those with struggling readers, some wise words please

[yawningmonster]

First off I am in NZ so our system is a bit different to yours I know. DS started school at the beginning of the year. He actually turned 5 in September last year but delayed starting for a number of reasons. So he has had 2 and a half terms of school. He is struggling with reading. They do a mix of phonics and look and say approaches but the rest of the class is outpacing him big time and he is beginning to notice. He is on yellow books (here first level is Magenta, second level is red) According to our ridiculous new national standards he is expected to be Green by the time the year ends (so has to work his way all the way through yellow and blue) We are a book loving family and he adores being read to and has heaps and heaps and heaps of fiction and non fiction books and audio books. We play word games and I spy games and have phonics based readers at home. Is there any thing else I could/should be doing with him.
I personally think he is doing great and I am proud of his achievements (he has Aspergers) but he is getting increasingly concerned that children are moving out of his reading group ahead of him and has started saying he thinks he will never read :(

what does 50/50 chance of success mean - is that 50/50 chance of success for getting the statement?

Yes

Are you primary? If he has the ed psych report and the statement it will be a help to him with his transition to secondary and also with administering future access arrangements.

Yes I'm primary and he has many many Ed Psych reports (he's 7) statement? - I have everything crossed but it won't alter his provision with us

Both my kids got extra help for their reading and I was told by a friend and primary teacher that this was because they thought the kids should be doing better and would not have provided the help to kids who were not as bright. I accepted all help gratefully. Certainly my DS is now just above average although was in the bottom group when he started school so whether it was the extra help or just reading clicking I am now sure. However, I remain glad that the school provided the help they did and always made sure we did all the homework that was involved.

There was a kid in my DS' class who got no extra help even though he was in the bottom of the last group but his parents did not do any normal homework with him because they were too tired! He is now getting plenty of extra help as he has been diagnosed with dyslexia. Really the parents should have been more encouraging at the beginning and I believe the school would have been more helpful. At the end of the day, this child has lost out and now has to have lessons on his own. He also has behavioural issues and swears really badly.

well all i can say is that in our case, a 'label' has helped ds1 massively.

for instance, we could have plodded on indefinitely doing endless repetitions of times tables as the teachers recommended and he would still be none the wiser - instead the specialist tutor has got him doing powerpoint presentations about each times table, and having him practise tables standing on a wobbly board while she throws small furry animals at him, and now he is finally starting to learn them.

it has also helped us to be patient with him and try to see things from his perspective. even just simple things like only issuing one direction at a time rather than 'go upstairs brush your teeth and get your pjs on' has literally changed our life.

if he hadn't been labelled dyslexic, we would still be left wondering how a family of highly intelligent people who breezed through school somehow managed to produce a child who struggled along in the bottom stream and could barely even write his own name. and he would have totally lost faith in his own abilities, whereas now he knows that his brain is just wired up differently.

small furry animals TOYS just in case anyone is about to report me to PETA

OP, I know that you are in NZ, but i have purchased a Letter and Sounds resource from Schofield and Sims. It is called 'Sound Phonics'. There are about ten work books which introduce the phonics sounds and gradually introduces the tricky words. I found it really useful for my four year old ds as there is a lot of repetition.
The website is.

www.scholfieldandsims.co.uk

goodness look what happened while I was asleep!!!
Thanks for all the input.
I am a little unclear...do you think ds is showing enough dyslexic tendencies to take it further...would taking things further alter anything for him like mrz says will that label actually change what is happening for him, he would not even come close to qualifying for a teacher aid or anything similar.

Have saved all the websites etc mentioned so thank you to those who have suggested them.

Mrz Einstein wasn't even at school when he was 6! (He's also claimed as Autistic, so I don't necessarily claim him as dyslexic, I prefer Richard Branson :) )

My son was diagnosed at 7, his private diagnosis has helped, all his state schools have accepted it. Admittedly I wouldn't advise someone to have it assessed so young, because I think they would do better spending the money on tuition, and I actually suspect his difficulties were labelled as milder than they are. But I wan't put under pressure to get the diagnosis, a friend misled me into going down that route, and I just phone and requested an assessment.

There are positives to diagnosis, including the parent having a piece of paper to confirm that it is not all just in their head. Something I also got when my son got a high score on MIDYrs, proving he is bright.

No OP I understand that New Zealand is slower to accept dyslexia than the UK. I would also suggest that you try to get hol of The Reading Reflex, and read the disturbing informatin there about how a mixture of Whole words and Phonics is the worst system.

I learnt to read at home with my mother, as school was failing me, I was one of a handful of children who did not need remedial help at my junior school. I would forget school and work on a good phonics system (The ORT ones suggested earlier are a good place to start).

Keep reading to him. Encourage him to learn his sounds (Reading Reflex or Toe by Toe are good for that). Make learnign to read fun. But also read lots to him.

There is another book "The Reading Bug" by Paul Jennings which is good for you as a parent. I also found story tapes useful, especially if they can read the book themselves afterwards.

Good luck.

I think 5 or 6 is way too young for many boys. My ds started school earlier than most americans and is a year younger than most of the boys in his class. He struggled with reading in 1st grade (turned 6 during the year) when all the other children (at least according to the teacher) were reading comfortably. As it turned out, he had a problem with his eyes that made it difficult and tiring to read: his pursuits and saccades were not up to par which meant he had difficulty tracking his eyes smoothly along the lines of type. This can be improved with exercises and is generally outgrown (ds did this). In addition, ds found the learn-to-read books deathly boring and chose to learn on much more difficult books (the Goosebumps series) which we would read together (I read a page, he read a page).

Ds is now 9 and is the fastest, most advanced reader in his year. He LOVES to read and in fact his teachers for the last 3 years have complained that he reads too much and doesn't pay attention to their lesson (I try to avoid pointing out that maybe they need to do more interesting lessons as ds is a voracious accumulator of knowledge and if the lesson were interesting he would be listening).

I'd get hold of some pure synthetics resources or a tutor and basically start again. It doesn't matter if he is dyslexic or not research has shown that this is the best way to learn to read and that mixed methods are the worst.

We didn't get our son assessed until he was 7 or 8 after several years of him gradually hating reading more and more, so that he would outright refuse to look at the books he brought home from school, and throw huge tantrums about being (gently) encouraged to learn his spellings. School knew there was a problem, but the SENCO was convinced that he was autistic despite him having several negative assessments, and none of his teachers feeling that that was the issue. Plus dyslexia runs very very strongly in the family, and the things he was struggling with were very similar to the experiences of his cousin, my brother, two cousins and aunt. As a parent who has never really thought about how to read (I'm a total bookworm and was an early reader) it was really difficult. ds loved to be read to, was very very articulate, and wanted to know about everything. He was just incredibly frustrated, and had started to think he was stupid.

Post assessment the SENCO sent us a letter saying that ds would get no educational help, just behavioural support as before. We hadn't expected help from school to be honest, we sent the report in for his teacher so she could understand where ds's strengths and weaknesses were, as it was a really helpful, very detailed report.

We did however get him some external tutoring, on the advice of a poster here (maverick) and it totally turned things around for him. Just six sessions of being taught reading with synthetic phonics from scratch, and you could see the light coming on that it was just a code, with rules, and that he could decipher it rather than guess, and guess and guess again.

I know that it was all about budgets, and appreciate that there were other children with greater needs, but if we hadn't done anything ds would just have fallen further and further behind and got more and more disruptive until he did meet the criteria but with a much lower chance of recovery.

He is still dyslexic but he is now a confident if not prolific reader, which is such a fundamental skill (he still is a very poor writer, but that is much easier to compensate for).

So I'd say to the OP keep on doing all that you are doing now, but really do read up on synthetic phonics, and if there is anyone in your community that can provide some specialist tutoring do look into it. We could tell after the first session that it was making a difference (as parents we had to attend to give ongoing support, and I found it fascinating).

Hi Yawning monster. I'm in NZ too and have a son in year one who is very far behind in his reading. He has an ASD. Do you want to have a chat on the email?

hi shells thanks for that would really appreciate it. i do wonder if the aspergers plays a part in that he has had to adapt to so much outside his comfort zone participating in day to day schooling that all his energy is going on coping and reading is just secondary for now.
Idont belong to cat but will add my email to my profile for a day or two and you could contact me that way

mummytime Einstein started school when he was six or seven depending on which biography you read at the age of 9 he transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium and at 12. For many years it was believed his grades indicated he struggled at school based on his grades but it was discovered that in 1896 (the year he left school) the grading system was changed (actually completely reversed from 1-6 to 6-1) so instead of him being at the bottom of the class he was in fact at the top.
His sister attributed his early speech "difficulties" to the fact that he was even as a very young child "withdrawn" which could indicate autistic tendencies

I tend to think these private testing companies might be quite exploitative in some cases, but I think in my DSD's case a diagnosis may help (if indeed she is dyslexic) - she's had simple tests at primary school with varying results. she got a scribe for SATs and hence got really good results - and this has meant she doesn't qualify for help at secondary! argh!!!

unfortunately there is no way we can scrape together the several hundred quid for a test. :(

AlgebraRocksMySocks I get really frustrated because we are very successful in supporting all our pupils and it means their results don't reflect their difficulties and hard work when they transfer and are in a less supportive setting.

yep. no good is it. she instead got sent to handwriting classes in year 7 - this despite the fact her twin has much worse handwriting than her... seriously, WTF?! how about helping her with things she actually finds difficult like spelling and reading!

yawningmonster, I suggest you get in contact with New Zealander, Kelly Rowlingson:

www.astepatatime.co.nz/

maverick thank you for that have just spent ages reading through that site and links thereafter, keen to try him out on it.