My daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia in year 9 - up until this point school had not noticed any issue, she didn't do SATS because of covid and it was me who realised that her spelling (always not great) was actually quite at odds with her general ability, and she was struggling to process what she was reading, which was more obvious as she was required to read more complex and longer texts. She was assessed privately for diagnosis, and her reading processing speed was on the first centile.
Now she is in year 10, and I am really worried about her passing English GCSE. She is capable in her other subjects (maths, science, art, geography) of 6-7 grades I would say (based on her class test marks so far), maybe even an 8 in a couple of subjects, but in English language in particular she is probably working at about a GCSE 3. She has a tutor, who is great, and a previous AQA examiner, who has been working with her a few months. In the tutor sessions she is capable of working through a language paper with support and answering questions using set strategies, to a grade 5 standard. However, in the assessments she has had (to be fair they have only done one paper 1 and 1 paper 2 assessment so guess it is early days) this has all gone out the window. I think this is a combination of nerves, time and, crucially, processing speed. She already has a laptop and extra time. In the first language assessment she did, she appeared not to be able to take in at all what she was reading - I have since arranged for her to have a computer reader, she has only just started using this and on her recent assessment she did actually seem to understand the passages more, and she felt this helped. However, what she has written is still probably about a grade 3. She spent ages reading the paper (listened to it 3 times then 'read' it) and about half an hour trying to do question 1 (this should take about 6 minutes with the extra time). She didn't write anywhere near enough and the structure of her answers just went by the wayside (maybe nerves and practice though).
She is only year 10 so I am telling myself she has lots of time to improve, and the tutor is planning to spend lots of time embedding the techniques and practicing over the summer. I guess she also needs to have a strategy which order to answer the questions and know how much time to spend on each.
Her spelling is very bizarre - not for all words and what she means to write is usually obvious. An example in the recent paper was 'ordotory' (auditory!) I think (this one was less obvious!), however, she would still be better not having spellcheck enabled as she should be able to pick up at least some marks for SPAG!
She really needs a 5 if she wants to go to 6th form (and is much more able in other subjects so should be capable of A levels in these). I am really stressed she is not going to get this, though am trying to tell myself there is plenty time.
I have heard that touch typing programmes (like touch type read spell) can help in dyslexia by embedding spellings in muscle memory so am
wondering whether to try this. It's not too expensive though may be time consuming, so just wondered if anyone has had any experience with this being helpful? Also any tips at all about how to get that magic grade 5 in English with dyslexia would be really appreciated.