AIBU To Dig Deeper into Child's Reading and Spelling Difficulties

[Sleepy104888]

Reposting here for traffic as I'm trying to figure out where to start. Recently went to parents evening and was told dd is a year behind in reading fluency (around 40 words per minute and is in Year 3) and also struggles in spelling. Since Year 1 the gap in reading and spelling continue to grow bigger. I see improvements but dd is still lagging behind peers in these areas. She is a very bright girl and is starting to enjoy independent reading, but I notice she will get stuck on words a lot. Teacher has noted she will do well with long words and then trip up on short words like 'zone'. Her spelling is a mess and she can only spell 5 of the 100 common words correctly so far, and often comes up with spellings that are way off unless they are easy to sound out.

I was worrying about dyslexia so tried a home screening test from Literacy Gold which suggested she may have eye tracking difficulties. I've read old threads and not sure where to start...behavioral optometrist (pricy and far), NHS orthoptist (if I can get her referred), or some other specialist. I do realise a home screening is very basic so also don't want to jump to conclusions and shell out a lot of money unnecessarily, but she's been falling further behind in these two areas since Year 1 so it is worrying me. I was blaming myself for not giving enough school support and now wondering if there's more to it (though I'm sure more practice at home would help too).

AIBU, to think we need to push for an assessment? And, if we should, where would you start from experience with a child with similar issues.

I disagree that teachers are teaching sounds incorrectly or that this would hold a child back if they did. Sounds have changed with SSP ie 'ruh' is now 'rrrrr' and i do think some of them are actually more difficult for kids now - 'luh' is now 'lllll' which IME can often turn into 'ulllll' and 'muh' is now 'mmmmm' which IME can often turn into 'ummm' (having listened to readers in school). Also try sounding out mum when you're saying 'mmmm'!

I'm not a huge fan of synthetic phonics, I taught DS the old way at the time they changed all the sounds and although he wasn't that interested in reading he was still the first free reader in the class. It didn't hold him back being taught 'incorrectly'.

Personally I'd get a private Ed Psych appointment asap OP if you can afford it as I expect there's a bit of a wait and in the mean time get eyes and hearing checked as well.

Keep asking school what they are doing to assess your DD’s barriers to learning.

I would look at getting a tutor if it’s affordable.

However, if it’s not, start doing Nessy Reading and Spelling (you can get a free trial but even afterwards it’s not overly expensive) with her and stick with it. I tutor mainly dyslexic learners and use it all the time with under 12s. It’s gamified but the theory behind it is really well thought out.

Having trouble with short words but not as much with long words sounds like dyslexia to me, once my DD got to longer words she could read them in context correctly, because the whole word was a different shape to the words around and she was reading the words not the letters. Short words were difficult because they could look the same as other words, 'on' could be 'no' for instance, as far as she was concerned they were the same word. Spelling was also very difficult because for her so many letters looked the same. She was bright and did figure it out for herself eventually. I did help her a lot with reading at home and practising writing.

She was also right handed and left eyed which didn't help fine motor control for writing, you can check which eye she favours by letting her pick up a telescope or look into a microscope and see which eye she uses.

Thank you everyone for the lovely recommendations! I have asked the teacher about her year 1 phonics screening results and copies of end of year reports from reception-year 2 to see how things shifted over time.

For those who asked what we do we definitely read but she never enjoyed it before until this year (part of why I was shocked she’s so behind as I thought things had clicked). It would be outing to say what I do but suffice to say we have always had books and reading since babyhood. My worry about lack of support is because around the time she started having school difficulties her brother was born and he has had a lot of health challenges meaning we’ve been very inconsistent on extra practice after school (eg spelling). We aim for 10 minutes spelling, 10 minutes reading, 10 minutes maths but it’s not happened a lot because of all that has gone on.

For those that asked how she spells, here are some examples when we tested how many of the 100 common words she knows: caut (caught), expearins (experience), different (diffrent). I did the Apples and Pears placement tests and she only passed the first two. She spelled why as ‘whey’ which surprised me as that’s so common. She will read Isadora Moon books daily independently and without prompting and we are now reading harder books together and she likes to read them out loud. If she slows down she can read the words accurately with few errors. If she picks up speed she makes mistakes, like her teacher said she read uphill as ‘ufil’. So had mixed up the ph and read as an f sound.

School is doing extra reading with teacher and x4 sessions additional for reading/spelling and says she needs to review phase 5 set 4 and 5 sounds if that means anything to anyone. I have ordered Dancing Bears and Apples and Pears from Sound Foundations as a start but didn’t want to ignore potential eye tracking issue and wasn’t sure the best place to begin as I’d want someone qualified to confirm.

No. “Uh” should never be added to words. A dog is not a duhooooguh. I added emphasis on the o because it’s another one where teachers teach the sound incorrectly and then you have kids who can’t read simple “o” words because they aren’t using the correct sound.

If you teach phonics you need to teach the sounds correctly.

Good that the school knows what she’s missing and is putting interventions in place.

I would ask the school what and how you can support. Have they invited you to a phonics cafe ever? That’s where you get to learn about pure sounds and the school’s reading scheme. Either way, if I were them I’d love a parent who would happily do some ‘homework’ with a pupil. They could easily give you a list of those set 5 sounds so you can be on the look out for them. They could also show you good techniques to support with sentence reading. Working as a team is a very good thing for the child.

@Hangerbout , I missed the phonics sessions as they are always during the working day, but I will ask about other things after Easter holidays. For now, the teacher is collecting some information like her year 1 phonics screening results and her end of year reports from reception through year 2 so I can compare, as well as helping set up a identification form with senco. It may be she just catches up with some concentrated help, but I want to look into the eye tracking problem and see if a professional agrees this is an issue, as that could make a huge difference if actually it's not just building confidence in phonics. When I test her on phonics she knows the sets her teacher mentioned, so it's only in reading or spelling that I notice if she's not connecting the dots with sounds (e.g. she was fine with cloud but I had her write out a sentence with found and she misspelled it so we discussed the 'ou' sound and how cloud/found were similar).

The good thing is other than speed she actually really enjoys reading this year and well do so independently. I'm trying to model reading for her in evenings with harder books, but she wants to read out loud herself and actually I don't see a difference in how she reads with early readers and more advanced children's books; she will read equally as slow with similar accuracy, which surprised me and have no clue why that would be.