Trying to assess how well my son reads in real life...

GOsh, if it’s a race, he is going to LOSE!!!!!!

It’s not a race. There’s a high variability in skill levels. I guarantee that he’s not alone. There are four other kiddos in there who have worse reading skills but do a much better job of pointing their heads at the book and moving their eyes and making it look easy.

Some people’s decoding and fluency runs years *head of their age and ability to understand what they read; others’ runs behind because they’re pretty separate skills. He’s not developing bad habits, which is very important. Sounds like you’re going to have to impose the good habits by keeping him reading with you… look for the fun stuff, and see if he doesn’t like harder books and get them on tape for him.

It is true that in public school there’s a big range in kids’ reading; my non-ld son just finished 3rd grade and some kids were reading Boxcar kids series books, and some were far beyond. What may help is if you can get the list of the 3rd grade books for the year and read ahead at home and discuss them before they have to read them in school. My 11yo LD son is always behind in rate and barely on grade level in fluency(rate + accuracy), and we read with him EVERY day; I read all the 5th grade reading assignments with him, and probably will do the same in middle school. I think it’s more like weight control….we have to keep working at it every day . It may be that your son’s school does not have a big range of abilities(maybe everyone is above average like in Lake Wobegon??), so his skills look worse to you .Has your son read the Magic Tree House books…they are easy and fun.

Karen,
I can’t give you a “real life” comparison. But the fact that your son can read those books accurately with fairly adequate speed is very good!

I’m familiar with all of the books you’ve mentioned. My son has read Mouse Soup with me within the last 6 months…and a lot of Henry and Mudge books! He reads with plenty of errors and big pauses (although he’s beginning to get slightly and I mean “SLIGHTLY” better).

Of course, we have friends the same age who have read all the “Harry Potter” books three times and read at night by flashlight! But I think the majority are somewhere closer to the middle.

Interestingly, I spoke with a mom the other day from my son’s last class (we’ve moved so we’re not at the same school anymore) and she told me that my son’s teacher had to go to a meeting because there were a number of students in her class whose reading test scores (SAT9/STAR) were shockingly low. In fact, this mom said they were much lower than my son’s scores…I don’t know how this mom knew everyone’s test scores, but my son scored “Below Basic” on the Star — next is “Far Below Basic.” And this mom believed there were numerous kids scoring in the last category.

So….I think it’s hard to accurately guage “the real world.” My child definitely has a very obvious reading disability. But I think that because it’s obvious he’s getting intervention and is being helped while these other kids must have “fallen in the cracks” because they appeared to be doing well (my son was the only child in his class attending reading intervention).

My son is exactly the same age.

When my son was at this level. (It wasn’t that long ago) He found Nate the Great. He just went nuts for this character and read the entire series in about 3 weeks.
It was a huge turning point for him.

My son wasn’t crazy for Henry and Mudge.

Please don’t misunderstand - I don’t care how the other kids are doing to be competitive. My son is LD, and we have to make sure that keeping him at his present school is in his best interest academically and emotionally. There is no special ed. at his school , and the school I think bends over backwards to let kids develop at their own rate. But if he’s really not closing the gap, or even maintaining the same gap with his classmates than we have to consider other schools or other interventions.

They probably are above average as a population - its a private school and while there are certainly alot of LD kids there (not all of whom have reading issues) the bar may be higher. But on the other hand, that’s where he’s in school, and that’s who he is comparing himself with.

Switching to another school could have other costs — and he could still not catch up. Often with our kiddos, *if* there’s been lots of good input and learning, there will be sudden jumps in skills as somehow the brain puts things together. This is totally different from situations where a student is coasting along and masking lack of skills *and* understanding.
I have a feeling, though, that you know this and are just doing the wrestling that you have to do with this decision… which is such a tough one!

My daughter was in the 34% for reading level at the beginning of 2nd grade. The school said not to worry, there were kids far lower. I told them 34% was not acceptable and got my own private evaluation. Found out the she had severe deficits in all areas and wa treading water. By the end of the year she would have been drowning.

How to get kids to make that “bridge” to fourth grade reading is tough: small print, long chapters and book, no pictures, longer sentence lengths, more multi-syllable words.

First, you need to have some data on his reading: Speed/accuracy on 2nd and 3rd grade passages. If 3rd goes well, measure 4th—if not, measure 1st. I would wrap this fluency into a reading inventory assessment of some type that would tell me how the student performs on reading both words and passages at various grade levels. Then, if I question the students comprehension, I have them listen to a story two levels above independent reading level and answer comprehension questions (relating to fact recall, inference/conclusions, vocabulary and others).

Something is hanging him up: kids want to be able to read. It is their work and they are very interested in doing it well (except in cases of trauma or other such issues). Even when they have given up, they still usually want to have someone save them from this fate.

That something could be poor decoding, slow visual processing, inconsistent visual processing, poor visual tracking, poor visualization, very poor short or working memory. And others.

What do you think it is? Parents often know wherein the problem lies. In fact, unless they are non-readers, most are pretty sure what is happening for their child in reading.

Make it fun at home, too. Reading along with book on tape is a nice fluency enhancer and certainly doesn’t harm anyone. Would he try different books if he were reading while listening?

///

Beware of this test and the emphasis you place on it. If a student has a good vocabulary, they’ll score higher because it is a cloze test. (Select a word that fits in the blank from a list of them). Poor vocab = poor grade equiv score.

It’s okay for a “guesstimate” but I follow it with a reading inventory that is criterion-referenced. I have specific reading skills which I want to evaluate. Neither of the tests you mention will do that very well.

///

Lots of pictures and nicely rich in context clues. Larger print. Relatively few words on a page—except once in awhile she’ll (author) pop a full page of words. Repetitious characters and vocabulary.

Nate also inspired my son to a love of independent reading—he loved the detective. It didn’t help him read more difficult books, though. Later on, the Bunnicula series by Debra and James Howe were hillariously interesting to him. They are, though, about a 5th grade read (though some say otherwise.)

For living in a home filled with conversation rich in vocabulary, my son has a suprisingly limited one. This alone makes me suspect there’s a language connection with my son’s reading difficulties.

Thanks for explaining the Star.

Do you know about the accuracy on the SAT 9. My son’s results were the folling:
Total reading: 43%
Word study: 63%
Vocabulary: 36%
Comprehension: 30%

I always thought my son had very good comprehension for someone who reads laborously slow. But now I’m thinking I should focus more on remediating comprehension. Perhaps I should order V/V and start working with my son.

What reading program have they used to teach him how to read and what did he qualify with to get the label? Did they even teach him how to read?

First, thanks for all of your suggestions. I realize my original post didn’t set the stage for my question.

My son is in a private regular college prepratory (K-12) school. He has been evaluated by a neuropsych, psychiatrist, and a myriad of other specialists. He has not been acknowledged by the board of ed. as a special ed. kid because we are doing everything privately for now. But the testing shows him as probably having a right-brain deficit. He looks like NLD in his WISC, not really dyslexic and not ADD. But the manifestation of his issues are in his reading/ writing and spelling. She didn’t test him for a Rapid naming deficit which I believe he has based on feedback from people on this board. He’s one of these puzzle kids - doesn’t fit any one profile.

He’s going into 3rd grade, and gets some multisensory reading support at school. We are having him tutored 2x / week using OG . He will stay at his school for 3rd grade - its 4th grade we are worrying about. Why worry now? because it takes a year to go thru the application process for the highly regarded special ed. school in our area. They choose to only serve hi-IQ kids with language based disabilities and its hard to get in. The kids there get OG based language arts 4 times a day.

His school peers probably are above the norm in reading because its a selective school. I think he got in at the age of 4, because he is a verbal child,and possibly gifted in some areas. The school doesn’t “counsel out” kids who aren’t going to be able to make it as the work becomes increasingly rigorous until 4th or 5th grade, but we don’t want to wait for him to fail. We want to be proactive.

I’ve had his neuropscych report read by about 6 neuropsychologists. And there is no consensus on how severe his disability is. Some feel he’ll “crack the code” and be fine with reading. Some feel very concerned about the gap between his intelligence and achievement and feel an immersion experience would benefit him. His school needs to be brutally honest with us, but they try so hard to be supportive that I don’t trust their assessment. His woodcock achievement scores were about 1 grade level below his grade, and yet it seems like he is far behind the other kids …I’m confused!!

Karen,

My son was less than one year behind beginning third grade and it still is tough. It is tough because nothing is easy for them. His skills were actually not much different than the lowest reading group in class but we elected for him to have resource help instead. He had only got to that point because of our intervention.

I recently took my son for a consultation on reading therapy to a person his neurologist recommended. She is a psychologist, trained in multiple methods, who started an LD school locally. She then sold it to a chain and worked as director for awhile. She now mainly provides training to teachers in LD and public schools.

Anyway, I asked about a clinical school for my son. She told me no, not yet anyway. Her concern was that he wasn’t bad enough—and that his needs wouldn’t necessarily be addressed. Now I htink his learning diabilities are at least as severe but because we have intervened, he is only about a year behind.

Now, this evaluation was also based on what is available here which is of course different than what you have. One other option to consider, if his current placement doesn’t work out, is to move him to a less demanding regular school where you could continue to have him tutored.

Beth

You’ve gotten feedback similar to what we’ve heard. In fact our neuropscyh. rejected the idea of a special school initially (“too special ed.”) and suggested other private schools that might be less rigorous. And of course I was happy she didn’t think he needed special ed. at first. But my thinking has evolved - he’s not an average kid, including socially. I think to move him , which would be socially difficult, just to put him in another school with regular kids who may reject him , where he still needs lots of tutoring doesn’t make sense. Especially b/c he is bright, we don’t want to just lower the level of the curriculum. If this one school checks out (the one that seems to be heavy on remediation while maintaining a stimulating academic environment) AND we can get him in , well that would be an option worth considering.

At first I thought that we’d do anything possible to make him successful where he is.But now I am starting to understand the emotional toll it places on him. And he can ‘t do after school activities (including Hebrew School which is a big deal) like a normal kid. So I’m thinking maybe the best way to make him feel normal is to put him in a school that teaches the way he needs to be taught.

This is an evolving thought - and one I’ll be working on for the next school year.

Anyway, you can understand why even when your kid looks like they are almost keeping up on paper, the reality may feel very diferent.

Thanks!

If it’s a vocabulary issue, then V/V isn’t going to address that problem, at least not directly. (INdirectly, learning to imagine what you are reading can make you more likely to understand new vocabulary that you read better, but it’s not going to tell you what concatenation is if you don’t know). If he’s reading laboriously, that’s usually the barrier to comprehension since he can’t give the understanding full attention. For most of my students, improving the accuracy and fluency made those comprehension scores (and real comprehension) go up even if we hadn’t worked on it much at all (though of course we’d done our share of reading & discussing).

I understand where you are coming from. I would just make sure that a school that serves kids bright kids with language based disabilities is also able to meet his needs, today as well as in the future. If he has a NLD profile, he may also eventually need math support, for example. I don’t know if the schools here specialize that much, from what I can tell. They tend to serve a broad spectrum of kids.

We’re going to be wrestling with a lot of the same issues this year–in 4th grade.

Beth

If he’s had a reading assessment like the Gray Oral Reading Test-3, you’d find out about his rate, accuracy, comprehension and how he does at reading passages of differing grade level materials; but if you’re asking how does he stack up in an above average private school with his peers, it sounds like you know the answer. What we found in having a child of superior IQ with LD is that he uses his brain power to get ahead with his peers, but that his absolute reading and writing skills are not on a par with the top kids in his class…and he has to live with that difference, and work harder than they do. If your child is just a tad behind, I would be concerned that an LD private school has bright kids who are VERY far behind, 2-3 or more years behind their peers.

but I’m sure there’s a website somewhere.

Okay, that *does* put a very different light on things. With these “puzzle kids” it is really hard to tell whether they will struggle more, or less, as the years go by. In general, though, the NLD kids who have trouble organizing information but have that good “short-term verbal” intelligence are the ones who have more trouble later. The ones who have trouble with the skills-with-details, the small pieces (especially the “whole-to-part” learners) tend to start doing a lot *better* when what they are learning is part of bigger pictures. The very things that are hard for others are easy for them and vice versa.
THe best you’re going to be able to do is make an intelligent guess. Look at his strengths and challenges, and look at how the learning tasks are going to change. WHat’s goig to get “harder” in the different settings?
*If* the sped school would meet his needs, then evn if he were not as in need of verbal-skills remediation as others, he could quite possibly become a real leader there and develop his strengths. There’s a tendency when you’re at the front of the pack for you to keep looking for a bigger hill to climb :-)

Sue,

I want to see if I understand what you are saying. Are you saying that children who understand broad principles, such as science concepts and social studies, can do ok later on?
I definitely have a puzzle kid.
My son always seemed to understand concepts like how the body functions or conceptualizing the significance of historic events. He likes to think about things and usually has a million questions. He has trouble with things like punctuation,and reading a clock etc.

Thanks

Linda F.

As a previous poster says…beware of the emphasis you place on testing. I have a child who has been notorious for smiling agreeably and not fully cooperating with testing…either that or he has the strangest disability on record. How would you like to be told your child had severe short term memory problems (2 percentile)because he was unable to remember any random numbers in order, but…….he he managed to score in the 99 percentile reciting random numbers in order backwards on another test. When he was younger, this kid got himself misdiagnosed with everything imaginable. Even my older child who is little miss achiever more than occasionally comes home with some bizzare and contradictory scores on standardized tests. Sometimes I wonder if they occasionally have problems with the machine scoring.. anyway, until you see a consistent pattern I’d be careful, and even with a consistent pattern be careful of how you interpret the results.

Listening to stories is such a great idea. Lately we have had to make an hour long car trip twice a week and our new car has a tape player! I started picking up books on tape from the library intended for my 4th grader. Much to my suprise my 9th grader has been quick about turning it on and changing the tapes for me.

I also (with Linda F.) want to understand what you just said because I’m not sure which of these types of kids my son is. Maybe neither?
He is one of those verbal, hear it once, spit it back at you kids. But it doesn’t seem to be strictly rote memorization like NLD kids, he seems to be (and the testing bears it out…) an excellent conceptual thinker. I’m not sure how to assess the parts-to whole skill. I’ve read about it, but not sure how I would know. Can you elaborate?

And to everyone else reading this thread: Thanks for articulating the issues with these puzzle kids. Its a tough call on where these kids belong, and for how long. Maybe sped school for 4th grade to get the reading /writing knocked, and then a good public school with access to resources in case the NLD type issues really develop. Its going to be a leap of faith no matter what we do.

My daughter seems to have both the verbal and Nonverbal LD problems; however, she has good social skills (except too bossy - some call it leadership :-). ). I’m just trying to figure out how she learns, what sher strengths are, etc. I’m listening…

Using Dr. Larry Silver’s early analogy: learning is the process of in-take, processing, storage, retrieval, and output of information and events. There can be a breakdown in any of these areas. Early-on (late 70’s and 80’s), a lot of time was spent talking about the “information processing” model and little time in storage. Some, especially in S/L, looked at retrieval of language (RAN, for example).

In the 90’s, we’ve finally figured out that the brain just isn’t as simple as “auditory learner” or “visual learner” and the whole right-brain/left-brain thing. “Brain does not store information in a linear manner, like a computer,” writes Dr. Patricia Wolfe. Instead, different kinds of information are long-term stored in different areas of the brain. (How can they tell? fMRI shows where electricity is “firing” when certain tasks are performed.)

Current model for types of memory:
Semantic: Memory for words/things related to language (words, symbols for them, rules for manipulating words, and meanings of words)

Episodic: Memory for events/people’s faces/situations (Where and when information was acquired.)

Procedural: Memory for body movements, processes that we do such as math algorithms. (Knowing “how” versus “what” according to Dr. Patricia Wolf.)

If any of these are weak, they will affect IQ scores and learning in different ways. Of course, how we perceive, or take-in information, and how we process it (including working memory aspects), and how we retrieve, and out-put all affect learning, too.

Leah, from looking at your daughter’s scores, I would be suspicious of her semantic memory. I would also be looking at Rapid Automatic Naming. Because her information and vocabulary subtests are so far below how she performs on everything else, I’m suspicious of the semantic area. Also, because she processes so quickly, that area might be moving in front of storage. Like taking too big a bite and cannot swallow it, only in learning.

Excellent parent book:
Diamond, M., Hopson, J., & Diamond, M.C. (1998). “Magic trees of the mind: How to nurture you child’s intelligence, creativity, and healthy emotions from birth through adolescence.” New York: E.P. Dutton.

The book I work from, as an educator, on this topic is:

Wolfe, Patricia. (2001). Brain Matters: Translating Research into Classroom Practices. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Also have Eric Jensen’s books at my fingertips.