, as basic skills will interfere with abstract skills.

I would agree that intensive remediation now is more likely to allow her access to acceleration/enrichment at the level of her cognitive ability in the future. This does not mean that she spends no time on engaging and challenging ideas and topics, but I would direct these more toward areas that do not rely on mastery of basic skills.

I think it is important to find out more about your gifted program. I live in a city with different school boards and they have vastly different qualifying criteria and ideas about what gifted programming looks like and that is just two examples. Reading posts here there are even more variations out there.

Some gifted programs are FANTASTIC for 2e kids. The teachers are used to dealing with 2e kids and they are far better than average at accommodating them. We're super lucky that our 2e DS is in a program like this. He's thriving in a way that just wasn't happening in an average classroom.

Other schools have gifted programs that are more aimed at the high achieving gifted kids. They basically take the normal curriculum and speed it up. Often it is more of the same or same but higher expectations rather than different. This would not work with my DS but my DD (not 2e) would probably be fine in something like that.

It think it really, really comes down to the teacher and how skilled they are at accommodating. I can say that my 2e kid is thriving in his gifted class but honestly most of that is about the teacher and his particular class where he isn't the only 2e kid. Throw him into a class of super high achieving gifted kids without accommodations or with a teacher that doesn't get 2e and I suspect it would be a disaster for him.

Thank you all so much for your help. I agree that remediation needs to be a focus right now. Last year she lagged in reading, and with some great focus by the school and at home, she finished and continues to read above grade level. She also got to meet with an OT last year (we've moved and changed districts), so we are working with her current school to get that back. They didn't see the problem initially, because again, due to the OT help last year, she came a long way. This is all made worse by the fact that we are military and change schools every 2-3 years.

aeh--here is the breakdown on her WIATT scores and also her Conners' Continuous Performance Test II

CPT: Measured twice on different days
First Trial: 41% probability that she would match a clinical ADHD profile
Second Trial: 30% probability of matching and ADHD clinical profile

WIATT
Reading:
Overall 112
Basic Reading 108
Reading Comprehension 113

Math
Math Skills and Knowledge 91
Numerical Operations 104
Math Problem Solving 80

Written Language
Overall 86
Spelling words orally in a sentence 102
Combine sentences into one 72
Construct own sentence with word provided 107
Timed Alphabet writing 77

Oral Language
Overall 120
Listening Comprehension 122
Oral Expression Skills 113
Sentence Repetition 87
Expressive Vocabulary 127

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

It's excellent that she's had early remediation in reading; that will be extremely beneficial over the long term. I would suggest that you continue to monitor her reading, as grade level for a primary-age student is obviously not adult-level fluency, and while I hope that last year's intensive remediation was enough to get her over the hump, and maintain ability-appropriate growth in reading into the future, her profile suggests to me that she still has some way to go to reach that point. No timed reading tasks were administered to her in this battery, as far as I can tell, so the place where a vulnerability would be showing up right now (and over the next few years) was not assessed. Most schools are administering one-minute oral reading fluency probes to elementary-age students multiple times a year (or should be, if they are not). Keep an eye on those, especially for discrepancies between her fluency/rate and her untimed decoding and comprehension skills.

Doesn't look like the CCPT lined up with ADHD, so the low WMI and PSI probably aren't because of inattention or impulsivity, which suggests they are actually symptomatic of low working memory and processing speed.

In her WIAT scores, all of the untimed basic skills are age-appropriate (though that, of course, is below her cognition), but other than reading comprehension, she struggles to apply them in context: math problem solving is substantially lower than computation, sentence writing is (inconsistently) even lower compared to spelling. Fluency tasks were administered only in writing and oral expression (though the oral word fluency subscore that represents that for oral language does not appear to be present in your list). I would have liked to see the remaining second-grade fluency numbers as well (oral reading fluency, addition fluency, subtraction fluency). Our single data point confirms the slow processing speed (either for motor speed reasons, or for cognitive processing speed reasons).

Does she have current OT testing data? Were OT and reading services on a formalized plan (IEP) in the past? Even if it wasn't an IEP, if there was something written up, like a Curriculum Accommodation Plan, or an Individual Student Support Plan, providing that documentation may also help receiving schools recognize a students need for services more readily. I'm assuming this recent testing was for an initial evaluation for an IEP. If you can get her on to an IEP, you should not have quite as much difficulty maintaining services from posting to posting, as schools must implement the current, signed IEP of an incoming student, even if it was written in another state. Sometimes schools will press parents to re-evaluate on entry to a new school district, so that they can change the services (sometimes to increase services, but more often to reduce them). If you don't feel comfortable with that, you don't have to consent to early re-evaluation.

The CCPT tests stood out to to us as well. She was diagnosed ADHD inattentive, but the tester seemed unsure. She recommended going to an audiologist and a speech pathologist to rule out an auditory processing disorder. The other diagnosis was dysgraphia and dyscalculia.

I'm skeptical about doing meds for ADHD at this point, because frankly, I'm not sure that is what is going on. Sometimes I think yes, and other times I feel like something else is at play.

We did the WISC, CPT-!!, BRIEF, WIAT-III and BASC-II

What other steps/test can we take to try and get a more accurate picture?