LuLu Tests for Phonemic Awareness

Thanks very much Helen. I will look into these. I would really like an accurate picture of where he is at with phonemic awareness. The school did the Woodcock Reading Mastery-Revised but the only results I got from that is he is reading on a K-9 grade equivalency (what in the world does mean when you are talking about a child in second grade). Yet the tester’s report states “he is below grade performance in all areas.” oh, okay ……………….. that tells me a lot. I’m going to ask for the standard scores in our meeting on Wed.

I also like the idea of the Brain Builders.

Is there an explanation for IQ/discrepency change in this instance? Shy of 3 years ago when the school tested him his VIQ= 111 and his PIQ= 84. We were told he qualified because of the discrepency.

This past May, we had the independent eval by the neuropsych who found VIQ= 107 and PIQ= 106.

This is a pretty significant change and from what I gather from reading about IQs they really should not change dramatically.

Is this normal?

Lu Lu,

Let me preface this comment with the words “I am not an expert.” That being said it looks almost as though your son has been remediated of his deficits. I seem to remember from the WISC scores you posted before that he didn’t seem to have one area that really stood out as being below normal.

The thing I keep reading is that remediation is not enough. These kids also need effective teaching. I think you need to remediate the deficit areas first through therapys (which I seem to recall your son has had, but I might be remembering it wrong) Once you jump that hurdle these kids need to be taught all the things they missed out on.

I really see all of this as a process where good teaching goes hand in hand with good therapy.

Just a thought from someone who is not an expert.

Linda

On his WISC this time around the two areas that stand out are Freedom From Distractibility and Processing Speed so visual and auditory processing kick in (which are also backed up in the WRAML) And from what I am reading, both are essential to reading.

He also scored poorly (or cause for concern) on the Gray’s Oral Reading test. He’s in 5th and he’s reading at a 3.1 grade equivalency. Also, the silent reading quotient is of significant concern; in the 21st percentile.

The neuropsych’s diagnosis is “Marked dyslexia: dyseidetic, dysphonetic and mnestic subtypes are evidenced. Word order confusion, dyscalculia, spelling dyspraxia, written language difficulties, reading difficulties and central auditory processing deficis are related to the dyslexic symptom complex.”

I see all of this in the daily work. Susan L (if I remember correctly) mentioned that his “good” scores could be a sign of good performance in the appropriate setting. I tend to agree. I went back over papers I kept from last year, and I just want to cry. He is not keeping up and the quality is really, really bad.
The saddest part is, many of the papers that are just marked OK or with a big C for correct, when I read the answers he wrote, many are inappropriate, incomplete or the page not finished. Some even have the stamp of “GREAT WORK” on them, which means she just was not reading his stuff.

So, I think there is something to your good teacher advice.

Sounds like a severe case of dysteachia. Couldn’t someone who was dysphonetic just not have been taught phonics properly?

I don’t know sometimes I think they make up some of these words.

Maybe I am just dysnotunderstandingthewholethingia.

Excellent word, but “dys” means “not” so to avoid redundancy it’s really dysunderstandingthewholethingia
(Let’s be accurate, here, folks! :-)

Lulu writes:

>He also scored poorly (or cause for concern) on the Gray’s Oral Reading test. He’s in 5th and he’s reading at a 3.1 grade equivalency. Also, the silent reading quotient is of significant concern; in the 21st percentile.

The neuropsych’s diagnosis is “Marked dyslexia: dyseidetic, dysphonetic and mnestic subtypes are evidenced. Word order confusion, dyscalculia, spelling dyspraxia, written language difficulties, reading difficulties and central auditory processing deficis are related to the dyslexic symptom complex.”>

Bingo! As of the first month of Grade 5 (expected level 5.1) he’s two years behind and should qualify for services. 21st percentile is also nearly a full standard deviation below average, and his IQ scores are somewhat above average, so you have a full standard deviation between IQ scores and silent reading, another qualification for services. And finally the neuropsych’s evaluation and list of difficulties is clear as a bell — this kid can’t read and needs help
Take this to the special ed director and be firm about getting real help. And then since the school’s idea of help is often more of the same, get an outside tutor who actually teaches reading with a proven effective phonetic/phonemic training method.

I will have to say as Karen did that I’m a parent and not an expert. IQ can change if there is remediation going on then IQ might go up. The performance side is likely to go down an my younger son’s did if there are visual-motor problems. If your son became unfocused or tired of the testing the first time through and the last part of the testing was the performance part this could account for the lower first time score. Testers are suppose to pick up on these issues and either stop the test or note their observations in the written report.

I would be interested in seeing the performance subtest scores for both testings.

Helen

Am I an expert — well, sort of. MA and some testing courses and a heck of a lot of reading.

IQ originally was held to be fixed, some kind of Platonic ideal of thinking ability. If test scores changed, that was blamed on testing inaccuracies and variability.

That theory is very much out of date, by twenty to fifty years. It is now known that IQ scores can and do change, by as much as 20% up OR down just because of environment. Then if the IQ score is affected by the reading disability, and it almost always is — even a non-written test asks vocabulary, and you mostly learn advanced vocabulary by reading — then remediating the reading disability will also have a strong effect on the IQ score.

IQ is much less used than previously and it is known to be variable and affected by a number of factors. The good thing about this is that doctors no longer give a life sentence to a toddler because of one test. The bad thing is that some schools aren’t using IQ scores for placement (a thread recently on one of these boards) and thus are ignoring one useful source of information.

I would use IQ scores along with *all* the other information available to make a suggestion for placement of any student. And if the IQ score changed by more than ten points between tests, I would strongly suspect something had happened to cause that change.

My son’s performance IQ went up more than 15 points after we did Fast Forward. This makes sense because the testers noted that he originally had trouble understanding the directions. In his case, he didn’t get “smarter” but rather the testing just more accurately reflected his abilities.

Beth

Age 7

Info: 8
Sim: 11
Arith: 10
Vocab.: 13
Comp.: 17
Digit: 5
Pict. Comp: 8
Coding: 9
Pict. Arr: 4
Block Des: 6
Obj. Assm: 11
Symb. Srch: 12

Age 10

Info: 14
Sim: 11
Arith: 7
Vocab: 11
Comp: 13
Digit: 8
Pict. Comp: 12
Coding: 11
Pict. Arr: 10
Block Des: 10
Obj. Assm: 11
Symb. Srch: 7

LuLu,

It looks like at 7 he had visual processing problems with sequencing and going from whole to part. What happened between 7 and 10 that could explain the change. Did he used to hate puzzles and then began to like them. Did he get glasses receive vision therapy or participate in some physical activity regularly? Did he play with legos or construction toys a lot?

It is interesting that on the Performance side the Picture Completion is the highest score and this is the only subtest that does not require any motor input. The coding score which requires a great deal of motor input was only slightly lower.

Helen

I think my answers to the questions might only confuse matters more. He had vision therapy before he was tested the first time.

We started with the vision therapy because his first grade teacher suggested an eye exam. Our pediatrician had brochures in his office about vision therapy, tracking problems, etc. So we went to the behavioral optometrist. Went through 9 months of therapy and things did not improve. So, then I insisted that the school test him. Until this time, they kept stalling me with the “all kids develop at different rates, lets give it time.”

He is very, very active in all kinds of sports and activities. Loves anything physical. He’s basically an “outside cat.” He does not have much patience or persistence for legos or such but will play with them every once in a while.

OHHHHHHH … but, he did get Playstation during this time and, like most kids, has spent much time with these various games. His frustration level with them though drives us all nuts though. Yelling and screaming at the T.V. So, I guess they are really not as bad for kids as the critics claim. Maybe it worked on his performance (visual perception issues).

What a revelation!!!!!! Silly me spent all that money and time on vision therapy when the answer could very well have been those ridiculous video games. What do you think?

.

I’m writing to you because you seem to understand the “why’s where’s and what for’s” of what I’m trying to understand. I feel like the child with LD! I believe that my step daughter may be LD. She has “moved” along in school and is in the 4th grade, private school, in Texas. Each year has become more of a struggle. My past experience with children ( all grown and college grads) has been from another planet compared to this! I am just positive something is wrong, it shouldn’t be this hard and her work does not resemble the 4th grade I remember. I have ask my local public school for help and direction. They are useless ( part of the reason we chose private school) and speak in double talk but will not give me the name of someone to go to or where to begin. I don’t know what KIND of Dr to look for not to mention who. Since you seem to have traveled this road, would it be possible for you to point me in the right direction? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you,
Sandi

I’ve seen that referred to before and I don’t have a good grasp of what it means. Thanks!

One easy suggestion: call the nearest university special education department and see if they do testing on children. That may give you a start at a reasonable cost.

“And then since the school’s idea of help is often more of the same, get an outside tutor who actually teaches reading with a proven effective phonetic/phonemic training method.”

Yes, PLEASE take this advice! The school will not fix the problem now if they haven’t already!

Janis

This is from an article on LD In Depth “Auditory and Visual Processing”

Whole/part relationships

Some children have a difficulty perceiving or integrating the relationship between an object or symbol in its entirety and the component parts which make it up. Some children may only perceive the pieces, while others are only able to see the whole. The common analogy is not being able to see the forest for the trees and conversely, being able to recognize a forest but not the individual trees which make it up.

In school, children are required to continuously transition from the whole to the parts and back again. A “whole perceiver”, for example, might be very adept at recognizing complicated words, but would have difficulty naming the letters within it. On the other hand, “part perceivers” might be able to name the letters, or some of the letters within a word, but have great difficulty integrating them to make up a whole, intact word. In creating artwork or looking at pictures, the “part perceivers” often pay great attention to details, but lack the ability to see the relationship between the details. “Whole perceivers”, on the other hand, might only be able to describe a piece of artwork in very general terms, or lack the ability to assimilate the pieces to make any sense of it at all. As with all abilities and disabilities, there is a wide range in the functioning of different children.

Helen,

My son is weak at part to whole reasoning. He has a hard time integrating pieces into a coherent whole. This became obvious in third grade. IQ testing at least suggests that he is stronger at whole to part reasoning. Would you have any suggestions on how to modify teaching (explanations) to use his stronger skills?

Beth

Also try iser.com and look for evaluation

Beth, which parts of the IQ test indicate whole to part/ part to whole reasoning? The reason I am interested is b/c I know one of these areas is an area of weakness for NLD kids, and yet I think my son has some unusual strengths in that area (can’t remember which applyies, but you know what I mean…)

Object assembly is part to whole and block design is whole to part. My son scored a 6 on object assembly and a 12 on block design.

Beth

I have been considering play station. Visual perception is my child’s weakness and he has never been interested in video games. He never pushed for them like most kids his age but I think he would play them if we had them because it is something “everyone” does.

I have always thought they would help but I was reluctant.

I think you are right about this.

No surprise here, I’ve reflected on the similarities between our boys before. My son scored an 8 on object assembly, and 13 on block design. SO I’m trying to remember which strength/weakness combo is typical of NLD kids. (I know I saw that in another thread…) I believe that Block design is a measure of non-verbal reasoning. Despite these scores, one of the things we’ve noticed about our son since toddlerhood was his fascination with systems - how things connect to create something larger.

I gave in on this last year. He always lost when he played with friends at their house and hated it. But now I have taken to limiting his play to an hour a day on the weekend. I find it very repetitious and rather obnoxious after a point. Still, I am not sorry I did it. I think it improved his hand-eye coordination and made him feel more normal.

Beth

Karen,

My reading says that NLD kids have trouble with parts to whole reasoning which would be consistent with both of our kids’ scores. Fascination can help him overcome many obstacles, especially since even his low score isn’t that low.

Beth

Both my boys love to play video games also but what I have noticed is that as their social skills and academic skills have increased game playing has gone down. Both boys liked to play the games where you had to read and use strategy to do well, I use to read for them what the screen said, but stopped. I told them if you want to play the game you have to be able to read for yourself. Lately I catch my oldest son sitting in his room doing 1 of three things, readig, writing, or drawing. When we have conversations now they no longer always revolve around cartoons or video games, he is much more into talking about life and world events. Yes, he still does play games but more and more they are srategy type games and games that involve learning. At least in our experience video games have had a postitive influence on my boys.

Any recommendations on games like that? I bought my son Powerstone 2 this summer as a prize for finishing IM. I am so sick of it!!! We have a Sega dream cast system—which may be a problem.

Beth

We also use the gameboy and its games as reward for accomplishing goals. He got his game boy last summer for reading every day, and earned some games this summer for doing Great Leaps and IM.

Socially, at 8 years old, Gameboy is where its at. it gives him somethign to talk about with the cool boys.

I searchced all last night and couldn’t find this fact.

And the fact that his score wasn’t super low in general (although relative to his verbal scores it is) is consistent with the fact that his NLD deficits don’t appear to be severe right now. Thanks for explaining.

Here is what I found:

“Most of the symptoms of NLD can be understood as the consequence of a single type of problem within the brain. This is a level of impairment in the ability to take multiple pieces of information and pull them together to form a single, integrated ‘picture’. This is the ability to see the ‘whole’ as a the “sum of the parts’, or to understand how many pieces of information fit into a single explanatory pattern.”

Beth

We do not have either of those systems. We have nintendo 64 and game cube. How about a computer, do you have one of those? You can try the following games on that: Civilization II, The Oregon Trail, and popular with adolscents Morrow Winds. There are some strictally educational ones out there too that my kids like forget the name of the top of my head but have to deal with solving mysteries, you solve them by doing school related problems. Anything that is a game my kids enjoy. For reading we also play some board games as a family like monoply, life, and clue.