Expressive writing and spelling

• Samantha was asked to write why she was interested in getting her ECE certification. She did take time to think about what she wanted to say.
• Although her grammar and spelling were weak, there were some signs of process (she used an opening and concluding sentence).
• Some common errors found in the written passage were:
  • Samantha omitted and sometimes substituted vowels and consonants.
  • She would leave out silent letters (i.e. instead of an "ous" ending, she would write "us").
  • If she wasn't able to recall a word from her memory she relied only on her phonetics for spelling (wrote payn for pain and laf for laugh).
  • She left out punctuation and often didn't capitalize her sentences.
  • Her writing included a number of run on sentences.
  • She left little space between her words.
  • There were letter reversals and she only caught them when she read over her work, not when she looked over her work (she said this weakness has been drilled into her head so she is very aware of it).

Math skills:

• Samantha had difficulty with multi-step calculations.
• She found it very difficult to find information on a graph or a chart.
• She struggled with operations when they involved more than two digits that required columns (long division, multiplication).
• Samantha was able to make change and deal with simple math involving single digits.
• She was able to recite her multiplication tables based on her strong memory skills.

Overall conclusions:

Samantha appears to have some visual learning disabilities that affect her reading, writing, spelling and math. Her strong verbal skills and good memory have helped her cope with her weaknesses and have allowed her to develop good comprehension skills when information is given to her orally.