Bloody levels again! What do you make of this?

[jaws5]

My DD ends y5 with 4c for Reading and 4a, almost a 5 for writing... I know it is quite normal to get a higher reading than writing score, but I haven't heard of the other way round... she doesn't seem to be as good answering reading comp questions, but her writing is very sophisticated! Any problem I'm missing?

Sounds like she needs practice at test taking skills, that's a marked difference as you say in the opposite direction to most. I'd be asking school which question types they needed help on.

Yes, I've ordered some reading comp papers to do over the summer...

comprehension is quite a strange skill. I used to be great at reading and understanding books and I was ok at writing (other than messy and too concise) but comprehension exercises I found SO difficult. I did an awful lot of practice when I was in yr5ish and I eventually got the hang of it but I always hated it.

Out of curiosity, purely because of what I remember struggling with, how is she with maths problems? you know when it is written in a sentence? I used to struggle to find the important facts and I think it is the same skills needed for that as for comprehension questions.

DS2 is a really strong reader (reading age well above chronological age) but always gets lower levels in reading than he does in writing. In his case, it's because he finds it hard to infer the subtle 'between the lines' stuff that's implied rather than spelled out. He also doesn't seem to understand what the examiner is looking for as an answer to the question, unless it's very clear what's being asked.

thats just like I was threebeeonegree. I found it one of the hardest things we had to do at school and yet it seems ridiculous because the answers are all there in front of you really but trying to find them, for me, was very hard.

Thanks, for your answers, that´s exactly it! Word problems are also confusing sometimes. It's not the norm for writing to be better than reading comp, statistically writing is the hardest subject in which to get level 5 at SATS KS2, and nationally is 8% lower than reading... But my DD is almost L5 now, and is using very sophisticated writing so should be picking up same kind of thing in other texts... Could it be some form of dyslexia?

ThreeBee, that's exactly what my DD is like, what do his teachers say?

The school provided 1-1 for half an hour a week with an LSA to help boost his 'reading between the lines' skills. We haven't got his SATs results back yet (long story) but he was getting L5 in reading in March/April of Y6, so it must have helped.

Thanks ThreeBee, I will suggest this support in y6, what were his levels at the end of year 5?

I'm afraid I don't remember the ones from the end of Y5, but the pattern has been that his writing is usually 2 sublevels above his reading and his Maths is 2 sublevels above that. I think it was the discrepancy between reading age and comprehension scores that led to him getting extra help.

yes, 2 sublevels difference here as well, but it seems that in your son's case the extra help did work!

It can be a degree of dyslexia yes - I didn't realise until we were looking into my daughter's problems

I hope it's not dyslexia in DS2's case. I think ASD, ADHD and dyspraxia are enough to be going on with.

I have wondered about ADHD before, but she concentrates brilliantly when she wants, eg. art, writing, music, things she's brilliant at... for long, long periods, since she was a baby. All this combined with impulsivity, fidgeting, and moving from one thing to another at times... according to teacher she's not dyslexic or ADHD, but I am not so sure...

I have a gut feeling that there is something going on here, but because she's doing well as a whole it's not being picked up...

I think comprehension needs a certain degree of confidence. You have to be willing to show not only you have understood the passage, but also the question.

This is OK for factual questions, but the less straight forward ones throw many children. They almost need permission to take, what to them, feels like guessing what the adult writer ment.

I believe that there are strong links between some forms of dyslexia and comprehension, but it's not something I've read up on.

My Dysleix DD1 being brilliant at comprehensions. Her coping mechanism for apparently wildly inaccurate reading is to somehow make sence of the bits she has got right and infer the meaning of the words she gets nowhere near.

She learnt this trick by accident, she hated reading her school books. So she'd chatter away about the pictures, the story, what had happened, what might happen. Absolutely anything except read the actual words. She drove me crazy, but I now realise she did exactly what you do to help children with their comprehension skills.

Very interesting Star, how old is she?

She's 15 now.
She got L5 in her KS2 SATs by one mark (she had a scribe and it was the comprehension/reading mark that pulled her writing mark over the threshold)

At 13 she got a reading age of 16 (again on a comprehension style test) and a spelling age of 9.

She's having to work really hard to get Bs in her GCSEs because, even with extra time she finds it hard to get her ideas on paper, despite knowing what she wants to say.

She is a very bright, in the proper meaning of the word, cookie. She's interested in everything and chatters about everything. She has a technical hobby, and has no problem with it's nice multi choice exams.

The only advice I can give you is to find things fiction or non fiction that interest your DD and talk to her. Give her practice in being confident in explaining things and ordering her thoughts.

Also Google comprehension skills and dyslexia and comprehension skills because there are idea out there.
There may also be stuff on bitesize, there is for most things.

Good luck, and if you keep hitting a brick wall don't let school say there isn't a problem.

Thanks so much for your thoughts and ideas! My DD is also hugely creative and probably finds it difficult to focus on the questions... I'll google comp skills and dyslexia!