dyslexia? Visual sequencing problem? second guessing myself.

[HattiFattner]

I had DS2s parent/teacher assessment this week. A very lovely and experienced teacher, who has taught both his siblings, and so knows our family.

SHe (and I) has concerns about DS2s reading, writing, spelling and numeracy.

On reading, he has not progressed from Y2 Sats level. He is in Y4. He is very hesitant, still does not really see the difference between "what" and "that" or "Where" and "There", but can pick up on very long words and decode them. Still hits a major block with certain sound blends - ai / ay in particular. Reads words from the middle - so last night, the word "rudely" became "Druley?" He was in reading recovery in infants.

His handwriting is a mess, which I have put down to him being a left hander. Teacher implied theres more to it than that - letters are transposed, badly formed letters, writes everything in very big letters (about 2 lines deep for each letter). He has done a writing/coordination scheme through the school last year, to try and get him better hand control.

Spelling he is 2 years behind his age. ALthough he gets 10/10 for every spelling test, he forgets the spelling when he has to write them in stories.

In numeracy, he also transposes numbers - so 315 becomes 351. He also writes numbers back to front P for 9 for example.

Teacher says she will now keep him on her radar. But im wondering (and second guessing) if DS has some form of dyslexia or visual processing issue.

And if so, what ....and how can I help him?

His confidence is taking a big knock because he is not moving on to the later books, he hates reading out loud and now avoids doing so ("I left my book at school" and "I finished it in class".)

He is otherwise a bright boy, funny, articulate. Just falling behind.

sugartongue

"dolfrog what are the methods that you have used to teach yours sons to read and write? Also how did you learn yourself? You seem to have high functioning literacy which seems to suggest that whatever you have used has worked. I would be really interested to know more about your methods of teaching. My DS functions reasonably well these days, but his literacy is totally inadequate to match his intellectual abilities which causes a huge amount of frustration for him."

Sorry I missed your post and question until now.

I have Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) which is a listening disability, or not being able to process all that you hear. Back in the 1960s no one in the UK had heard of APD, so i assumed that everyone else was like me, and that any differences were due to being left handed. I took me longer than my peers to pick up regarding reading, and have never really been able to read aloud. Left school with 8 O'levels, and 2 A'levels.
It was only when our children began to have similar problems at school in the 1990s and were diagnosed as being dyslexic, that my own issues began to be explained. Further progress was made when our eldest was diagnosed as having CAPD, in 1998, the real problem then was that hardly anyone in the UK knew what CAPD as it was know then was. so I had to begin researching online, especially from the USA, and lobbying for UK APD research. I had to create my own web site so that my sons teachers and school etc could begin to understand what APD was and how it affected him. The Medical Research Council got their Government funding for a 5 year research program in 2004. And I was clinically diagnosed as having APD in 2003. Since then all of our DCs have been clinically diagnosed as having APD as has my DW.

One of the battery of tests used to diagnose APD measures the size of gap between sounds an individual can process. Most who have APD are not able to process the gaps between the sounds that make up a word, nor the gaps between words in rapid speech. Which means that most who have APD can not use phonics, and can not phonetically sound out new words.
Which makes a nonsense of phonics for all children, and only demonstrates the ignorance of those whose only motivation is to sell phonics.

So I do cope with text, not very well, my spelling with out as spell checker is terrible. I had to take English Language O' Level 6 times before i managed to scrape a pass. It is all done by memory, by being able to match the whole sound of word, to the whole shape of word as text. And by learning to be good at guessing. The APDUK web site demonstrates some of the visual coping strategies many adult APDs use especially multi-coloured text. Some APD children have found using different colours for letters useful, then different colours for vowels and consonants, then different colours for nouns and verbs, the different colours for different phrases, until they get to the adult different colours for sentences. Extra Spacing always helps, on the web site we try to use a new line for every new sentence.

You find the following links lists useful
UK APD
Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)
Dyslexia and Reading
Reading

[Sorry - I keep getting deleted here. If anyone's serious, please get in touch eg on youtube]