If your child struggled with reading & spelling, did they 'settle' or catch up, or has it become an ongoing problem?

[betterwhenthesunshines]

My daughter will be 7 next month, she's in Yr 2. Even in reception we noticed she just didn't 'get' blending and stayed stuck on CVC words for a looooong time. I also think this meant that she got so ingrained in the A says 'short a' level that when she moved on to the other 'a' sounds (long a, aw in awful etc) that has also taken a very long time. Last year she was quite upset at school, avoided reading. We did A LOT at home together and started Toe-byToe which I think helped her to focus on left to right reading rather than just guessing, but it's not very interactive with tangible elements.

However, this year she is happier, motivated and doing much better (ORT level 8 and her reading age has just been assessed as 6yrs 9 months so just under her chronological age). Her spelling in her writing is just all over the place! She is still writing 'no' as 'on' for example and still misspelling common words such as when, said. Often she seems to use a quite logical phonetic approach but in the wrong places eg:
coochoon = cushion
selowtaip = sellotape (a brand I know!)
swich = switch
sung glarsis = sun glasses
pensil = pencil
keebord = keyboard
payper = paper
joos = juice

I'm just interested as my son never had any confusion like this, it all seemed so starightforward! I know that any diagnosis is pointless as it's just a case of patient teaching of a good structured approach ( and I don't actually think she is Dyslexic as she seems to be progressing). I'm just interested to ask how this turned out for others?

Yes, my dd had problems with reading and spelling up until about year 2/3. Her spelling was (and still is sometimes) hilarious eg unyun soop for onion soup, flawel for falafel (she was writing a list of her favourite foods). At the end of year 1 we were told that she was well below average in literacy and they were clearly a bit concerned. It all seemed to click in year 2 though and iirc she got a 2A in reading for her KS1 sats and last year we were told she was above average for reading and her spelling was age appropriate now too.

One thing I should mention is that she had quite a severe problem with her eyesight in one eye. I'm not sure how much difference that made because she seems to read fine without her glasses now, but if your dd is due for an eye test it might not hurt to rule it out.

There is very much hope though, dd made phenomenal progress in a couple of years, I think it just takes longer for some kids.

Thank you DaisySteiner - we have her eyes checked regularly. I know you're right that sometimes things move on in leaps and bounds. Good to know that Yr2 is often the year! Certainly at the end of Yr1 she was well below and it had been a very frustrating school year for her.

It's just hard to know how much extra help to give (can't hurt but tiring as she already gets homework every night...) and how much to leave it and hope it will fall into place and take the risk that she just ends up slipping a little bit further and further all the time. Just needed a bit of a positive boost after last night's parent's evening!

I'm going to start doing the Apples and Pears spelling with her at home so hopefully that will help too.

Apples & Pears is very good and I highly recommend it.

The hard thing is getting her eyes tested properly. Opticians mainly test for short sightedness.

Behaviour Optometrist's are better - but still can be a bit hit and miss depending on who you go to - and they can be very expensive.

But you need to get her eye tracking and convergence properly tested.

An awful lot of kids have undiagnosed vision problems with eye tracking and convergence and spend their whole life hating reading or being bad at spelling - without realising they have a vision problem :(

Eye tracking is a good point. I'm guessing you mean something like eye muscles not being strong enough to control the eye so that it wanders slightly rather than along a line?

I'll look into that as it's certainly true that sometimes it's as though she doesn't see what's written.

Yes, exactly - it's an eye muscle problem and very easy to correct - if you know that it's a problem.

For an example of the problem look here, watch the virtual tour and see how badly that boy's eyes move when reading the penguin text. :(

If she finds it easier to read flash cards than books, than that's an indication it could be eye tracking......

Not seeing what's written is another classic sign :)

Thank you - has prompted me into action - have just spoken with someone and booked an appointment. :o I couldn't really put my finger on the problem but this seems to make sense so it will be interesting to see.

I watched the video and that is certainly what her eyes do, especially if she comes to a difficult word, she often looks elsewhere on the page, or starts with a consonant that's in the middle of the word etc. Her reading is much better if we use a card to separate off a single line of text, and we used to cover and do word by word and sometime even sound - by sound but that is difficult to do when for example you need to see the magic e at the end of the word.

Knew someone on MNet would have a pointer! Thanks x

It may just be that it is taking a while to 'click' with her and she'll catch up in her own time too. DS1 was slow to get going with reading and at age 7 he had a reading age of 4 (despite always having been read to and encouraged to read himself). Suddenly, it just clicked with him and by the time he was 9 he had a reading age of 13. Now I can't get his nose out of a book and he costs me a fortune as he likes to reread them so the library isn't really an option.

DS2 was the same,last year he made 3 years progress with his reading level partly due to the school finally letting him ditch Chip and sodding Biff.

PiousPrat - you're right and of course if I do give her extra help out of school with something like Apples and Pears then I'll never know if she would have 'caught up' anyway, or if it was that that made the difference. I know you shouldn't compare but I do think if she was no.1 baby we wouldn't have these concerns, it's just that she is no2 baby so we know how hard it is seeming for her.

I think level 8 at Y2 is fine.
www.oup.com/oxed/primary/oxfordreadingtree/chart/

My son had a literacy spurt in Y2. At the end of Y1 he was a 1c but finished Y2 on 2a for literacy. His reading really took off when we stopped reading school books like ORT and he read books that interested him instead. He read a lot of fact books, simple chapter books, comics like the Beano and Christmas annuals.... I obviously kick myself that I didn't do it sooner but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

My dd started off strong (finished Y1 on 2c) but I feel that she has slowed down and others have caught up so she's doing well but is no longer miles ahead.

As for the spellings- I think that it's quite normal for Y2 work to have spelling mistakes. My older children write with 'creative' spelling but have high grades for literacy. They can usually spot their mistakes when they re-read their work so I think that a lot of their spelling mistakes are down to rushing and laziness.

You are absolutely right to work on the spellings at home and Apples & Pears is an excellent programme. The problem with spelling is that it is partly a product of kinaesthetic memory for the unique 'feel' of the word and the more often she spells a word wrongly the more it will reinforce the kinaesthetic memory of the 'wrong' spelling. Once that is embedded it is incredibly difficult to change.

I though your examples of her phonetic spellings were absolutely fine in that she obviously has an excellent 'ear' for the discrete 'sounds' in words and a pretty good idea of how to spell each sound in sequence (even though the 'sound spellings' weren't always the correct ones!)

When you're doing the programme with her always get her to say each sound as she spells it (this promotes connecting the 'feel' with the sound) and never use letter names!

Yep - I agree that she seems to be able to apply a preety good phonic guess! But exactly as you say, the longer she goes on incorrectly, the harder it is to change.

I do encourage her to say as she writes, but unfortunately then she thinks I'm a nutty lady, and just writes the word and THEN says it...

Thank you everyone for your encouragement.

My dd could barely read "cat" at the end of Year 1. I bought the Read Write Inc reading scheme and read them with her every night for about 3 months and she came on in leaps and bounds. It is very structured and new sounds are introduced systematically. By the end of Year 2 she had made it into the top reading group at her high achieving school. It sounds like your dd can correctly identify the sounds in words but does not yet have at her fingertips the range of different ways sounds can be spelled. I haven't looked at the Read Write Inc materials to improve spelling, but I imagine from their reading books that they would be excellent.

The school is using Read Write Inc (although they still use predominantly ORT as their reading scheme...) which does seem a good system although her reading is still below average for her age and certainly well below others in her peer group. I think she does now have a good grasp of basics but certainly not things like why the 'ou' in young is different to the 'ow' sound of out. For example. And actually I don't know why, only to tell her "it makes a different sound here"

LeQueen - my DD is like that re spelling - she's 12 now, yr 8 at grammar school so I'm hoping that they will drum into her that it matters now. I think in primary they don't correct kids too much because they don't want to inhibit them from writing creatively.

She was slow to get started reading though, something of a struggle all through infants then in yr3 it clicked and she could soon read anything (still not an avid reader, unfortunately)

DH said he was much the same but at some point he realised he'd got to spell things properly and started bothering about it.

Yes, sounds like she could have vision problems. Bad spelling can be a symptom of various eye problems.

For example visual discrimination problems means that it's harder to see each individual letter in a word........

Eye tracking problems could mean that she's essentially guessing lots, which works for expected sentences, and doesn't work otherwise......

DS caught was a slow reader but caught up in yr 2 and reads well, however his spelling is awful and still is at 16. He had to ask me how to spell Autumn last night. He gets ribbed about his spelling on Facebook by his friends, it can be that bad!
The good is that he is targeted A/A* in every subject, but probably will only get a C in german. He is on the SN register for SLD but doesn't get any real help for it.
He used to use a ruler to keep track on the page but doesn't need to now, but he seems to have more of a memory problem ie copying a sum from the board he will forget the numbers from looking at the board to looking down at the paper. He had various eyetests (not your normal optician ones) many years ago at opthalmic clinic and his eyesight was very good, now he is short sighted and wears glasses.

My DD does have eye convergence problems. She sees double at 20cm instead of 12cm. She does not have the problems DS has even though we found out she was seeing double when she was reading. Never told anyone because she thought it was normal! This was picked up by normal optician. She is supposed to do excercises but forgets.

LeQueen - firstly, I'm only saying that she might have vision problems - not that she does.

Secondly, no, you can't be tested for this kind of stuff at a normal opticians.

A Behaviour Optometrist will test for eye tracking issues and a whole lot more. They are expensive though.

Eye tracking issues are the most common problems, so that is the test I'd recommend.

However to test for visual discrimination difficulties you'd need to go to an OT.... If she has terrible handwriting (which can also be caused by visual difficulties) then I might go down that route - otherwise I probably wouldn't bother.

If she has visual discrimination difficulties she'd find word searches and spot the difference puzzles very difficult.

PiousPrat said "DS1 was slow to get going with reading and at age 7 he had a reading age of 4 (despite always having been read to and encouraged to read himself). Suddenly, it just clicked with him and by the time he was 9 he had a reading age of 13. Now I can't get his nose out of a book"

Nearly identical story with my dd. She started learning to read at 6.5 and it was a hard slog for her. She made slow steady progress but found it tiring, saying the words in most books were too small and that she often lost her place on the page. Reading fell into place around her ninth birthday and within a year she was a proper bookworm.

Her spelling reflected how much reading and writing she had done: it was pretty dodgy even when she was ten, but now at twelve she's an average speller and I have no doubt she'll be an especially strong speller in a few more years.