• Ben says: 
January 30, 2012 at 4:23 am 
Hello, my 12 yo daughter is having difficulty academically in the small private school we just enrolled her in. It doesn’t seem to be getting better and my wife and I are seriously considering homeschooling for her .
PRI is 18th percentile
WMI 86th percentile
PSI 13th percentile
I am trying to understand the implications of this score. The private school is so small it cannot make much in the way of accommodations. Abeka is used. Her grades in the core classes are basically failing.
Any insights would be helpful. Thanks
REPLY
  • Melissa Mullin, Ph.D. says: 
February 8, 2012 at 12:34 am 
I am sorry to hear that your daughter is struggling. The Verbal Comprehension Index score is not included in your message, but I am going to assume that it was high since your comment is based on my Frustration Profile article. 
Here is what I see in the profile you present for your daughter: She is strong verbally and had excellent working memory skills. Her ability to work with visual material is weak. The PRI in the 18th percentile indicates that visual problem solving is hard for her, and her low PSI shows how difficult it is for her to quickly process pencil and paper timed tasks.
  • To support this profile I suggest:

 

• Improve Executive Functioning Skills, Working Memory and Study Techniques

 

• Teach the use self-talk to organize her learning and performance strategies and to focus her attention on tasks
• Build strategies to help analyze, prioritize, and execute specific steps in a given assignment
  • Break down tasks and follow the order checking work along the way
  • Encourage your daughter to visualize what she is going to do before she begins the task
  • Teach your daughter strategies that cater to her understanding of the big picture:
    • 
 Outlining
    • The SQ3R approach is recommended as an approach to studying information from text books
    • Give her a concept of the finished product when working on projects
    • When working with academic material, review the components and the whole picture

Build memory skills by building association to preexisting knowledge

• Teach your daughter strategies to help her recall information, such as PAR:
  • P= Picture it.
  • A= Associate it.
  • R= Review it.
• Memory strategies such as:
  • “Chunking” information into more manageable units
  • Rehearse new information to help encode it.


Build your daughter’s visual-perceptual strategies and perceptual organization to support her problem solving skills:

• Exercises to increase your daughter’s understanding of part-to-whole relationships is recommended
  • The Snap cube Program will help your daughter build her visual thinking skills.
  • Teach her how to use graphic organizers to depict information visually and increase her retention of ideas.
  • Teach Active Reading Strategies to build verbal memory and reading comprehension skills:
  • KWL Charts
    • Predicting, paraphrasing, story/plot maps, character maps
•
  • Teach note-taking techniques that will present and summarize heard information visually.
  • Exercises to sharpen her ability to attend to visual detail and to express similarities and differences between images are recommended.

Processing Speed

• Allow longer response time for your daughter to
  • complete seatwork assignments in class
  • make decisions when offered a choice of activities.
• Allow extra time for tests, usually time and a half
• Reduce the amount of work required.
• Shorten the assignment so it can be accomplished within the time allotted
• Train your daughter in time management techniques to become aware of the time that tasks take.
• Emphasize accuracy rather than speed in evaluating your daughter in all subject areas
• Replace timed tests with alternative assessment procedures

Fine-Motor skills


• Use Retrain the Brain to build fine motor skills
• Use Handwriting without Tears to enhance letter formation.
• Become a touch typist

• Use of a computer for school assignments and exams is recommended.
• It is recommended that your daughter be allowed to tape all lectures due to her need for extra processing time and her difficulty with visual motor speed.
• Use of Dragon Dictation software may be helpful for your daughter in getting her ideas out.
• Access to class notes is recommended.
  • REPLY