Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Achievement - Ability Discrepancy

It wouldn't surprise me if it helps him. And I'm not kidding about "real" writers using the voice recorders to solve this memory problem. It's a totally valid issue, even for grownups!

Maybe check Radio Shack or a similar store for a recorder? It's where I got mine, and even my fancy one with bells and whistles and computer software was only $40 on sale, I think. (4+ years ago, so I may be off a bit there...) You might also check the toy department of Target or KMart. Sometimes they have cheapy recorders for singing and stuff that could do the trick.

ebeth - have you read any of Jessie Wise Bauer's info on writing? She talks about exactly what you are talking about ....hhm bad sentence I know. Classical education model uses dictation to train DC to hold the information in their head while getting it on paper. My friend, after listing to Jessie's CD "Writing w/out Fear" started doing this with her son. SHe was shocked to find that he couldn't hold more than half a sentence in his head. Since she's been doing narration and dictation, his writing has improved a great deal and he actually writes more in his journal on his own.

Wow, Dazey! That is an incredible reference. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I will look into that right away. As soon as you said that he couldn't hold more than half a sentence in his head, the light bulb went off in mine. LOL!!

Also thanks to Kriston for the information on the voice recorder. I will try looking into both Radio Shack and Toys R Us. Maybe attacking this problem on two fronts will solve it. I wonder if the two ideas would work in concert together. Could DS dictate to himself on the voice recorder and then practice holding longer sentences in his head as he writes them down? Hummmm.

Thanks for the great ideas everyone. It is amazing to struggle with a problem for what seems like eternity, only to have several bright minds here say, "Oh, I know just the thing you need!"

If there are dues to be paid for being a "member" here, then hit me up now. I'm loving this place!!

Yes, ebeth, the DC would eventually move onto writing his own thoughts down from the recorder.

I know someone who is looking into a game called "Druidawn" for helping kids write. Apparently, it's a story like Dungeons and Dragons or Lord of the Rings (but not very scary) and the kids take turns. They have to write their character out of whatever situation it is. I'm not sure exactly how the game works. The kids get together, say, once a week, and play the game and then the writing is done either then or during the week. Make sense?

Anyway, I'm thinking of looking at it for my son (7) who also hates to write and has a lowish (109) processing speed. He, too, says he can't get the ideas out. Anybody know anything about Druidawn?

Hi Everyone

Again, thank you so much for all your help in the past. I am back and now have the report and the individual subtest scores and was wondering if anyone could add anything (? The psych says probably "2E" - gifted visual spatial with some verbal strength and auditory sequential weaknesses as he has demonstrated many of the typical characteristics of visual spatial learner (both at school, to his parents and to her). For example, he seemes to be finding more complex thinking easy but basic skills hard. She said he seemed to be really invigorated by the more complex questions on the WISC (in verbal and perceptual area) and relatively bored and not as interested on the achievement test. I know there was some queries as to which subtests were highest on WISC and also on the WIAT. Well here goes -

Verbal-
Similarities 17
Word Reasoning 16
Vocabulary 15
Comprehension 14
Information 14

Perceptual -
Pic Concepts 18
Mat Reas 15
Block Design 15
Pic Comp 11

Working Memory -
Digit Span 9
Letter Num Seq 10
Arithmetic 11

Processing Speed -
Coding 12
Symbol Search 12
Cancellation 14

I am sorry I had the processing speed slightly wrong (from memory last time) and it is reported as 112 which is a bit higher but still large discrepancy with verbal and perceptual.

On Achievement (He is 8.4 yrs) he got -

REading fluency: 8 years 2 months
Reading comprehension: 8 years 1 month
Spelling was in the 14th percentile with age of 7 yrs 1 month
Maths Reasoning: 55th percentile
Numerical Operations: 42nd percentile
Writing - not completed as said too tired and 'too hard' for him to write so much. In the rapid naming task (oral)where he had to write out names of things he fell in 75th percentile but with large numbers of spelling errors. Apparently he had to link sentences into one grammatically correct sentence and he even made errors in spelling with the words in front of him!! He did not use correct punctuation or capitalisation. He found it difficult to organise thoughts and only wrote short sentences leaving out information and ignoring punctuation.

The comments were that in maths he would often try to work it out in his head (even though paper available) He made careless errors and sometimes confused symbols (even in the same sum) he also tended to guess and rushed to get stuff over with instead of going through problem solving steps.

In reading he is described as a slow reader who shows some lack of fluency tending at times to read 'word for word' and over punctuation marks. He tends to guess at unknown words (eg adventure/action; crossed/closed) which leads to errors in comprehension of text. In comprehension task he preferred to guess rather than look back at text.

Sorry about length of text but I was wondering if anything jumps out at anyone from the more detailed results? perhaps it has already been said before and the above just confirms - I am not sure. I would very much welcome any comments at all.

thanks
Tiz

Hi Dottie

Yes the ability/achievement is huge. the psych seemed quite worried in person but the report does not really diagnose as I guess psych's don't do that. She mentioned that we may wish to seek further diagnosis. I had thought of dyslexia - funny thing is that i have for years wondered about that. he still does occasionally reverse letters and things and he is over 8 now. i also noticed the verbal and how everything was 14 and over. To me this seems his big strength. Probably what i haven't said is that he is a class clown [actually one older kid told him he was 'school clown'], extremely funny to both kids and adults (quite adult in his humour and understands adult concepts and jokes well), surprisingly quick on the spot humour too, fantastic negotiator and never gives up, is showing talent in drama as well. Does the latter make sense to you with this profile?
thanks so much for your insightful comments Dottie!
Tiz

Sorry Dottie, the psych did say she thought he was a real 'pleaser' and 'did try hard'. She commented on his impulsivity though in the achievement test (which contrasted with his thoughfulness and care on the iq tes) - go figure? The bored part was not from him just that the psych thought he seemed much more interested in the WISC test