Trying to identify reading difficulties

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My daughter, diagnosed AS 5 years ago at age 6, has always struggled with reading. At a very young age she was obsessed with books-wanted to hold them all the time, wanted them read to her, etc. She even developed an early ability to read words well beyond her age level. She is still able to read very advanced words.

Her difficulty, however, lies in comprehending what she is reading and even hearing. She states when she reads it is just a jumble of words that have no meaning. She is unable to follow a story line, draw conclusions, make assumptions, etc.

Every year in school they have been modifying her work-allowing her to do very low level reading for assignments and assisting her in reading instructions, etc. However, now that she is in 5th grade, her teacher wanted the public school (she is in a private school with lots of 1 on 1 help) to do assessment to find out what the issue truly is.

I've just come from a meeting discussing the results of extensive testing, including IQ testing by the public school district. 5 years ago, when she was diagnosed they also did IQ testing which was very much in line with the results I saw today.

Here's the issue:
She scores VERY, very high in some areas and VERY, very low in others. They state this averages out to "Average Intelligence". However, I am smart enough to see between the lines so to speak and understand that her low areas might be contributing to the reading issues. I just don't know how to mediate them when the public school district is unwilling to see through the high scores to the difficulty in between and tell me how to help her.

She scores exceptionally high (95+%) in General Information, Visual Spatial Thinking, Crystallized Intelligence. BUT, she scored very low on all the Memory subtests (both short term and long term) as well as on the Fluid Intelligence. They were all in the 20th-30th% range.

They also did the Woodcock Johnson Test and also had wide gaps in scores. The math areas were 95-98%, while the reading subtests were 30-40% and a few of the reading subtests-Word Attack and Quantitative Concepts-were below 20%.

So, I feel they passed over the indicators that showed impairment in areas related to reading due to her high overall cognitive abilities and Math Reasoning.

My question is, how do I help her? Does anyone have experience in this type of situation? If her Memory and Fluid Reasoning is impaired how do we work on reading comprehension? Is this just a result of her different neurology and will be a constant struggle? Is the school right in just thinking not everyone is good at everything and therefore, she just doesn't have the abilities in reading? I feel, with her great strengths there could be something we might do to mediate the areas in which she struggles.

Thank you for any feedback or suggestions!

I don't know if this applies or would help you, but if your daughter was reading very early, she might be hyperlexic. (Early, above average fluency and relatively lower comprehension.) That is what my son is. I have been working on that, myself, as the public school was not helpful because they were not going to do anything unless his grades were really bad. So, they did very little (close to nothing, really)

I would look very closely at the sub-tests to see if you can figure out key issues and maybe issues that overlap.

I would find some very short reading passages, like the kinds they would have multiple examples of on standardized testing. (Your state may have samples, online) to see how she does with short passages, so the memory aspect is not so much in play as with an entire chapter book.

In addition to seeing how she does on the state-supplied questions, ask her questions that check for main ideas, ask her to summarize, see if she can identify supporting details and if she understands how they support the main idea, not just that the sentences are proximal. Other good things to check for are the ability to make conclusions as well as inferences regarding conclusions that can be made that are not explicitly stated in the text. Also check to see if she can match up pronouns with the antecedents they reference. The pronoun thing can be confusing to autistic kids and it makes comprehension difficult if you lose track of what is being discussed.

When we were in public school, I used to look through everything that had to do with reading comprehension and would analyze why he would get questions wrong. I did not worry so much if it had to do with deciphering people's emotions b/c that is a longer term project and beyond the scope of reading comprehension, but I more paid attention to the rest of it. Some of it was in the general knowledge/inference realm b/c my son's knowledge base does not align well with children his age. I didn't worry so much about that either, b/c that knowledge is going to come out of order, so even after explaining a particular point, I knew that there would be more on other assignments I could not predict. After eliminating those things it was mainly an issue of inferences in general (not just based on kid knowledge) and drawing conclusions with some other things scattered in there.

Try to see if you can identify different categories of things --- and then decide what you need the school's help with most. Try to use their lingo. If your daughter has a textbook she can bring home in language arts, look through it for the various strategies so you can tell them specifically what she cannot do.

Sorry, TL:DR. I hope some of it is of use.

Edited for spelling

You might try to see if there is a Lindamood-Bell tutoring center in your area. They have a program called Visualizing and Verbalizing that is all about reading comprehension. http://www.lindamoodbell.com/programs/visualizing-verbalizing.html

Thank you both for the excellent comments. While there is not a Lindamood-Bell center nearby, I ordered some of the Visualizing and Verbalising workbooks, perhaps they'll be of some help.

My testing is very similar to your daughters. I fall off either side of the bell-curve on many tests. My language ability is exceptionally low (lower %age than your daughter).

Don't think it will just get better!

You may be able to get her into a speech and language pathologist. That may seem surprising, particularly if she speaks well, but there are many language-related therapies that are harder (or impossible) to do as an adult. Seek to rule-in or out a diagnosis of a language disorder (expressive language disorder, receptive language disorder, or mixed). Life with these issues can be exceptionally frustrating, especially if she is intelligent but often unable to properly communicate her big ideas.

To be able to pass comprehension tests as a kid, my mom taught me to read the questions first. (Helped significantly. Though, some new computerized tests make it impossible.)

I agree that learning to summarize is a very important step for her. Have her summarize anything and everything. If it's frustrating her, give her less information before asking her to summarize. Find the sweet spot and slowly grow it.

Thank you Screen_Name, she did go to a Speech/Language Pathologist for 2 years an they stated she did have some Receptive/Expressive Language issues. She just doesn't fit perfectly into any of the diagnostician's boxes that tell them exactly what her issues are. She's a unique combination of many issues and it seems the Memory issues, and slow processing speed when relating to language are part of it. She was a late talker but her verbal skills seem to be excellent, even far above her age level. Your suggestions are good and I will try that. When I try to work on reading with her she becomes very frustrated quickly and her teacher thinks her perfectionistic tendencies cause her to not even want to try at times.

Mine has the perfectionist thinking also. We are doing a workbook, right now. (Just a generic one, but it has different skill categories) and I am not even grading it. I have had to tell him explicitly that I know he needs more confidence in reading comp and that is what this workbook is for, and that I will not grade it. I help him with strategies as he needs it, but I try to encourage independence and what amounts to risk taking for him, which is doing things he is not great at. He sometimes will exclaim, " I am lacking in confidence!" and I am not sure if I put a thought in his head, or just a way to express it.

We are plugging away and he is doing it. I started this a couple of weeks ago, and I have him doing a unit a day (8 lessons) during his daily 1 1/2 hour LA block, but only 2 times a week, and when he is done he can free read without me peppering him with annoying questions--just for fun-- so I do not kill his love for reading..

I dont know if it helps it Your explanation sounds to me, as if when someone tries to explain something more complicated verbally. The listening is for me so complicated, that I cannot imagine what I listen to, at the same time. (I am a visual thinker.) It ends with the person blabbering tons of stuff, and with me only remembering that the person blabbered lots of stuff. ^^

However with reading I dont have the problems, because of it being far easier for me to simply read an informations myself, then to hear it. So when I read, the informations become instantly visual, and instead of an endless cacophony of sounds, that I shall remember, its instead an simple picture.

Might the problem be, that because of her teachers telling her to do so, she is too much focusing on remembering the words themselves, which are nothing else then written blabbering, instead of creating a picture or film, of what the words describe? Maybe you can do some exercises with her, by focusing on imaging visually, what you read/hear?

Actually I am reading a big fantasy series /Wheel of time) I can tell you easily whats actually happening, but could not tell you about one single sentence of it ^^

cubedemon,

Yeah, it does work that way. That is why I give him things that I think he can do but are a moderate challenge, so he can can feel that "a ha" feeling. I don't grade this particular project so the wrong answers do not torment him and degrade his confidence, when he needs to build it up in this realm. In other things, even other language art things he is better at, I do grade them so I can work on him tolerating the imperfections, so he does not feel his fears are validated and that getting things wrong is so awful.

It is a balance like everything else.