WISC score - grateful for any help

[NT2018]

DS is 7. Summer born and youngest in year. Currently in YR3 in London Prep.

He has been meeting all expectations but weakest areas by far are spelling and writing composition. I have been working with him at home on fun tasks without much progression.

He can get full marks on weekly spelling tests but not recall words the following day, can’t sometimes recall high frequency words etc.

He also really struggles with organising, planning and composing writing tasks despite being able to verbalise exactly what he wants to put on paper. He takes a very long time to produce good written work. Anything produced more quickly will be full of spelling errors, untidy, no real structure.

The school aren't that bothered as he’s so young but I organised an Educational Psychologist assessment to better understand how he learns and what I/school can do to help him.

The report has come through and mentions that he should be considered gifted and to develop him accordingly.

The school definitely do not think he has any real talent. They have him in the normal streams for core subjects.

His processing speed is completely out of kilter with his other scores. This may be a specific learning difficulty or something that may improve with practice and time it says.

Is this a profile of a gifted child? They couldn’t calculate a reliable IQ given the range of scores on the subtests.

How do I support a gifted child to fulfil potential if he is?

Any knowledge at all on this type of profile would be so helpful to me. I feel so alone and frustrated with the writing issue.

Could he be dyslexic? There seems to be a mismatch between his verbal and written abilities.

No, not dyslexic apparently. The EP said he has a reading age of 19 years old on subtest.

The school SENCO also screened and was negative.

The report did not label any learning difficulty at all. Only the mention of gifted potential.

I don’t think with that processing speed, he can show that potential tbh unless the school is willing to make concessions in terms of time allowed for tasks etc.

It does make sense…teacher mentioned at parents evening that I had to work on DS listening skills as she always has to repeat instructions with him but I guess it’s because he doesn’t get what he has to do quickly enough!

Yes those scores are very clearly (highly) gifted. It's not that uncommon for processing speed to be significantly lower than the others. He is a deep thinker, not a fast one.

My understanding was you can still calculate a full-scale IQ (FSIQ) even though the processing speed is low - WISC-V is more tolerant on this point than WISC-IV was. There is also GAI (general ability index) which may be relevant as a "global" score in this scenario. Ask the assessor if they could calculate GAI or other relevant ancillary indices. see e.g. https://www.pearsonclinical.co.uk/content/dam/school/global/clinical/uk-clinical/files/wisc5-sample-interpretive-report.pdf

Re: "The school definitely do not think he has any real talent. They have him in the normal streams for core subjects". Well, if they keep thinking that, you'll need to move him. It's very common for primaries to judge ability by speed - who had their hand up first, who finished their times table quickest. But that has nothing to do with depth of thought. You need to be careful he doesn't end up trapped in a catch-22 where he's disengaged because they won't give him advanced work but they won't give him advanced work because he's not demonstrating what he's capable of - he can't, particularly on timed tasks on low-level work. Stress the importance of untimed assessments in your interactions with the school.

In your shoes, with a child with a "spiky profile" combining high and average scores, I would read up on twice-exceptionality (2e) and executive functions. Very high WISC scores like these do not preclude a coexisting difficulty like dysgraphia/dyslexia, and can actually make it harder to spot due to masking/compensation. Though, as a summer-born boy, his motor skills and executive functions might just need more time to mature. For children with handwriting difficulties, use of a keyboard can help a lot.

This might be relevant:
https://www.hoagiesgifted.org/the_highly_gifted.htm

I think my DS processing speed was about 40 and he managed A levels (with extra time) so yours should be OK. He also did much higher on everything except processing. I think he is dyslexic, though not diagnosed, as his verbal expression is excellent and he still has the best vocabulary of the family despite his siblings always much higher in exams. He is diagnosed ADHD, I think he also has ASC (loss of sensory issues). Perhaps your DS may also be dyspraxic which would affect writing. Maybe if he's finding the physical action of writing difficult then he doesn't have the capacity to also think about spelling the words. Incidentally, you can be a fluent reader and dyslexic.

Thanks so much your responses.

I will ask the EP about the global score.

I am still convinced there is an underlying learning difficulty with writing/processing and he’s just clever enough to get by. We’ve just finished a homework task earlier this evening where writing 8 basic sentences took 90 mins!!

Yes, the school is very much focused on timed assessments and who can do tasks quickly to a high standard. Even prior to this report, I was starting to think that this isn’t the school for him as he shows no progress in producing quality work in the time he has available in lessons…hence why he is in the lower streams.

I will send on the report and organise a meeting to see if they will support him to reach his potential and in the meantime look at other schools around the area.

Thanks for the website mentioned. I will check this out too.

In relation to the writing issues - how much longer with continued support/interventions would be reasonable before considering further difficulty screening if there was little progress? Another year or possibly two?

I have a DD with a wisc like that at 6. She was diagnosed from that assessment with dysgraphia. She's since also been diagnosed with ADHD. She's recently been assessed again by an ed psych and it was interesting to see what tests the ed psych ran this time. She did a battery of processing speed tests, which came out with a big discrepancy to her verbal/non-verbal abilities. It really is helping to make sense of her - things like her not responding immediately to instructions and not really getting any faster at her times tables, no matter how often we repeat them.

Luckily my DD's school isn't focused on timed assessments and we deliberately selected a school that is all through - as we thought that timed entrance tests for secondary school wouldn't show her abilities. Her school also test all children using cat4, so can pick up on discrepancies between abilities and attainment.

My DS scored extremely similarly to this when he had an EP assessment aged 9. He was subsequently diagnosed with ADHD, and then later also ASD.
He is very verbally articulate, but extended writing tasks are always a huge challenge (as is any kind of task initiation)

Re: how much longer with continued support/interventions would be reasonable.

I would seriously consider teaching touch-typing now, eg. Englishtype (software) is accessible at that age. If he takes to it consider asking school to make use of a keyboard/equivalent his normal way of working.
More generally you may get useful input on support from an OT, particularly if they have sensory integration training. Some of them will do a school visit / classroom observation as part of their assessment.

A good starting point for learning about giftedness with coexisting weakness (2e) is:
https://dabrowskicenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Silverman2009GEI.pdf