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?

mrz given that no two children are the same, some can do that but we are not talking about those children, we are talking about children who are actually struggling with spelling. It's not an outdated view that children who are struggling with spelling should focus on getting the spellings correct when they are doing creative writing (in fact the opposite).

It's not about having the right and most modern approach and using it for children, it's about knowing a lot of different treatment plans (old and new and continously developing ones) and seeing which ones and which combinations work with an individual child. Also about monitoring how well the approaches work and being fully prepared to re-assess those approaches as the child either progresses or regresses.

Yet you seem to be basing your assumption on the fact that your child can't spell in English ...
The fact is that if children are taught well they don't need treatment??
Extract from a piece written by a five year old with spelling

Miranda and her father Prospero lived on an enchanted island. Today Miranda gazed out at the tempest. Jagged lightening split the ebony sky and the huge waves filled the air with a million raindrops. ...it continues in a similar way for a side and a half of narrow lined A4 with just 2 spelling mistakes.

It's a very simple matter to praise the child for the phonetically plausible attempt and explain that because English is complex in this word we use this spelling for that sound ... And the child can correct the spelling ... It's empowering and it reinforces the correct spelling not the wrong.

There is a massive difference between pointing out spellings for a child that can produce that kind of writing and doing it for a more normal range to potentially dyslexic child.

My child can't spell the complete English language yet (you seem to assume that I am saying he is not spelling at all). He can spell simple three letter words and can read simple words like ant, snail or ink. In his school, like most others around the world, formal learning starts after the age of 6. They use mostly play-based learning. Children are free to explore formal learning before year 1, if, like my son, they are ready, willing and happy to do so. In those cases then they are encouraged. If not, they are not. This is a actually a very common educational method. A child, like the one whose work you provided would benefit and probably enjoy exploring formal learning before the age of 6. This is usually an exception, not the average. A lot of Education experts in England realise that other European countries have higher levels of academic achievement and child well-being because they do not try to do too much too soon. Specifically with under 6's.

So you're no longer saying five year olds can't spell?
Are you basing your diagnosis of a child you don't know on the fact they can write creatively and spell accurately? Interesting!

Child scores very highly on Leuven's emotional well being scale

I never said five year olds can't spell!!! I said It can take a long time for children to master spelling. Year one spelling is never very good and mostly sounded out rather than correct. Picking apart writing attempts to focus on accuracy often inhibited a lot of children from producing creative writing.

I have not changed my view on this and if you note I said A LOT of children. Not ALL children.

I can assure you I haven't "diagnosed" any child.

You've provided a peice of writing that is far from the average writing of a 5 year old child. Are you disagreeing with me that the child who wrote that wouldn't benefit and probably enjoy exploring formal learning? Because you have been suggesting the exact opposite!!

No tomatodizzymum you expressed the outdated belief that accurate spelling is incompatible with creativity.

Actually I provided a piece of average writing ... Not the best or worst

Then you have above average students!

I didn't provide an outdated view, neither have I said that accurate spelling is incompatible with creativity, you said It's well researched that children who do well in spelling tests don't apply it in independent writing. and I provided a possible reason for this. We spell well because we learn the spellings, this takes a while for children. You seem to want to dispute this!

No we don't have above average students. In some school our average kids would be bottom group.

The research provides the answer tomatodizzymum ... Which I would have thought anyone working with SEN would be familiar with.

mrz - i almost always agree with what you say on education threads, but on this occasion, I don't think you can possibly say that the child who completed your quoted piece of work is an "average" student.

"Miranda and her father Prospero lived on an enchanted island. Today Miranda gazed out at the tempest. Jagged lightening split the ebony sky and the huge waves filled the air with a million raindrops."

The language alone would be far exceeding the expectation for either Reception or Year 1, let alone the ability to spell it all correctly.

Text like that would undoubtedly have been levelled in the "old days" as a level 3.

I agree with you though that some children are able to be both creative and spell well.

Yeah, come one that work is not average in the slightest. P!ease. It is astounding for a Y1 child. Why on earth you would put it on this site so parents can use it as a stick to beat themselves with I don't. Some children will never learn to spell no matter how well they are taught. And they don't have to dyslexic either. To say they can is an insult to children, teachers and parents who try very hard. The central, essentially component in the education is the learners capacity and willingness to engage. Teachers are secondary to that.

Some children will never learn to spell no matter how well they are taught.

No, THAT is the biggest insult to children. Talk about low expectations.

The rest of your post doesn't make much sense either! I would either get some sleep or lay off the if I were you, poppy70.

Littlefish as I'm sure you know you can't award a level for a single piece of work. In new expectations the child is consistently working at the Y1 standard. They do display some aspects of Y2 standards but not consistently.

Poppy every child can learn to spell if they are taught well ... No one can be a perfect speller ... There are too many words in English for anyone to be familiar with them all but if you can hear the sounds in a word and know how to represent them ..you can use other clues such as word origin to make a pretty good attempt at even the most obscure ... And by you I include adults
It's shocking that a teacher would write off children or groups as unable to learn to spell

You might also have worked out that the class have been reading The Tempest ...hence Miranda and Prospero and "magpied" vocabulary.

Mrz - You may not realise it, but your tone is coming across as rather patronising. Of course I realise that you can't award a level for a single piece of work. I think in posting that particular piece that you have simply muddied the water and taken this thread further off track. It is not an average piece of work, nor is it average spelling for a 5 year old.

In order to produce a piece of work like that, the child must have been producing others around the same level in various styles. The piece of work you offered is far above year 1 standards and I would suggest that even with the new levels, it would be considered to be above year 2 standards.

I just don't know that all children have the ability to learn to spell at what would be expected levels. They can certainly be helped and can show improvement, but for some it's not going to happen. It's also not necessarily because of the typical difficulties that people would think of. I have a boy in my class (age 10) who just cannot spell. He's definitely improved this year, but his spelling is so poor that most people wouldn't be able to read it and take a good guess at what he's trying to say. He has ADHD that was not controlled when he was in infants so he just never learned how to spell at the same time as everyone else. Now we're playing a huge game of catch up, and despite a huge amount of intervention and support, he just isn't improving.

When it is suggested that all children should just be able to spell, it marginalises the difficulties faced by children who, despite a huge amount of input, just aren't getting it. It also marginalises the efforts of teachers and teaching assistants breaking their backs to help and not making any progress.

Sorry Littlefish I tried to word it so it didn't sound patronising. I'd originally written the post as if you didn't know and added the beginning to make it clear that I wasn't suggesting you weren't aware and ended up making you feel patronised ...sorry again

Letsghostdance I didn't say it's easy for every child or even every adult ...we all have to work hard at spelling and no one is a perfect speller...but there is absolutely no reason to write off any child. We can learn to spell but we need to know how our written language works

I was told in year 2 that Dd might be dyslexic but they would wait and see how she fared over the next year or so as some children do grow out of their "dyslexic" traits. That seemed a reasonable plan and could understand where the observation was coming from.

I was told by my dds teacher when Dd was in year 4 that she did need to have a proper assessment. But they wouldn't do it as she would soon be going to senior school and if I needed one doing then it was up to me to tell the senior school.

The VA primary school got rid of their SENCO dept when dd was in year 3. Not that they told me.
If I was able to I would have paid for the assessment myself but as an individual I came up against brick wall after brick wall and it appeared that the only way to get an assessment was to have the school refer the pupil which the school was not going to do.

We finally got an assessment for dd in year 9. Her spelling was deemed to be in the bottom 1 percentile as well as other problems. Sitting in on the assessment made me realise how bad things had gotten. The ep then told me that her dyslexia was not "treatable" . If she had been diagnosed earlier things would have been put in place that would have meant she would be able to learn strategies to overcome her problems but because of her age she would need to rely on technology.

I do feel for anyone trying to get their child diagnosed. If you have not had to deal with the schools reluctance to land themselves with a bill for EPs, even if you say you are quite happy to pick up the tab, then no one can understand what the problem is. It is a rare Primary school that will bite the bullet and bring in an EP usually they give the impression to want to pass the problem on to the senior school. I did read a thread that indicated a lot of students are being diagnosed dyslexic whilst at university which means senior schools are also just passing the problem on.

Nd if you Home Ed forget it

From the comments here, I think people are unaware of what can be achieved using a really excellent linguistic phonics programme such as the one Mrz's school uses. Most schools are using Letters and Sounds, which is a bit of a hodge-podge, often without sufficient resources or training, which would make it very difficult to achieve similar results.

Remember, we're not that far along from the days when teachers were told that "phonics doesn't work" full stop. Unfortunately, the government isn't producing comparisons of the success rates of different phonics programmes, even though I believe they have sufficient data from the phonics checks to do so fairly easily.