Give me hope

[Wobblypig]

Can anyone give me hope for my dd? Has anyone's Dc done really badly for the first few years of school but managed to catch up and thrive later on.
For years people have told me the old ' don't worry children learn at different rates' malarkey but now my daughter is going into year2 not able to read fluently or do basic maths. I gave asked for her to be kept back a yeR before and I was refused and I am about to ask again out of desperation.

Are there any stories of it all just falling into place?

Op are you sure the staff are qualified to rule these possibilities out. Has she been independently assessed ? What type of school is this and does she fit in behaviourally?

Forget about "numberfriends" at home, you don't gave to do maths at home the way school does it.

Also, make this the school issue: what are THEY going to do to help her? You really gave to ve a pushy parent as the school will have their own agenda (dx cost money! And resources!) so make a fuss.

Noone else will.

Make a big fuss about her not seeming to learn. Either she needs a SEN diagnosis OR if she is a child with no SEN she needs to be heloed to make the progress expected for her age.

I had to fight like a lion and move school for this to happen with my DS. And I am so glad I did.

So yes hearing checked 3 times and eyesight. No behavioural problems. No dyspraxia. The dyslexia thing is something we have raised but as has been pointed out it is too young to say. They say her phonic grasp looks to good for this whatever that means. She struggles in recognising diagraphs but manages single phonemes. So rain would be a problem because she reads it as r.a.i.n. However many times we go over it. She has SEN input but it doesn't seem to be doing much.

I would suggest looking at something like Phonographix, which emphasises the fact that in English there are many ways to code for one sound AND that symbols (letters) can code for different sounds. I do wonder a bit about the teaching if she doesn't realise that "ai" codes for a different sound to "a" and "i".
I would go back and request specifically set targets with review dates. So she will know two letter code for "ai" "ee" and "oo" by the end of june, and what school, TAs and you are going to do to achieve this. Then at the review date make sure she has achieved. If she hasn't then they need to be trying alternative strategies or calling in outside help.

You really want them to have specific, targeted and measurable goals.

Wobbly
Both my DS are dyslexic and DS2 was diagnosed privately by a very experienced Education Pyschologist at 6 . (She works at Great Ormond St for the NHS). DS2 had speech problems and still does to an extent, in that he doesn't always give the right sounds to the phenomes. The school recommended this

My DC tend to make phonetic spelling mistakes e.g. something like moozeeim for museum.

Both have had a lot of one to one in school and we have also worked with them at home. Something like Bear Necessities might help
www.prometheantrust.org/

DS1 was probably close to the bottom of his class in Yr 2 but once his reading got to a level where he could access the curriculum better he improved rapidly. He got level 5s in his Yr6 SATS. DS2 is Yr3 and seems to be holding his own where he was really struggling up to Yr 2. His reading is starting to improve now.

Forgive me being a rebel, but does she HAVE to learn through phonics? Maybe she'd find another tried-and-tested method better, for her. Maybe all sprts of approaches until the penny dropped. Ditto maths. Don't get me started...

What methods would you suggest - I suspect she actually learns whole words as well as decoding.. She actually decodes well but get stuck on diagraphs and things that dont follow rules with for example GONE.
We banned the school from sending home ORT because there were so many irregular wards out of context with the reading level so she mainly reads GINN 360 (4) and New Way ( green ) but it is hard work .
With the maths I am just drawing a blank becasue when she comes home at 4 o'clock I feel mean making her sit down and do more stuff that she hates

Wobbly, DS2 didn't start to read until half way through year 2. He was not young in the year either. Had a reading age of 5 (almost a year behind) in his year 2 baseline assessment. By the time the SATS came around he was at 8 and 10 months. Achieved an A in his GCSE. Lots of countries don't teach reading until 6. Also took him forever to count to 10, (A* in GCSE maths). So the answer to your original question is that it is possible for DCs to catch up and thrive later on. Apparently some kids lag behind and take off at 11.

hedge, agree! phonics did NOT work for DS1

In fact, it messed his spelling up (for life ?!).

He is very literal minded, very "square" very good at maths and logic. Hopeless at spellings. He keeps trying to find patterns and rules....that then do not apply

By learning all these "rules" about phonics, that have so many exceptions, he just ended up confused. English Spelling is fairly random. And I say that as a language teacher.

To pretend there are clear rules is to lie.

But for my other son the phonics system worked well.

Serendipity - wow. Did you have a feeling for why he was slow to start?

I'm afraid I would avoid the Ginn 360 books like the plague .. Like old ORT they are Look and Say and require guessing from pictures.

It appears from what you say there are huge gaps in her phonic knowledge. What phonics programme does the school use in KS1 for teaching phonics?

What sort of "rules" are the school teaching BabyG?

I can only say what worked for us.

I completely abandoned the sheer misery of reading aloud from the reading books the school used.
Instead I read aloud to my DD from a variety of books every night at bedtime with the book where she could see the words and pictures. I sometimes asked her to 'give my voice a rest' and read a bit to me so I was monitoring her progress. Sometimes we used the 'scheme' books which are actually quite entertaining when the torture element is taken out of the process.

It took all the stress out of reading, ensured she knew what sentences really should sound like, increased her vocabulary - and it was enjoyable.

She soon became perfectly able to read aloud if necessary - enough to be 'on target' on the very few occasions when anyone in school listened to her read - but, to my mind, it was more important that she understood what she was reading and came to regard books as a source of entertainment and information.

We also used a brilliant series of books called My Bear's Counting House which she absolutely loved and gave her a head start in numeracy which she never lost.

She has jollyphonics. There are gaps but they seem to relate to memory. She cant remember what 'igh' is or 'ew' or 'ue' and doesnt recognise them as groups of letters that need to be put together to make a sound. When decoding she justs sees them as individual letters . She is better with 'sh' 'ch' and 'th' and 'ee' but not 'ea' 'ai' although she is more likely to get 'ay' than ' ai'. Recently she has struggled with who, where, there were, and why and to be honest I could really help her becuase I dont udnerstand why we say these words the way we do.

Wobblypig, I used a book called Toe by Toe by Keda Cowling with him, it was a long time ago now, but I think 5-10 mins in the evening just before my reading a bedtime story to DSs, and he took off very quickly from there. It may have been mentioned somewhere on this thread, I haven't read all the responses to your initial post. There are lots of nonsense words in the book which focuses on decoding skills. Getting DS to count and recognise his numbers was through perseverance again. However, I think the main thing was, he just wasn't ready at 6 for academics. Good luck with helping your DD. BTW from your other posts on other threads, it looks like your DS is at the same school my DS went to for prep.

Personal view is that Jolly phonics works really well in reception but lacks structure once basics have been taught so I wouldn't think it has helped your daughter.

You might like to look at Bear Necessities ( more child friendly that Toe by Toe)

Thanks for all the suggestions, will investigate the options as well as meeting with Head.