Upon entering public school 5 years ago, my son’s tests scores were well above average in every category. He has been attending the same public elementary school from Kindergarten and is currently in the 4th grade. Each year his test scores are lower. He has problems reading aloud and has had problems with his teachers every year. They indicate he’s disruptive to their classes.
He’s very well behaved at home, we had tim tutored over the summer for reading and is reading at grade-level, but still does not read well aloud.
His IQ is above-average, he does very well one-on-one but does not work well in groups. This concerns me because next year he will be transferring to a school that only works in groups.
He’s not organized at school - and we’ve been working with him on his organization at home, but it has not transferred over to school. This will also be a problem next year because he will have a locker and will be required to change classes.
I read he may have a nonverbal learning disability based upon what we’ve experienced and observed. I’m not really sure what to do from here - any help is appreciated.
Re: Question regarding possible learning disability??
You really have two choices. First, you can ask the school to evaluate him. Second, you can get him evaluated privately. Either way, don’t delay. There are so many possible reasons for the problems your child is experiencing and an evaluation will help you to understand what is going on. In the meantime, you might want to cruise around this website, especially the LD in depth section. For starters, take a look at the section dealing with gifted children with learning disabilities and at the section dealing with ADHD. That’s not say that your son has an LD or ADHD —really, all that can be said is that he is having the kinds of problems one may see when a child does have a learning issue.
Hi. You’ve come to the right place to get advice.
Other people here who know more than I do will help you out with NLD etc.
For myself as an academic tutor, here are the points in your letter that raise red flags:
— tests at grade level silently but does not read well orally
— high IQ and generally intelligent
— continually dropping test scores as school progresses
— works well one-to-one but not in larger groups; disruptive when he does not know what is going on
Of course nobody can diagnose online, but I meet a lot of kids with this same general pattern, and here is a possible scenario to investigate:
Many highly intelligent kids who get off on the wrong foot in reading use their intelligence to cover up great gaping holes in their reading ability. This is particularly common when the early reading program is of the memorize-and-guess type. Tutoring, unless carefully planned, may sometimes just be a bandaid that teaches more coping skills but leaves the gaping holes underneath. The student does well on tests by being test-wise rather than knowing the subject matter, and does well in small groups by reading the teacher rather than the book. The problems show up in oral reading where test-wiseness can’t cover the lack of skills, and in situations where the student has to work independently. As choolwork gets more complex the coping skills become less effective and more failure and frustration grow.
Have him read to you orally from a fairly easy book, and listen to the *kind* of errors he makes. Does he randomly replace and switch around the basic vocabulary of, for, from, an, a , the, was, said, and ? When he meets an unfamiliar word, does he make wild guesses that have nothing to do with the look of the word on the page? Does he try to get you to give him “hints” and does he look more at your face than at the page? And when he writes, is his writing “alphabet soup” style? These are all signs that he is guessing rather than decoding.
Often this can all be helped a lot by thorough tutoring in reading skills from the ground up. Not just basic level 1 phonics, but a thorough program that teaches *all* the skills.