Worried about my year 1 DD - what to do

[writingandspelling]

DD’s end of year 1 report has come as a bit of a surprise, and seeing her books for the first time even more so. DD is reading well - very fluent, great comprehension and inference, and can read pretty much anything. It’s pretty hard to get her to stop reading, tbh!

She’s also ok at maths, certainly verbally or typing. But her writing is pretty dreadful, both in terms of neatness and spelling, and this also affects her written maths as her work is hard to read and disorganised even though the actual maths is right iyswim. She is very reluctant to write at home but when she has done so her writing has been a bit better than at school. Her fine motor skills could probably do with some work, though she plays violin well for her age (grade 1 standard), so they are not uniformly bad.

As far as spelling goes, she’s ok at spelling cvc words or regular short words. She’s got the hang of some of the less regular ones, like ‘are’ and ‘when’, but she struggles with many others. She can break long words into syllables verbally. She is not at all motivated to spell things correctly and school have never sent home spellings or asked us to help learn them so we haven’t pushed it.

She’s been marked as only just meeting expectations in both writing and maths. The report also says her ability to make connections between different topics, ask good questions and make inferences is very strong, as is her vocabulary and speech. And, as I said, there’s nothing wrong with her actual maths per se. I therefore think she may be performing under her ability due to problems getting things down on paper.

We’ve made an appointment to speak to her teacher about it and will ask what she would suggest. But I’m keen to get other views too. Money is not an issue. We are wondering about some occupational therapy to asses and help with her motor skills. Does it sound like we should also have her assessed for dyslexia? In the meantime we’re doing more fine motor activities and trying to find fun ways to get her to write more.

I would be really grateful for any suggestions.

Get an assessment by a developmental optometrist if you can. My DS has a visual motor processing delay and it makes handwriting very difficult. He is allowed to type and once he had learned the keyboard was very successful . He is also terrible at catching balls but fine at throwing them at a stationary target. Its the translating incoming visual info into outgoing motor adjustments that is slow.
If that doesnt show anything, then look at a dyspraxia assessment. These things are all much easier to treat/handle the earlier you catch them and intervene

could you go through this link test online for dyslexia? it doesn't give a diagnosis but it can give you an idea if she is likely to have it or not x

Thank you both. I'll look into the developmental optometrist @SeaToSki

I should have said that I doubt she is dyspraxic. She is very well coordinated and learnt to ride a bike (no stabilisers) on her 4th birthday and swim shortly after that.

That test is really useful @sleepismysuperpower1. She came out low risk even when I ticked everything that could possibly apply.

I did just review a couple of dyspraxia checklists though. The only indicators she meets are to do with writing and drawing and messy eating. The vast majority are nothing like her.

could you also have a look at this dysgraphia test? dysgraphia is a difficulty in automatically remembering and mastering the sequence of muscle motor movements needed in writing letters or numbers, so would effect her writing

Fine and gross motor skills don't always develop at the same rate. My older son was similar - actually riding a bike without stabilisers 3km each way along a forest cycle track to pick up his sister from Kindergarten before he turned 3! His balance bike was his favourite thing in the world from 18 months (tall child).

However his evil teacher in his first year at German primary just used to strike a red biro line through everything he wrote and we write nasty comments and a command to redo the work - sometimes multiple times. I went in to see his teacher and she wouldn't discuss giving him any credit or acknowledgement for the fact that his maths and the answers to questions were almost always 100% correct, she jus wanted to catastrophism about his handwriting His spelling was poor til he was 9 too, even in German which has far more logical spelling rules.

He just needed time though tbh. At age 10 it all came together and spelling clicked and his handwriting became rather beautiful when he could take his time and used a fountain pen. Now he's at secondary his handwriting tends to be a biro scrawl but not one teacher says it's a problem, and his spelling is good.

So she may just need time especially as she has no writer dislexlic feature andreads lots. She's very young still. I'd try to relax and give her space tbh.

My ds1 spent 4 years absolutely hating school because of the handwriting obsession. It did s lot of damage.

Can you post a photo of her writing? This sounds very normal to me (taught ks1 for years). Two syllable spellings are not expected and they only need to spell phonetically (as it sounds). It may look bad to you but it probably isn't. She sounds bright apart from the comment about only just being at the standard. Does she work hard or is she the coasting type of pupil?

Sounds like to me she needs encouragement for writing at home and handwriting practise. A top tip is to buy her some fancy stationary to make it desirable such as smiggle etc. Expensive I know but kids love it. I don't think she needs tutoring or any assessments from what you've said.

Get some play doh, paints and crayons, small beads, anything that requires using her fingers will help.

Kids learn in leaps rather than small steps so all seems ok

Sorry for all the typos ^ would write not we write, catastrophise not catastrophism, wider not writer ...

You say she is meeting expectations for maths and spelling/ writing so that’s great. Is her teacher worried about her handwriting or spelling? Year one is still very little and it’s not uncommon for children to still be getting to grips with getting things written into paper. If you’ve looked at some checklists for dyslexia/ dyspraxia etc and she doesn’t meet the criteria for anything then it might just be that she’s not as advanced in her writing as she is verbally. It doesn’t sound like she’s falling drastically behind and you say yourself she’s not very motivated to write or try and spell things correctly. It might just be that she’s rushing when she’s writing and being a bit lazy/ unfocused and this making silly mistakes. If her speech and vocabulary are somewhat advanced then she may be getting frustrated because her thoughts are coming faster than she can write and so she’s going for speed and quantity of writing over quality of spelling/ handwriting etc.

I don’t think I would be panicking and going down the diagnosis route yet if her teacher isn’t worried and she’s meeting expected levels. Not all children good at one area such as verbal reasoning will be equally skilled across the board and it’s okay if her spelling is a bit weaker than her vocabulary. Bear in mind she’s probably been talking a lot longer than she’s been writing.

Obviously if there are other signs of a specific difficulty then it is worth looking into it more, but if her teacher hadn’t flagged anything up and she isn’t meeting criteria on checklists either then it sounds like it might just be something she needs to work on and develop because it doesn’t quite come naturally.

Thanks @sleepismysuperpower1. She comes out right at the top of moderate risk on that one.

That sounds awful @anothernotherone, your poor DS! And here was me wishing we spoke German or Italian or Finnish with lovely (more) regular spelling! Thanks for sharing his experience, which does give me hope.

@Russel19 thanks very much for your thoughts. I don't have any pictures from her school books which were what shocked me, especially when compared to everyone else's (they were all open on the table). She is my first and I don't work with children and thought the school would tell me if she was at risk of not meeting expectations, so I presumed she was ok until then.

But here is something from home which is much better than anything that was in her books. She did this independently. I would say this is her absolute best writing and spelling.

She writes 3 and 9 back to front and often 5 as well. None of her letters are like that, though we went through a phase with b and d as I think many children do. But the maths was more an issue of organisation on the page. It was impossible to follow in places.

Oh and she was teased from reception about her 'scribbly ' drawing and writing and I think therefore she wont really try. If she thinks she cant do anything well she gives up. She is very quiet and well behaved at school so they think she's trying but I'm not sure she really is.

@mynewbeartotoro thanks, you could be right about the frustration. She always has a lot to say. I got her to dictate a letter to me last night and couldn't keep up!

@greentulips thanks, I will

The school report said her spelling was erratic and something like 'there may be a specific difficulty with spelling of which we are not yet fully aware'

The main thing I notice immediately is that her letters are not a consistent size. If she made them the correct size in relation to one another it would look ten times better.

A trick for this is to use a coloured pen to draw in a middle line between two normal lines and get her to do her letters between the coloured line and the bottom line. Does that make sense? Ascenders should go to the top line, descenders below the line. Worth a try.

I don't think handwriting means a lot but I know a lot of people/teachers do. It's a bit like the saying 'Don't judge a book by its cover' - many people do. The same relates to maths work. In maths does she use the squares provided? One digit per square?

Firstly don't worry! Kids learn at different paces and some pick up certain skills quicker than others. Very academic kids can struggle with motor skills and very physically able kids can struggle with academics, we really can't expect them to be good at everything straight off!

Working on fine motor is something you can do at home, whether arts and crafts (tiny beads for instance) or fun writing it will help but try to ensure it's enjoyable - we did holiday diaries for instance and each week we choose a specific place to visit to write (and draw) about.

As i started, don't worry, I have a dyslexic 18 year old who was bottom of the class throughout primary and the beginning of high school awaiting a levels with predicted a grades across the board! It's a marathon not a sprint with school.

Yesterday I sorted DS's stuff from Primary (he's year 9 now).
This is his writing from the July in Year One (so the end of Year One). I have no idea what it even says.

I'm a TA and have worked in a year 1 class. I would say that writing is pretty good. As for spelling in a year 1 class they normally spell words phonetically even if that means spelling the word wrong e.g. unicorn spelled yooneecorn would not necessarily be marked wrong at this stage. Writing letters and numbers backwards is also pretty normal at this stage which is why they don't like to test for dyslexia etc until a child is over 7.

Her writing is perfectly average for year 1, she’s meeting expectations. There’s nothing to worry about here.

Thank you @russell19. No, she wasn't using the squares like that in maths. Not sure there even were squares tbh but I guess there were if that's what's normally used. She struggles to remember the proportions of the letters, and even with guidelines like you describe she doesn't get them all in the right place. How much of that is inability to and how much is disinclination to I don't know.

@stucknoue and @hellohah that's very reassuring.

@butterbeen aren't they supposed to be able to spell all the reception and year 1 exception words correctly? She gets an awful lot of those wrong. Her writing is definitely not average in her class, by a long way. Perhaps she is surrounded by able writers and her teacher has got expectations set a bit high (there were a lot of comments about poor handwriting in the report).

She’s meeting expectations for her age in both english and maths and her written work looks pretty standard for the end of year one.

I’d say you have nothing to worry about and she’s pretty much where she should be.

Honestly, how you described her writing I was expecting it to be huge and unreadable, but hers looks fine, would probably be somewhere in the middle of the class in terms of neatness.

Tbh, I think that your DD is doing fine and you need to adopt a "that's nice..." approach to her report. Her writing is legible. She's meeting expectations. She's ok.

I teach that age, albeit in Scotland so our curriculum is different. Honestly I wouldn't be too worried at this stage, though, it's worth knowing and keeping an eye on. Many of my pupils were like this. It's very phonetic, "eny" for example which means she has a good phonics base, which explains why she finds reading easy. It will come, I'm sure. I did a big push on common words in my final term which helped massively with pupils like her. One of my most able has terribly scribbly handwriting and drawing but I worked with him and he's making progress too. It's good. She's met expectations and now you know what her next steps are. You should be proud.

Ok perhaps I am taking the report and the fact that the majority of her handwriting at school is much worse than the picture too seriously. It is hugely reassuring to hear that many people don't think there's an issue. I will try to calm down!

It's just hard to know what's normal and what's not when you don't personally have a clue and you're doing it all for the first time, isn't it.

Crossed posts with you @Artykitty666. Thank you. That is really good to hear.