Another home schooling post

[chica1]

My 8 yr old is in yr 3 and it's the end of his second week at home.

I'm am actually feeling like a really crap mum and really upset with his teachers. All the work they have set the class is way above is capability and I have suddenly realised how behind he is with his school work.

We have told the teachers since year 1 we were worried that he was struggling and they didn't seem concerned at all. He's bright but really struggles to write anything. I knew spellings were an issue but tested him on some 'red' words his sister is learning in reception and he got about 1/3 wrong.

For background I work FT so he does his homework with his dad and reading with me and his reading is ok. So I hadn't picked up how behind he is in writing.

I am still working FT unfortunately but I so wish I could be home to help him more.
I'm glad I have a chance to help him but I don't understand why the teachers haven't picked it up with us. I even emailed his teacher last week and said he would not be doing the spellings she had set as were we are learning KS1 spellings and all she said was that's a good idea !!!

That does seem very poor from the school!

Can use twinkl or other website to get some work for where you think his ability is?

I would email the teacher and express your concerns, see what she says.

Could also post on the primary boards here, there are quite a few teacher around who are very helpful and can maybe give you some ideas to help him along.

I have a plan to focus on KS1 work, but I wonder if he has something else wrong. He's not dyslexic as he's reading is ok, he just struggles to write.

Dysgraphia? Or Dyspraxia?

Is he generally clumsy/ poorly coordinated?

No but he does sound very young for his age if you know what I mean, more like 5 yr old and still has trouble pronouncing words even though he can read them.

Hi, I have experience with dyspraxia and dyslexia and I would recommend having your child tested if possible. I myself struggled with dyslexia when I was younger but this was never picked up in school as I was a great reader. However, my spelling was not so good and my writing was very slow. I hope this helps!

Reading with interest as my year 3 child is the same. She really struggles with the English that is set. Writing a sentence is enough of a challenge, let alone thinking about pronouns and spellings.

Like Olivia above my daughter really struggled with writing/spelling. She reads well above her age though.

Despite talking about it every parents evening from yr 2 it was only in yr5 that she was diagnosed with dyslexia by an educational psychologist - which we paid for. School suspected dyslexia but couldn't justify the funds as she wasn't 'bad' enough. She couldn't spell her name correctly at 9, but had read all the Harry Potter books for example.

Dyslexia doesn't necessarily mean difficulty reading - it can effect writing and spelling as well as, or, instead of.

Spelling is not something I would be too concerned about. Red words are hard to spell, they have to be learnt.

There is going to be a huge disparity when we all get back to school, there is no doubt about it.

The problem at the moment is that the teachers can't teach or assess properly and they can't say 'oh, Mrs smith we don't think John is doing very well at the moment, in fact he's quite behind so step your game up'.

How is everything that isn't spelling?

Op I've been alerted to this for about a year when I couldn't wait for my dd to click anymore!!

We suspect dyslexia but have not investigated it yet. However we do have 2 tutors which have been absolutely worth their weight in gold. One works on the maths, the other English.

Get fhw flash cards for spelling, go over writing sheets for 1st 100 hfw...

Show him how to words are built eg root words and patterns adding ing... Tion.. Etc.

Try and get him spelling on a white board or with magnetic letters so he can put them into context.

The great thing is you have noticed now!! Time to help him and definitely think about a tutor.

• since my length dds journey I've realised that teacher training doesn't properly cover sen, so that's the first huge problem, which I was staggered by! Then the school SENCO is often not trained in sen at all at all and they can hold dc back from receiving help purely due to budgets and sometimes a culture in the school.

Get his hearing checked could also be an auditory processing issue.

Dd just got diagnosed with dyslexia. She’s 13 and has a reading age of 15+ with a spelling age of 8.

Just a heads up that the OP is from last March!