DD failed her phonics screening - any advice?

[formerdiva]

I know there's another big thread on the screening, but it mostly seems to be debate about whether the test is worthwhile or not. I just wanted a bit of advice about what my strategy should be? To give some context:

I trust the school - the teaching staff seem good, and the other children don't seem to have an issue
They've told me that DD is immature (she's an August baby, but to be fair her friends who are summer babies don't seem to have issues)
She doesn't concentrate or focus very well at all
We do her homework every day and read to/with her every day

I feel really anxious for her. Any advice about what our next steps should be?

Sorry, but I still think that anything going on in the brain which affects your ability to function day to day or to learn in school relates to intelligence of one sort or another. And IQ tests and theories on intelligence change every few years - because people have to admit that they have constructed false scenarios where some functions of the brain relate to intelligence and others don't.

That points not just to environmental differences, but to differences in cognitive function. - Differences in cognitive function but not differences in intelligence or cognitive ability.

No psychologist will agree with you that having dyslexia means you lack intelligence.

Name me a psychologist who can accurately define intelligence. It seems to me it's more a case of people thinking they know it when they see it.

I would trust my ds1 to write an amusing and entertaining story, with perfect grammar, spelling and punctuation. I would also trust him to work out any sum I asked him. In these things he is truly intelligent. I would not trust him to find the lines of symmetry in a shape or to make a bookcase - in those things he really is of limited ability.

Psychologists use standard tests to measure intelligence. For example the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wechsler_Intelligence_Scale_for_Children WISC] test.

They certainly don't think a child is intelligent because they've chatted to them for half an hour.

WISC

In these things he is truly intelligent - No.

Nobody measures intelligence like that.

His ability can and has, of course, been improved with huge amounts of time being invested and practice, and looking into the causes of his difficulties and trying to find ways to ameliorate them, but an abnormally large amount of time has needed to be invested in this, because he was not born wired up in the right way for these things to come naturally to him without intensive tuition... In what way is that so utterly different from the person who needs abnormally large amounts of time to be spent on learning to do anything whatsoever?

And have you found the psychologists' definitions of intelligence to be remotely helpful to you in any way, Indigobell? Have they helped your dd learn to read?

Not all things need to be measured to be obvious. In fact , with our children it is usually their difficulties which we measure in order to improve upon them. If an aspect of their learning is optimal we usually do not feel the need to measure it.

rabbitstew is just saying that her son is fab at writing and less good at some aspects of his maths. Thus it is easy to quantify how his maths could improve; less easy to describe how his literacy should improve.

She has no reason to 'measure' the literacy aspect of his intelligence, she knows he is fine.

I think there is some confusion between intelligence and achievement here

I think I know what rabbit stew means when I think of our schools experience with ed psych reports- lots of our parents seem to pay for these. These reports have a tendency to say nearly every child they assess is highly intelligent. They then go on to list a whole range of areas in which the child is weak, areas that could reasonably be viewed as to do with intelligence.

those still left out of the loop will be written off as truly incapable of ever learning to read, because they've not managed to in accordance with the supposedly foolproof method and therefore can legitimately be given up on. In reality, it may be that they are the minority for whom it is thought to be too expensive and time consuming to work out how to teach them.

No-one claims that SP teaches every child to read, just significantly more children than any other known method.

These children who you predict will be 'left out of the loop' are precisely the ones whose situation concerns me most. While we have the present elastic view of 'dyslexia' thousands of children are being needlessly labelled and given precious time and resources which could be devoted to the ones with really significant difficulties. I'm not talking about the children who are just slower to learn, they need more time and intensive teaching, but they will learn. I'm talking about children like Indigo's dd who won't respond to just some more intensive teaching.

While we have EPs figuratively 'stopping' at the dyslexia diagnosis, and reeling off a standard list of 'interventions', (which is all I've ever experienced in 12 years on the job, and, is all you'll really get from the 'dyslexia specialists') we will never progress in determining the underlying causes of the dyslexic symptoms and really working out the best way to help them.

I was once told by Sue Lloyd (Jolly Phonics), who was an SEN teacher for a long time, that she only had one pupil during her teaching career who just couldn't learn to read. Those are the children we need to be focussing on. Not the Aint Been Taughts...

I appreciate that children may learn at different rates and that some children 'pick up' reading more easily than others, but at present we have too many children within the 'normal' range of cognitive ability who struggle to learn to read.

I would trust my ds1 to write an amusing and entertaining story, with perfect grammar, spelling and punctuation. I would also trust him to work out any sum I asked him. In these things he is truly intelligent. I would not trust him to find the lines of symmetry in a shape or to make a bookcase - in those things he really is of limited ability

But is it limited ability because he hasn't yet learned to do these things or low ability because he is incapable of learning them?

( I wish my fingers would learn to get the 's' & 'u' the right way round in 'because'. Limited ability or low ability?)

dyslexia.yale.edu/Myths.html

maizieD- what should we be doing for the children who are not learning to read even with proper teaching?
What sort of intervention would help them? Is there a place for (properly trained) voluntary assistance? Because there certainly isn't going to be lots of spare money around for paid assistance in schools for a good while.

I think my ds1 is capable of learning them, maizieD, but some aspects of his intelligence (as measured by psychologists) are vastly higher than others. What meaning does an overall IQ score have when some of the tests measure you as profoundly gifted and others as close to average????? That one side of your brain is damaged (in comparison to the other)? And what help is it to Indigobell to tell her that her child has high cognitive ability but big problems with visual processing, memory, auditory processing, etc? I was under the impression that an IQ test measured things like processing speeds, memory, visual processing, etc, yet apparently you can have huge problems in those areas yet still have a high IQ. What does high IQ actually mean if you have a poor memory, poor attention span and low processing speeds? And what if you have a fantastic memory, high processing speeds, but average IQ scores? Which is actually more useful? If you don't fit in the standard bell curve where all scores fit relatively neatly together, where does that leave you? As the living proof that IQ tests are fatally flawed????

ViewOfTheHills - there is currently no school based intervention that helps kids who can't be taught to read.

There are however dozens of alternative therapies that parents can do which work.

My school is trialling one of the alternative therapies that I have used with DD with 10 Y5s who have literacy difficulties. It cost them no money and took me 5 minutes to explain to school what to do.

The trial has been a huge success. All 10 boys have made adequate progress this term - which they wouldn't normally.

Next year school are going to run the intervention on 40 kids. 10 in each year group. .

So hopefully soon there will be an intervention schools can use. But at the moment there isn't.

How big are the year groups at the school IndigoBell?

Not all 10 kids in each year group will have severe dyslexia - we're just choosing the 10 kids who struggle the most.

But the initial 10 kids all had huge difficulties. They were all on SA+. Most of them had a label of MLD.

Can you remind me please what the intervention is, and how it was measured. It sounds remarkable.

That does sound promising Indigo

rabbitstew - your definition of IQ implies that visually-impaired or hearing-impaired people are of lower intelligence that people with normal sight or hearing...

Maleuleca - it's very early days, but very exciting so far.

We've adapted the Tinsley house Therapy so that it can be done at school. TH is a neurodevelopment therapy, so what we're trying to do is improve the child's brain so that they find it easier to learn.

Then normal teaching methods will be more effective.

We don't have much data yet, like I said its very early days. The boys have only been doing these exercises this term. We'll get some more data in the last week of term.

But the data I do have now is:

• school choosing to do it with 40 kids next year. Ie they're convinced.
• all 10 kids with MLD made 1 or more sublevel progress thus half year (which is unheard of for these boys)
• the teachers have noticed the kids are more engaged and motivated and switched on. They now seem cleverer. Eg they can make mental leaps now they couldn't previously.
• the boys have noticed that they can do academic stuff easier. And they all feel great.

We're planning a whole year intervention, but for the first term all we'll do is the stairs exercise which stimulates the cerebellum.

(I know the exercise sounds crazy - but it ain't ).

The exercise takes 5 minutes and we do it 3 times a day. First thing, straight after lunch, and last thing.

The exercise,

• stand straight, eyes closed
• walk up 3 stairs.
• walk down 3 stairs (without turning round or opening your eyes)
• repeat 3 times (building up to 10 to times as the child gets better)
• repeat 3 times a day.

When they can do that, there are some more variations.

How I understand it works is these kids have very poor sense of propreception (where they are in space) and are continually using their vision to tell them where their limbs are rather than their brain.

So this exercise forces them to use their cerebellum for gross motor co-ordination, rather than their vision.

I know it sounds weird. But it's very effective.

And free to do.

Will have to see how the 40 kids go next year - but I'm amazed by the results do far. I didn't expect school to notice improvements in all 10 boys in less then a term.

The therapy does. It teach them to read - it just makes their brain work better. BTW these boys are all I to their third year of RWI. So they have been taught properly.

And it's an unusual cohort that we have so many kids with MLD. Normally we don't.

Bonsoir - I don't see how you come to that conclusion when my argument is that an overall IQ score is pointless because it doesn't tell you anything useful (ie I believe you can't weigh and measure "intelligence" and give it a number that is remotely meaningful). As quoted, below:

"The point of an IQ test should be to look for your areas of strength and weakness so that you can have a better understanding of how your intelligence works. An overall IQ "score" means nothing much of any use to anyone."

I didn't set IQ tests, but the fact is that the IQ tests that are used are assessing visual and auditory processing skills of people who can see and hear - they do read numbers out loud and get the subject to repeat them back, for example; they do have pictures for which you have to complete the sequence. If you can physically see and hear within what are considered to be normal parameters, your intelligence will be judged according to how you interpret what you see and hear. Seeing and hearing people are not treated as though they are deaf and blind when they are given an IQ test. Their visual and auditory perception therefore can affect their IQ score. And a person who is visually impaired does have particular weaknesses which affect how their intelligence works (and how you test it). I do not believe IQ tests are clever enough for anyone really to understand what they are testing and how to isolate that tiny bit of intelligence which is supposedly pure IQ.