AIBU to seek extra support for my son’s phonics difficulties?

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Hi, sorry I am posting here for traffic and seeking advice please.

My son is end of y1 and struggles with phonics/reading. There is a possibility he has ADHD.

I know the curriculum ramps up in year 2 and i am afraid he is going to fall behind. What should we be doing? School seem a bit blasé about it and only care about the kids who are causing behaviour issues tbh. Even said about his ADHD not being an issue because he isn't kicking off down corridors when I asked about seeking private diagnosis.

He is a quiet boy who likes to follow the rules. We have tears over reading and the SAT style worksheets as he wants to be "right' for his teacher.

Would a phonics tutor help? Or am I over worrying at this point?

Thank you

Did he pass his end of year one phonics screening check? What was his mark? This will give some indication to posters as to how much he is struggling.

Have you had his end of year report? This will have his phonics score and if he is expected or below in reading. Knowing this will determine next steps.

Remember there is a high chance he may be dyslexic as the two are often found together.

How much do you read to / with him? You'd be amazed how much is picked up effortlessly if you do this regularly.

If you're not already reading together every day, I'd start with that before spending money on tutors.

I’m a KS1 teacher and I home educate my daughter who is six.
A tutor may well be of benefit but reading with your child daily will make the biggest impact. Ask your child’s teacher to share his assessment info- specifically gaps and next steps. Do you have a good understanding of the synthetic phonics approach they are using at school? IMO comprehension sheets at that age will not inspire conversation and deep understanding of a text.

Phonics look like a nightmare. I had SEN support at school for English until year 3 when I was then put back with the rest of the class. I missed so much. Grammar is a mystery to me. I view those first 3 school years as a traumatic waste of time.

Not sure how I did in year 2 sats (no one cared) but I got 4s in year 6 and went on to get A in both English language and literature. I was diagnosed with dyslexia shortly before turning 20.

If your son was in Scandinavia he wouldn't have even started school yet. Please don't worry and enjoy reading with him.

Just FYI, you don't need school to help with an ADHD diagnosis. I didn't bother as there are more challenging children in my child's class so they were overlooked. I just went straight to GP.

Your DS will have done the phonics screening recently and you should find about that in the end of year report. I would wait for that and see how he did.

I wouldnt worry too much at this stage but my main advice would be to make learning fun. My DD is dyslexic and she responds really well to differentiated teaching methods like writing letters/sounds in sand or outside in chalk, learning acronyms for non phonetic words and reading cartoon style books with pictures (like the wimpy kid series).
Shes had an English and maths tutor from year 3 to year 5 and benefits from 1-1.
I read to her still at bedtime so she enjoys books without the effort of reading. Audio books are great too as build vocab and understanding of language.
She had a big learning leap in year 4 and apart from spelling has excelled at school now.
she didn’t pass the year 1 phonics screening but we didn’t tell her and just kept going with building confidence and an enjoyment of learning.

She also has adhd traits but no diagnosis of that- she learns best in short, energetic bursts.

Read, read, read and read to him. Every opportunity you get. It’s the thing that makes the most difference.

I would suggest adding phonological awareness into the mix. An ability to hear the sounds that make up a word, and discriminate between them, is a really important part of learning to read. There are lots of resources online.

A tutor will only work if they follow the same reaching scheme as the school, otherwise you risk massively confusing him and making the situation worse.

The best things you can do are 1) talk to achool, get them to sned you work and tips to help support at home and 2) read with him all the time. Read recipes, shopping list, anything and everything. It is not a gimic, reading makes a huge difference

Rather than worrying about phonics, what is his actual reading like? If he can read I wouldn’t worry about the phonics. They are only one way that children learn to read. My DD never understood phonics and ‘failed’ the tests but has always been a fantastic reader. Her teacher told me not to worry about her phonics ability, as she clearly learned to read by sight.

DD1 didn’t take well to phonics, I don’t think her brain operates like that, but we decided to try the EasyRead computer learning course with her. It has not been cheap but the difference it has made to her reading, and confidence in reading, is incredible. She’s gone from being slightly below average I would say to one of the top readers in her class, as told by the teacher a couple of weeks ago who was very impressed with the improvement in about six months. The support from them is really fantastic too, you can phone them, they do Zoom lessons etc. all included.

I’ve been really impressed, but it is expensive.

I feel it’s been worth the money but she could well have found her way to where she is eventually anyway. But she was getting put off reading entirely because she was struggling, school reading books often ended in anger/tears, she didn’t want to read books or read signs or do any of it. Whereas six months later, she just sat on a train and read a book the whole way.

He's still rather young and some kids are just slower to get started.

There are phonics resources you can get to use at home. I would not go over the top, but a short practice each day, combined with printing, could be helpful over the summer. And just lots of reading together, you reading stories out loud.

My dyslexic child couldn't (and still can't) break down unfamiliar words using their phonetic knowledge.

The primary school weren't concerned when they missed out simple words when reading or when they complained of the words moving around the page in year 1. When I said that I was concerned about dyslexia, they totally dismissed the suggestion. Child was diagnosed as dyslexic at age 8 (by a private Ed Psych).

Got to secondary school and has had 3 years of 1:1 English Tuition to get them through English Language GCSE.

Child absolutely hates reading because of these difficulties even though we read to the child every night until about the age of 11. There wasn't a shortage of books in our house. Said child has never willingly picked up a book to read for pleasure.

I would invest in a private Ed Psych report to assess your child's abilities. They will make recommendations from their assessment.

Primary school dismissed the idea of dyslexia because my child could read (albeit slowly).

When they got older, the child told me that they 'read' by knowing the shape of the word. If they don't already know what the word looks like, they can't 'read' it or break it down phonetically (as I would with a word I'd never seen before).

Primary school dismissed the idea of dyslexia because my child could read (albeit slowly).

When they got older, the child told me that they 'read' by knowing the shape of the word. If they don't already know what the word looks like, they can't 'read' it or break it down phonetically (as I would with a word I'd never seen before).

If you can afford it the app reading eggs is really good. 10 minutes a day nakes a huge difference. They do a free 2 week trial so its worth giving it a go. The also have summer catch up resources.

https://readingeggs.co.uk/hpsuboffer/

You could also try teach your monsters how to read. Its free if you have laptop. You have to pay to use it on a tablet or phone.

Phonics doesn’t work for every child. Gove and co started emphasising it as a way to prevent reading by sight because they decided children weren’t fully comprehending what they were reading that way. Alien words were another Goveism to help prevent reading by sight. I learnt by sight, I’ve been an avid reader since 3 and did my degree, masters and PhD in American Literature, now lecture in it.

My DS with SEN hates alien words with a passion, he tries to convert them into real words. He still passed the screening with flying colours and can read fluently but he thinks alien words are daft, which they are.