How long doe it take to be assessed for dyslexia?

[AngiBolen]

DD (Y2) is being assessed at school. She saw someone last week who asked her to draw a picture of a relative. I'm presuming she will be seen by this person again sometime soon.

Basically I want to know how long it will be before I have a definitive answer.

And who actually does the assessing?

The secondary school put her in sutible sets for her intelligence rather than her writting ability, although they need a prod in Y7. They are assessing her for exam dispensations now in Y9.

Actual help with her underlying difficulties, bugger all!
She used to go to the learning centre 1 hr a week, but they didn't do much accept teach her to type. I only last week discovered that she hasn't been this year.
She's a bright girl top options stream on her CATs, but she spells like a six/ seven year old. DD2 probably did spell better than she does at six

Her reading out loud is full of errors, but her comprehension is perfect. I think sometimes the right word goes in, but that's not what she says.
It's the total lack of spelling ability either phonetical or sight words that I dint know how to help with (since I'm not much better myself).

We use the Eye Can Learn materials in school and can now direct parents to services if we suspect this is an issue.

We work in a very different way to that teacherwith2kids describes. Children are rarely withdrawn and interventions take place outside normal teaching time and are often delivered by teachers rather than TAs

It's just a different model, which I thought Indigo might find interesting. It does work very well for us - even if I worked through every lunchtime and every break I am not on duty, that only gives me 4 x 1.25 hours per week for all interventions, whereas a full-time TA has 3 hours non-class time every day (ours are not all full-time, but even a mornings-only TA has 5 hours per week to deliver interventions). This gives them time to do their 'specility' for children from across the school as well as some time for more general work such as reading with children from each class who don't have a literate adult to read to at home.

I also appreciate that our model relies on very able and highly-trained TAs. We're lucky in that department. I know that there has been concern that the least able children spend the most time with TAs when what they need is teacher time - but when delivering a specialised programme for e.g. tracking or movement or whatever, I would definitely prefer to be in the hands of the TA who has had all the training, does this every day and has significant expertise built up over years in this one area, rather than in my hands as a 'jack of all trades' teacher.

I don't know how to help.

Sorry op hijacking your thread, somewhat.
What I think I'd say to you is firm diagnosis or not finding help is hard. There are a lot of conflicting theories and IMO a lot of mumbojumbo.

I don't think dyslexia can be "cured" personally. The way DD1 and I see not only words, but faces and remember names and facts is utterly different to the way non dyslexic DD2 does.

Good multi sensory teaching that reinforces basic skills helps, but is very hard to get. Often an acceptance that the child isn't stupid and lazy and does have a brain is all you can hope for.

Dyslexic difficulties are not rare, nor is their recognition a new thing.
It is appalling that the school responses are so piece meal and honestly crap. It leaves room for a lot of charlatans offering miracles.

That's interesting teacherwith3kids ... do your teachers not access the same training as TAs?

Mrz, as it's a small school, we all wear many hats - also almost all training is 'out of school' as we're not big enough to make a training day by ourselves. We do get 'cluster' training but that is often on big initiatives.

• We all receive certain training e.g. safeguarding, external visits, positive handling.
• All teachers receive certain training on particular areas e.g. APP, Literacy, Maths, MFL, new ICT etc
• Subject co-ordinators attend appropriate training (we all have at least 2) e.g. Maths, IT, Science etc
• All staff working with specific year groups attend specific training e.g. Early Years, swimming [as one teacher has to teach a swimming group when KS2 goes swimming]
• TAs, and sometimes particular teachers, attend specific training on particular interventions e.g. Smart Moves, Maths interventions, Speech and Language, Autism, attachment Disorders etc

So although I COULD access all the training all the TAs attend, as I already attend a large number of CPD events each year in my 'teacher' and 'subject co-ordinator' roles it is a more efficient use of time and resources for the 'expert TA' to attend each and then use that expertise across the whole school IYSWIM? We do have an effective 'sharing good practice' forum for making certain that everything is shared that could affect e.g. whole class teaching or school policy or practice in particular areas.

Tell me about the many hats .. I'm SENCO, Child Protection officer, Literacy coordinator, KS1 leader, Inclusion co, Multi agency liaison , Extended schools, ...etc etc etc We also run our own training programme which reduces costs to a minimum and means we can target school specific issues.
We tend to have SEN training as twilights or on INSET days that everyone attends (linked with a cluster of schools to share cost) mainly because we like pupils to be in the class not withdrawn.

Sorry OP I've gone off topic but it's interesting to see how other schools work thanks teacherwith2 kids

Teacher (and mrz) - thanks that is all very interesting.

I think it is a model that would work well at my school, we have a lot of TAs (one per class) and some of them are trained in various interventions (speed-up, fizzy, pyramid etc.....)

Both of you claim excellent results with teaching children to read, but what is clear is that you both not only use synthetic phonics, you also do eye tracking and other interventions. (What other interventions??????)

I think all my school does is Read, Write, Inc. And I think this is why we don't teach all kids to read. However as I'm only a parent not a teacher I don't 100% know what happens at school.

It is also a junior school, not a primary. (Although I still have good links with the Infant school )

After putting so much effort into curing DDs dyslexia, I'd really like to help other kids - I'm desperate for school to teach all kids to read.

But the difficulty for me is finding stuff school can do, as opposed to stuff parents can do. And of course getting school to listen to me :)

So I really need stuff aimed at schools, otherwise they can't take me seriously.

The eyeCanLearn stuff is good.

Do you know of any other stuff I can recommend to school?

Or have any recommendations about how I can approach this?

We don't want to go down the RWI route (although undoubtedly it gets good results) but do follow our own structured phonics approach and firmly believe in high quality classroom teaching is best for all children and although some may need additional help at times this should be an extra not a substitute.
For reading we use Lexia (with a bit of a health warning as a whole school intervention children can also access at home) I'm also using Bear Necessities and Apples and Pears with target children and may introduce Bearing Away for a statemented child in Y1.

We use a number of physical interventions and I'm able to make direct referrals to a private OT service which specialises in DCD/Dypraxia/ADHD/ASD/Sensory Processing Disorders and CP. They also provide free training for all our staff and will come into school to work with pupils and provide programmes.

mrz - on a different thread you were talking about an eye tracking type intervention you were doing with a lot of kids....

Is that something you've just pieced together over the years?

How do you decide who to put on it? And what do you do in it?

Like most of the things we use it is a collection of activities we have found useful put together over time. Lots from the Eye Can site some from the OT
It is usually the obvious children who are picked up. Those who lose their place when reading or can't copy from the board or text and jump around the page. I look for signs like head tilt when reading, closing one eye, eye turning in or out when focusing on text, complaining of headaches or tiredness.

Things like following the torch, flashlight tag, clapping bubbles, dot to dot, mazes, rolling a ball, passing a bean bag, finding all the letters of the alphabet in order in a piece of text by taking your pencil for a walk left to right and looping the letter, marble runs,

Mrz, funnily enough I was just coming back to this thread to say that most of what our 'expert' TAs do for any intervention isn't from a particular scheme - it is a collection of activities that they have picked up during their years of being 'the specialist' in that area and they then tailor what they do to the particular child.

I also wanted to say that the to withdraw / not to withdraw question is a really thorny one which we struggle with. No child is ever withdrawn during Maths, Literacy or Phonics / Reading teaching - those are times when the TAs are timetabled to be with classes. However, the philosophical question of whether it is fair to remove a child from e.g. French or Art for a short intervention that tries to address their overall difficulties in school is a difficult one and I can quite see that there are different solutions. It is the time factor which sways it for us.

We couldn't do it without the goodwill of all staff who work with children before /after school and during their lunch breaks,
I don't know what the solution is but it does seem a shame when some children never have a music lesson because that's when they do reading or always miss topic because they need to ELS/ALS/Quest. Of course there are children who have specific programmes that can only be delivered at certain times and these do impinge on normal lessons.

and lots of things are incorporated into daily classroom routine