Primary School wont diagnose dyslexia

[bethalexander]

My 9yo DD is really struggling with her spelling and is bottom of her class. We think she has dyslexia but her primary won't test her. Getting her tested privately costs a fortune. Surely the primary have a duty to test her?

I just realised where I said Y1, I meant Y2, DD is in Y2and the progress has all been this year (thanks to her amazing Y2 teacher) sorry

Zebda if it makes you feel any better I couldn't read until I was 9, couldn't tell the time until I was 12 and my spelling was (still is) terrible. I have to run most things by a spell checker and unfortunatly that doesn't help with sentance structure.

I also have a masters degree. So it matters not a squat

If she can spell phonetically then I don't think she is dyslexic. It is when they can't is when there is an issue. Dyslexic children are easy to spot right from reception and they are invariably is the children who just can't match spoken sound to its symbol. She sounds like she is spelling phonetically... Or trying too. It isn't the best strategy to correct children when they are showing something they are proud off. I would merely take a note of some important word she misspelt and for some reason over the next few days invent a reason to write it or find it in a book.

I agree spelling phonetically is actually the most logical thing to do, if anything it shows she understands words well. Might be good at languages in the future. My son, who isn't dyslexic always did this, still does and he's 12. Now he's older I will ask him to look the word up in a dictionary and this is helping bring up his spelling to the level of his reading.

Hi Poppy, there are different types of dyslexia, visual and aural/visual. So its perfectly possible to master phonetics and still be dyslexic. Although this is not commonly known.

Actually I dont know for certain if she is dyslexic (still waiting for the bloody tests!) But with extensive family history of dyslexia on both sides of the family and a lot of experience of this, I and the SEN are satisfied that she is showing the majority of the key indicators And she is responding well to support we are giving her at home and at school.

A big challenge is that she is also very bright (she gets this from her Dad mainly) so is not behind, just behind where she could be, and also very frustrated by 'the rocks in her brain'

poppy70 dyslexic children are not easy to spot at all. A lot of them slip through the cracks. I was a special needs teacher for 10 years and have a psychology degree and I know for sure I wouldn't be able to spot a dyslexic child.

Yes it is but there are common indicators and she isn't possessing any of them as far as I can tell.

They are fairly easy to spot in my experience. There are warning signs from the start that are easily ignored and they do slip through the net.

tomato I like the idea of starting to look words up -this will be great when she gets to that level. I also think our DC will be in a spellcheck word more than ever and take heart from this

Poppy just re-read your post and think your idea of contriving (in the positive sense!) A reason to see/use a word is brilliant. I will definitely try this. The issue is her memory just seems to 'wipe' immediately after practicing a spelling.

Sorry if my previous post seemed defensive, I struggle to reconcile her brightness with the mental blocks I can see she has, and she gets very anxious and frustrated when she gets things wrong/is corrected... With her grades and progress (now, not a year ago) it would be easy to ignore the problem

Sorry I was referring to original poster about child not showing signs. No idea about your daughter. What spacial, organisational things does she have?

Sorry tomatodizzymum but phonetic relates to the sounds of a language and English obviously has speech sounds.
Perhaps you meant that English doesn't have a phonemic orthography (where written symbols math the spoken sounds)? Language rarely have a perfect phonemic orthography but languages such as Finnish and Italian can be described as having shallow orthographic whereas languages such as English as having deep orthographies.
The written symbols of English obviously relate to the spoken sounds of the language but we have retained many representations from earlier pronunciations which makes learning to read and write in English more complex. There is a code but it is complex.

In English we don't have one sound one spelling.

English has 44 sounds represented by a 26 letter alphabet so sounds can be represented by one, two, three or four letters
One sound can have more than one spelling - /ae/ and be spelt a as in apron, ai as in rain, ea as in steak, a-e at in make, ey as in they, ay as in day, eight as in eight...
One spelling can represent different sounds great, bread, meat

Yes English has speech sounds, so it's phonetic in that context. Just type is "english a phonetic language?" and you'll get the answer. When using phonetics to talk about written language it means there is a direct relationship between the symbol and the sound. English doesn't have this, for example the word read [ri:d] and read [red] need to be in context, there is no direct relationship between the symbols and the sounds, the same with many other words.

Just type in English orthography as that's what you're really talking about.

English doesn't have a direct one to one correspondence,few languages do, but it does have a code. can represent /ae/ /ee/ or /e/ but never the other 41 sounds. It's complex but there is a code and if you know the code you can read the words. Of course you need context to read heteronyms but 5 year olds can do it if taught how and they can certainly learn how to spell words correctly without losing their creativity.

To be clear all spoken languages are "phonetic" languages because that simply means they have sounds. Maybe what you mean is "written English isn't phonemically (not phonetically) accurate?" (Sometimes it is and some times not). It's also worth mentioning that no written language is 100% phonemically accurate but some written systems come closer to that ideal than others do.

canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/42480

Just type is "english a phonetic language?" and you'll get the answer.

Which just illustrates the danger of relying on the internet for factual information.

'Phonetics' is the study of speech sounds and how they are produced. Nothing at all about how they are represented by symbols.

The oft repeated mantra that says that English is not a phonetic language is based on a complete distortion of the term 'phonetic'; distortion perpetuated by people who have completely failed to understand that written language is based on the spelling of discrete sounds, not the application of 'rules' about letters which insist that a letter or letter combination can only represent one sound. Just because this distortion is perpetuated on the internet doesn't mean that it is a definitive 'truth'.

in regards to written language not spoken! It's hard for English children to learn to spell period. Arguing about the definition of phonetics or my understanding of it won't change that!

I speak Portuguese, there ARE 'rules' about letters where a letter or letter combination can only represent one sound. My 5 year old can read and write any Portuguese word. Not English, yet. FACT.

So that means other 5 year olds can't spell either ??

Take your example you can only know that an word can represent one of three sounds. To correctly read the word though you have to simply learn the word, the code is useless. To write a word is even harder as one sound can have several letter combinations. So again to learn it correctly you have to just learn it.

My child can spell, that's the point. It takes longer for English children to learn to spell so that's why it's not so critical in year 1 and children are given time.

Take your example you can only know that an word can represent one of three sounds. To correctly read the word though you have to simply learn the word, the code is useless.

Tell that to the well-taught child who swiftly reads the word by using each of the three sounds they know represents until they find the correct one.

Selecting the most common first as they've been taught, then others if necessary and will unconsciously normalise the pronunciation if they are familiar with the spoken form ...

No tomatodizzymum other five year olds can spell now in English!