Reception Class problems

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DS2 (5) is just about to finish reception, we've been aware that he's struggling for some time, but parents evening and report this week has highlighted it even more.

There were lots of positive things, he wants to do well, is a lovely, happy child, like to work hard and play hard, has lots of friends and a great sense of fair play.

However, there was nothing positive accedemically, which being fairly academic myself I have taken out of proportion (whereas DH is being far calmer).

DS has been having NHS speech therapy for about 18 months which we are generally pleased with.

So for the detail, DS recongnises letters and the phonic sounds of letters ( not ch, sh etc) but is still unable to blend together well; he can spell out cat, hat, dog etc but doesn't instantly recognise them and we may as well forget tricky words. His teacher sends home lots of different things to try, but progress is slow.

He is still having problems with number bonds to 5 and his teacher is very concerned that he is going to struggle in year 1.

His teacher says that after the speech thereay input she would have expected a much bigger improvement in his speech and has suggested that we consider private therapy alongside - she has suggested a private therapist that has worked in the school before, who will do an assessment, and this is where I am starting to be more concerned "be able to look for anything else that might be going on".

We've been given lots to work on over summer, but DS doesn't really want to sit down and work, he would rather be bug hunting, riding bikes, getting muddy and I am worried about what we are going to achieve. At the moment he's unaware that there are any problems, but the other children will start to realise soon, so that is another worry to add to the list.

So what i would like to know from parents that have been through this is how to help DS? what games can we play to make it really fun? Have any of you had children that really struggle in reception who manage to catch up?

If he can hear the word when you say the sounds can he say c-a-t and put it together to make the word?

Yes he can, with occasional errors, which is fine for single words, but a sentence takes that long that he really has no clue what it was about by the time he gets to the end - thank you for your help.

The only words that he can read without sounding our are:
His name
Mum
Dad
Is
a
I

It doesn't matter if he has to sound out every single word in reception ... he's an apprentice reader automaticity comes with practise.

When he is reading a sentence ... he sounds out the first word and says the whole word you repeat the word and he repeats it he sounds out the second word and says the word you repeat the first and second words he copies third word you say first second third words and he copies until you get to the end of the sentence and he says the whole sentence . Yes it's very slow at first but as he gets used to it then you stop repeating the word and he does it himself and eventually he will just read the sentence.

Thank you again, his teacher has demonstrated it before, but having it written down makes it much clearer - I will show DH too as we do seem to have different approaches.

What about tricky words - shall I just forget them for now?

I'm assuming the school must be teaching tricky words as whole?
There isn't any need just sound out as normal but point out that the "tricky" part is the sound has a spelling he hasn't seen before (so say s- e-d and tell him in this word the is written "ai" w-o-z "o" can be spelt and sometime is the spelling for "z")

They are yes - and that makes more sense now!

I found my DS was having trouble blending words. School have a 'high frequency words' sheet which they send home and we go through them every day (stuck them on cardboard and cut them out so they come out in random order). These are words which they need to learn to say instantly. Just the word on it's own, not in a sentence. I will use them in a sentence myself just to give him the example. He is effectively rote learning them, really. The Tricky ones have a star on them so that he knows that it's not going to follow the simple rules he already knows eg, said, Mr. He does the " 's' 'a' 'i' 'd', no 's' 'e' 'd' -'said'. He has learned the 'ai' sound is 'e' but has to remind himself for awhile before he gets it automatically.

As he gets confident with one sheet he moves onto the next sheet, but we continue saying it every day until he can read it without sounding. Those which he 'masters' are still gone through once a week as he will sometimes forget them in that week. I have noticed that even when he can say the word straight out when practising the high frequency words, he can still stumble on them during reading, sometimes not getting it at all, other times still needing to sound them out.

Another reception teacher/SENCO here to throw in my tuppence worth!

Echo everything that mrz suggests - if you are able to model segmenting and blending to your son, he will have greater exposure to the letter sounds that make up high frequency words. If, after segmenting c-a-t, he struggles to remember what he has said enough to blend, you could break it down to c-at instead. I've known children who simply can't remember what sounds they've said for long enough!

One of the best things that ANYBODY can do with a child is cook. SO much scope for letter and number work. "Are there any ingredients that start with m?"; "tell me when the dial (on scale) gets to 200"; "there are 3 smarties on this bun...can you make it up to 5?....How did you do that?". If you're stood by a bus timetable, etc, ask DS to point out places bginning with 'E'; or do any buses have the number 2 in them?;... can you find 5 rectangles in the car?... You don't need to mke any of this the focus of your summer...just ask questions when you can!

Thank you nanny1 - cooking is a favourite pass time in our house (especially if it involves cakes or cookies!), although I usually let DS1 do the weighing and measuring - Maybe I need to let DS2 take over?

So, we've decided to go ahead with the assessment and have it booked in for Wednesday morning, which is unfortunately the last day of term. I'm hoping that we'll have some answers from that fairly soon and I plan to speak to the NHS SALT on Friday.

It's been a week of mixed emotions; I finally bit the bullet and decided to have DS1 assessed for his fine and gross motor skills and the results were worse than I had hoped for - I suppose I just don't want them to struggle and I've taken it quite badly.

Thank you again for all your input - I'll let you know how things go on Wednesday.