what testing to ask for

I have a Child Study Team meeting for my 10 year old daughter next week to discuss evaluation for LDs (at my request). She is in 3rd grade, and has been in this country (adopted from Bulgaria) for 2 years and 2 months. She is still in the ESL program, but she has issues that I just can’t explain away with the ESL excuse, and I’m hoping that the school system will agree. Her teacher tells me she has trouble focusing, and does much better with one-on-one attention, (and that she flirts with the boys — sigh).

I’ve compiled a list of observations — below is the “Reader’s Digest” version. I sense (from previous experience with my older dyslexic daughter) that they will test for a minimum of things, unless I request them specifically. I’m hoping that the collective wisdom on this list can help recommend what I should be asking for.

My thoughts so far include ADD, SI, CAPD, memory, reading comprehension, oral comprehension, and written/oral expression. That make sense to anyone? Am I missing anything? Do I get to approve the specific testing they are going to do — e.g. what the eval will consist of? Can I ask them to add specific tests if I think their plan is insufficient?

Here are some of the things that I have observed her having difficulty with:
1. Grasping math concepts — e.g. place values, money, fact families, multiplication concepts.
2. Time concepts and learning to tell time on an analog clock.
3. Math word problems — e.g., knowing when to add or subtract, creating the mathematical sentence, interpreting multi-step word problems.
4. Following/understanding written directions — e.g. not answering the questions that was asked.
5. Identifying patterns, e.g. 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, ?
6. Accurate copying — e.g. spelling words, sentences.
7. Handwriting neatness — it is usually legible, but she doesn’t always seem to be able to control it completely.
8. Remembering instructions and other orally transmitted information, e.g., remembering what she is supposed to do for a particular assignment, remembering whether she has a test the next day or the next week.
9. Tracking while reading — frequently skips a line.
10. Reading decoding — the easier books seem to flow fairly smoothly now, but she has a lot of trouble when coming across unfamiliar words.
11. Spelling — Spells very phonetically, to the extent that she hears the proper sounds. But she doesn’t always here the correct sounds, and doesn’t remember how to spell words correctly. E.g. cumming instead of coming.
12. Information Retrieval — seems to do best with a written multiple choice test, sometimes doing well on a test even though oral questions that required recall the night before had a 10% success rate.
13. Writing sentences and paragraphs — e.g. difficulty in retrieving, organizing, and writing the answer to an “essay” type question on a test, e.g., “How did the Indians help the pilgrims?” I think the answer she gave was something like “They helped them.”
14. Processing and relating information — drawing analogies.
15. Reading comprehension - This is sometimes due to ESL vocabulary issues, but not always.
16. Observation and Retention of things around her — lacks sense of direction, sense of time, relationships of events, doesn’t notice/read signs around her that could give her a clue of what is happening or where she is.
17. There are also occasional inklings of SI issues — she likes her water hot, she tends to sway/rock while standing (when she first got home she used to hit her head repeatedly against the pillow at night), and sometimes she asks me to lay my weight on top of her when I am hugging her good night. Yet on the other hand she sometimes shys away from hugging and kissing.
18. She always has to be doing something EXCEPT when she is watching TV, in which case she can stare motionless for minutes on end, even at the commercials, and even when she is supposed to be getting dressed for school.
Thanks,
db