if anyone can help? (yr 5)

[RadioLater]

My son is 10 and year 5, September will be year 6. His report now states that he is
speaking and listening 4c, reading 2a, writing 2b, maths 3c, and science 4c. He is so behind everybody else - I really think that he may be dyslexic and am pushing the school to help. However based on these scores does anyone have another opinion? I really would appreciate your help, many thanks!r

Drosophila - I think it's because there isn't really an agreed defn of dyslexia, and a label isn't really helpful. The same strategies are used to teach someone who is struggling to read regardless of whether they have a diagnosis of dyslexia or not.

I'm certainly not looking for a diagnosis for my DD - I'm looking for ways to teach her to read and write.

CarGirl - I don't think it's down to funding. There are no particular resources required by someone who is dyslexic. Extra support that is required for someone who can't read or write is required whether there is a diagnosis or not.

IndigoBell - that's really not the experience of parents from several of the schools in our area. Once had a professional private diagnosis the school still refused to provide any help because the child wasn't "far enough" behind to warrant it! They moved schools and did get help for their dc.

Similar stories with lots of other conditions which meant the child would benefit from help, LEA won't provide it without a diagnosis, LEA puts lots of obsticals in the way to parents getting even referred to get a diagnosis......

Perhaps it's because we've got a particularly tight LEA!

CarGirl - I'm sure our experiences are different

I'm not sure what what help you are referring to - my school is providing lots of extra reading tution for my DD. I'm guessing that the schools that provided extra help would provide extra help with or without a diagnosis.

Each child is expected to meet certain targets. And the school doesn't really have any excuses why a kid hasn't met their targets - so basically they have to give support whether they have a dx or not. A dx really has no effect on the support they get - because there is no support that is specific to dyslexia as opposed to kids who are just struggling to read and write for a diff reason.

Fascinating reading, ladies. Going to paste some of it to my notebook
My ds is a very visual learner, but his auditory learning systems are developing with a lot of work.
A thing I found fascinating when talking to a lady who lectures Mandarin at our local university : there are no Chinese Dyslexic people, as all the symbols are actually pictures. Which stacks up with what you've all been saying. IMHO it's a very individual thing and once you've figured out how a child can learn and retain something, then bingo. Until then, it's pulling rabbits out of hats til we hit the one that works.

The diagnosis we got is useful as his problem is atypical. He read very early (3) and is generally very bright. There are major focusing issues and concentration though and recording issues. One big plus of the diagnosis is that he is less likely to be labled lazy. Funny how labels like this are easier to use. A teacher I really liked said to me in Yr 3.

It's not true there are no chinese dyslexic people, just google chinese dyslexia.

Just wondering but does anyone else see words in colour? That's mainly how I remember them. (Monday is black and brown and white, Tuesday is green and yellow, etc) I think it's called synaesthesia. Presumably your children don't do this already, because they can't spell, but might it help if you add some colours to their letters and numbers?

I can barely understand a lot of this conversation, as it is the first time I have met these terms etc. My brother was diagnosed dyslexic in the 1970s, when not much was known about it.

So sorry if this post is a bit of a time-waster for you.

Fascinating, I hadn't heard of synaesthesia before. Does it make everything more intense as multiple senses are involved? Presumably different people see the colour for Monday differently or is it the same colour for everyone? I wonder if this is where we get sayings such as "she saw red" for anger, "she was green with envy", "he was a yellow belly" for coward, "she was in a black mood"

Not sure if it makes things more intense - don't know what things look like without it! Yes, I've asked people about it in the past, and other people see colours too, but not always the same ones.

For me, anger is red and brown, envy is greenie-yellow, coward is red and black and mood is black and white.

Some people hear music in colours too. I sometimes do.

Now you'll think I'm a complete nutter!

But what I was thinking, to help dyslexics, was if the children don't already see the colours, maybe they could learn either individual letters or whole words in colour - as a natural extension to making them into pictures (mentioned earlier, which I really understand, as I do this too).

The problem would be that once they tried to read in b & w again, they might not be able to read the same words or understand new ones.

I don't know how the brain works but I know that pathways can be established, and I just wondered if there were any possibilities here. has it been done?

Sorry if this is a bit of a time-waster ...

There is a book that recommends something like this. I think it's called 'seeing spells achieving'.

I use it to help DD with her spellings. She basically embeds the spelling word into her picture of it. And I do things like ask her what colour the text is to help her do this. It does seem to work.

it sounds like a good way of visualising words and making them more concrete in memory

Do you know, IndigoBell, reading your description of how your daughter has been taught to read, so called 'phonics' mixed with look and say High Frequency Words, and ORT books mixed with ReadWrite Inc books, tells me that your DD has not had good quality synthetic phonics teaching. Most definitely not (I wish there were a GGRRR! smilie...)

No good SP teacher would be mixing the different strategies like that.

You say you can't see that your DD is confused by this mishmash. Hmm.

Maizie -

a) How can I tell if she is confused? What symptoms would she display?

b) There is nothing I can do about how she has been taught. What advice do you have going forward?

c) The govt targets at the end of reception are to learn 45 key words - and at the end of year 2 to learn the next 100 key words. How are other kids learning these words?

d) In read write inc there are red words which are not phonetically regular - how are they meant to learn these words?

d) She has been taught her sounds and she has been taught to blend - how can you say this is not good quality synthetic phonics teaching ( she has been bringing home books - but they haven't read those books in class, and I haven't read those books with her at home )

e) Why has she failed to learn her 44 sounds?

a) She is simultaneously being given two different, incompatible, strategies for reading - she hasn't managed to learn either of them particularly well. She may not be sitting looking explicitly puzzled, but she's getting very mixed messages about 'how to read'

b) You wouldn't like my advice..

c)Whoever told you that learning those 45 HFWs is a govt target, is coming up for being 3 years out of date. There is no longer a 'requirement' to learn those words.

d)There is no such thing as a word which is 'not phonetically regular'. All words are made up of a series of letter/sound correspondences; some of these correspondences are less common than others. This does not make them 'irregular', just uncommon. However, surprisingly enough, the frequency with which some of these 'uncommon' correspondences occur is quite high. For example; 'igh' is an 'uncommon' correspondence for the /ie' sound, occuring in relatively few words, but these few words occur very frequently in text as they are words like bright, night, light, fight etc. There is absolutely no need to teach them as 'whole ' words; they are decodable with a 'tricky' bit (i.e. the uncommon correspondence)

I wish they had completely done away with those 'tricky' (or 'red') words when Letters & Sounds (the govt. guidance) was written and I have had several 'arguments with one of the authors about it! There are some programmes which don't use them. The criticism made of these is that decodable text without those useful little words is very stilted and strange; but quite frankly, early reading practice is not an exercise in literary criticism, it is what it says, practice. And I think it is mostly parents and teachers who are put off by those texts, children aren't great literary critics on the wholeand seem to be quite happy with them.

d)Good quality phonics teaching of course encompasses decoding and blending, but it is as much a question of what you don't do as well as what you do do.

e)She hasn't learned all her sounds because i)she clearly has a difficulty with learning which needs to be addressed and ideally addressed in such a way that she learns the sounds to automaticity and ii) she's had other stuff thrown at her which has diverted time and attention from what, for her, is the most vital aspect of learning to read.

This isn't the first, nor will it be the last, time that I'd say this to anyone with a child with reading difficulties. Phonics is the only method of teaching reading which will guarantee that a child will become a fully independent reader. Any other reading strategy will ultimately depend on another person's knowledge when the child encounters a word they don't know (as it has no tools with which to work it out). If it transpires that it is absolutely impossible for a child to learn with phonics (as a few children don't) then second best has to be acceptable; it's that or nothing.

But I wouldn't settle for second best without a real concentrated effort to crack the phonics...

Just doesn't ring true for me Maizie.

The 45 words being 3 years out of date - well she was in reception 3 years ago.

If you don't count 20 minutes a day for 2 years of phonics tution as a real concentrated effort to crack phonics - then you sound like my LEA SpLD team who think that what she really needs is another 6 months on Read, Write, Inc.

She is not confused about what is a 'sight' word and what words need to be decoded. She has a handful of sight words, and every other word she tries to decode. But because she has been unable to learn her sounds, she's only able to decode CVC words. When you see a vowel you need to be able to look ahead to see what the next letter is and if together they make a diff sound - this is just too much for her to do.

The evidence I have that she has been well taught, is that every single other kid in her class has learnt how to read - and that includes one deaf kid and one EAL kid with a variety of other problems. I honestly don't think every other kid would have learnt to read if they weren't being taught well - but it hasn't worked for DD.

Of course there are words which aren't phonetically regular - most english place names for starters 'one' and 'two' are great examples. What phonetic rule do they follow?

Again, it is just not true that if people haven't been taught phonics they don't work out how to decode for themselves - most people learn this skill by reading.

On this thread we have discussed a variety of other methods which are neither about phonics nor whole word learning. It is not true that it is either phonics or whole word learning.

Phonics a good way to learn to read English? Read this poem.....

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

and

It really is a long long uphill battle to teach our DC to read.

Thank you Indigo, I will try and remember that poem when Im getting frustrated with DS.

fantastic poem
I googled and found something similar

I take it you already know
of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead-it?s said like bed, not bead.
For goodness sake, don?t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for pear and bear.
And then there?s dose and rose and lose
Just look them up?and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward.
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come I?ve hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,
I?d mastered it when I was five!

What fun these verses are. But...it seems that Indigobell's daughter has difficulties with the very early stages of learning to read, the basic or simple code, blending cvc words together, not the rather more complex elements illustrated in the poems.

If a child has not automatised at this level, then, like maizie, I would question how they can simultaneously be expected to learn whole word fashion, a substantial number of high frequency words, and, a fair number of digraphs.

Advising on a forum is fraught, but I'd be laying off anything 'irregular' until she has skill and confidence in regular reading of cvc words in continuous text.

IB,

It is really none of my business what you do with your daughter, so I will just shut up now and get on with the day job.

I hope you find something that 'works' and that it doesn't cost you a fortune...

this thread all seems a bit complicated and unfortunately don't have time to read through all of it but just wanted to add that my DD had similar difficulties learning to read and with phonics at key stage 1 - never learnt to blend, sound out or spell although memorised huge quantities of words so can read reasonably well.

Fast forward to Y4 when she was diagnosed as severely dyslexic with auditory processing issues, hence the total lack of phonological awareness.

Not sure if relevant to your DD - assume dyslexia has been suggested but from my experience it's a vastly misunderstood and under-recognised difficulty - and yes, on scrutiny, DD's teacher admitted her dyslexia was very obvious but schools are reluctant to highlight this as then they have to do something about it....(we had her privately assessed as school wouldn't.....)

Thanks CremeEggs.

Did getting a diagnosis of dyslexia help her?

Claig these threads are not for your entertainment, these are children in real life who have real problems.

oh dear, I upset you in the past by disagreeing with you about phonics. I'm not convinced that phonics is the answer to every problem. Like many other posters on here, I think there may be other methods for chidren who have difficulty with phonics. I found the thread informative, I hope you did too.