Help in the Classroom for child with severe dyslexia

[Christineg24]

My 7 year old daughter has recently been diagnosed with severe dyslexia (mainly reading and spelling). Can you tell me what help in the classroom I should be asking for at school? Many thanks!

Ask for support with reading. Spelling will follow later.

You need to make an appointment to speak to the SENCo, and take the assessment report with you (a decent report should suggest which areas need support). Am assuming the school didn't commission the report?

Thank you BluBonnie! We had a private assessment and then took it to the school. We've had one meeting with the SENCO already where we discussed all of the points in the report and we were told that her needs were already been met within the classroom setting. However, she is still coming home saying she can't read the questions on tests and no one helps her to read things. She gets very upset and says she cannot get anything right at school. I fear her confidence is being slowly eroded and this is the area that we so want to build up. I just want to understand how much and what kind of help she can be given in the classroom, what is the norm?!! Sorry for the long message!

You should bring up the points you just mentioned with both the SENCo and the class teacher.

If there is a teaching assistant assigned to the class, your daughter may be getting a little support already. Unless she is "average" in a class of fairly weak children they should take notice of what you are saying, and should explain how her needs are already being met..

Schools (at least here)can be fairly shitty about accepting a private assessment without a fair amount of persistence foot stamping. Try asking the SENCO would they prefer to get their own Ed Psych (they wouldn't 9/10 because of funding).
Often the first line of assistance comes from ta or existing staff within the school doing 1-1 or at least very small group work on reading literacy and numeracy separately from class once or twice a week. If this doesn't help further assessments can be taken and outside help brought in for specialist dyslexia intervention again usually 1-2 times weekly depending on Childs echp/iep. However different areas may vary

Did the assessment include any recommendations that could help her reading? Some dc with dyslexia told me they find reading questions in tests easier if it's printed on a special colour ( I think blue), or if they have special coloured plastic cards to lay over their textbooks. Also your dd would need extra time for tests. Problem is that our Local Authority at least doesn't accept that dyslexia actually exists, and there is no longer any dyslexia screening ( yeah, no idea which planet they live on). So our school would just treat her as someone who has failed expected standard. But while our school wouldn't have the budget to assess her for dyslexia, if our SENCO saw a private assessment that made practical recommendations, the school would try to help as much as they could with their very limited budget.

The report should have recommendations - or at least break down what her area's of weakness are in a good level of detail.

Things that often come up in reports are to use those transparent coloured rulers that you hold over a text to help read it, printing on coloured paper. and sometimes if working memory is a problem the child can look at an instruction on the board and forget it by the time they look at their paper, so printing it off on top of the paper they are working on helps. Some fonts are to read. There is also lots of tips about multisensory approached (I don't know what that means, just that the school did that with my son)
Also look at having work recorded in a different way for some things like science so having to write it down doesn't hold her back.

As a dyslexic myself i was going to suggest coloured overlays, there is a variety of colours and green is suited to me best, but different for each person. Also ruler can help as able to make u keep your place. I also find reading in red for example more difficult so would as teacher if they could not use red pen. Or if they did write on board using red i would ask for it pre writing so i could use green and ruler
I found out at uni, and mature student , so felt confident to ask but u could ask for ur child at school.