Help me help my 8yr old with English

[Santaschiefelf]

Ds is in yr 3. I knew he found English difficult but during lockdown when his books were going between home & school I was still shocked at the level of his work. Only around 1 in 20 words were spelled correctly. He can’t even spell most of the YR & Yr 1 tricky words. Sentences were very simple & often didn’t make sense. Capital letters & question marks don’t seem at all intuitive to him.
His writing is ok & mostly legible. Joined up writing has helped reduce the number of letters he writes the wrong way round but does still mix d and b and when he is writing cm or p for pence he almost always writes the c and the p the wrong way round. He also regularly writes the numbers 3 & 5 the wrong way round.
He spells the same word multiple different ways on one page, sometimes his spellings are phonetically plausible but often not. If I tell him how to spell a word he will often write the letters down in the wrong order. He also sometimes writes whole words backwards and when he reads back over work he tends to see what he thinks it says and not what it actually says.
His reading is ok & he passed the yr 1 phonics screen (just). He tends to read far too fast ignoring any punctuation & making lots of mistakes but when I get him to go back over words he can usually sound them out correctly.
I emailed his teacher about my concerns after we got written reports for parents evening last term. She basically said he is fine & that was it!
I don’t think this is normal for an 8.5yr old though?
What are the schools responsibilities in terms of getting him to the expected level? Should they be giving him extra help?
I’m desperate to help him but he is unbelievably resistant to doing any kind of school work at home.
Has anyone got any good ideas of the best way to help him?
I also have concerns about his memory which isn’t great.

Hi there. I didn't want to read and run without responding. I think you are right to be want to try to help your child with this. I think that it would be useful to ask for a meeting with the teacher and SENCO at school who is responsible for organising assessment and support for children with any additional needs. I would write down all of your concerns as you have done here and ask for support in helping your child with this. If he's in year 3 but only spelling rec or year 1 words then there are additional interventions they could be putting in place. Regarding the reversals...there could be visual discrimination difficulties that could do with exploring. The website www.eyecanlearn.co.uk has some nice games that can be played at home and in school. I hope you are able to discuss this further with the SENCO...good luck

What is he like in other areas of learning? Does he pick facts up ok and show understanding of them? Say he was learning about castles or space, does he come home and tell you things he’s learnt?

And what is his number formation like? (Eg does he ever write ‘3’ backwards ?)

What’s great is that he’s got you fighting his corner for him. You will need to be persistent and keep pushing it with the school, as he may need additional support in class, which will help him with all this.

Thanks for the replies.
He never ever tells me anything about school and gets really annoyed if I ask.
I do think he struggles to remember things. During lockdown he spent some time at home & some at school & on zoom calls the teacher would ask questions to recap things they had already learned & he almost never knew the answer.
He writes the number 3 backwards about 50% of the time which is better than it was & also often writes 5 backwards.

He is ok at maths despite a difficult start as he didn’t recognise any numbers until he was 5.5yrs
He does struggle with speed though so has ended up staying on the 2 & 5 times tables for ages as he can’t answer questions fast enough to move on.

I did outline my concerns to his teacher. She said he’s fine but we can pursue it if we want to!
He isn’t in the bottom few children in the class & is quiet, well behaved & extremely rule abiding so I suspect the school won’t do much.
I guess I need to speak to the Senco.
I would like to try to understand what I can expect from the school before the parents evening that is coming up.

Good luck with it all, I hope you get some support from the school.

I could of written this post. Same age of DS as well. I don't have any advise. I suspect dyslexia for my son. He also has a diagnosis of DLD. After two meetings with the school i have got my son moved back a level in comprehension work and they are dropping topic work for literacy for the time being. My son cant spell most basic words. Does ok on his weekly tests as we put so much work in, but if you asked him to spell the word a week later he would have no idea. We are currently scribing for him at home, under teachers advise. He can't put a sentence together to write even though.

He definitely needs some sort of formal assessment. Im a bit taken aback that the school think he is fine, there are several areas of concern from your description.
As a starting point can he see and hear okay? After that I would be pushing the school a bit more. When did he last have a standardised reading test and what did he score on that? Although the school (probably) can’t do a dyslexia assessment they should be able to do a screen which would show if he needs further investigation.
Assessment of memory and processing is a little more complicated, could you afford a private EP assessment? Or you could possibly go down the speech and language therapist route, parents can refer their children directly.
If your son is quiet and compliant then I’m afraid you can’t be! He needs support and you might have to push a bit to get it.

What is his spoken language like? Can he speak in grammatically correct sentences. I would also think about getting him assessed for DLD or dyslexia. I have a DC with both and your son sounds exactly the same

Encourage reading or activities with a lot of reading. This helps enormously with spelling and sentence co structuring, almost without any effort. The oxford press books, alien adventures are great for boys.

Elisheva what is a standardised reading test? Does it come out with a reading age?

We had parents evening last week. His teacher agreed with me when I said that I’m appalled at how bad his spelling so I’m not sure why she thought he was fine last term! She said they had done a phonics intervention, his phonics knowledge is good but seemed surprised that this hasn’t helped his spelling. She seemed at a loss as to what to do next and said she would discuss it with the English lead. She is adamant that his reading is y3 level.

Jaded what is DLD??

I think his spoken language is ok. He makes the odd mistake like saying what instead of that and runned instead of ran but he makes sense. I have noticed that his younger sister is much better at picking up new words and using them appropriately. Her memory is also notably better than his.

Ds is not a big talker (unlike his sister) and enjoys his own company. We do read a lot and he is working his way through different novels with DH & myself. We always insist on him reading some to us before we read to him therefore he does some reading out loud every day. He doesn’t yet read to himself for pleasure.

We have always strongly encouraged reading every day but I don’t think it makes any difference to his written work! I try to ask him questions about the story and what he thinks about what someone has done or said or what will happen next but he just gets annoyed with me & says let’s get on with reading & we’ll find out!

I am lucky enough to have the money to pay for a private assessment. I have no idea how to go about finding and EP though, should I go on recommendation?

I still don’t really have an answer to the question of what the schools responsibilities are in terms of getting him to the level where he meets expectations. Should I be expecting them to be giving him extra help? What should this look like? Unfortunately the lovely Senco left last year (not that he was really on her radar I don’t think) and she hasn’t been replaced so the HT has taken over her role. I feel like the HT has got so much on her plate at the moment & I worry I’m being a bit precious by contacting her but I think I need to get over myself & start doing something about this!

DLD is developmental language disorder. It can present much as you've described. An EP should pick up this in an assessment though. Go on the British Psychological Society website and you can find registered Ep's in your area. As for school, given they are not worried about him, he probably won't flag up as needing intervention. If they are running any catch up groups you could ask for him to be included. However, if he has Dyslexia or DLD it isn't a case of catching up but being supported using different strategies. Given you can afford an assessment, this would be my first step-then you will have information to discuss with school as to what the psychologist has recommended will help him.

I've been there.

We paid for a private assessment and came away with a dyslexia diagnosis. This confirmed what we'd suspected after the results of an online Nessy test.

We now have interventions in place-lots of specialised one to one and we're working on touch typing so adaptive technology can be used asap. We're also doing Nessy at home. We are paying for 95 percent of this as the diagnosis didn't reach a threshold for funding.

Seeing your child's work can be a shock but there is help available. Also, it's not indicative of what they can do when they're not having to write the answer. It's not the end of the world. It's really important that you leapfrog the stress of your child thinking there's a problem, if you can.

Spelling the same word different ways throughout the document can be a sign of dyslexia.

Extra help looks like different things-learning to type, working orally where possible, learning word families with specialised methods-all sorts of things. Dyslexia doesn't go away but a package of ongoing help and support can make a huge difference to your child's experience as a learner. It's something to celebrate as a difference, if you can. There are lots of great role models.

If you can pay for a private assessment, do. Getting help quickly makes a big difference. We sent the results of the assessment to the school. Yes, they should have done it themselves but they didn't. They have made some minor provision but it's difficult time, isn't it.

Nessy.com do a dyslexia screen assessment
It’s about £20 and some schools use it to screen children anyway

The fact he reads is irrelevant most dyslexic children can read. Most dyslexia are diagnosed at university when they hit a ceiling point.

Dyslexia affects memory, time keeping, organization skills handwriting, and spelling as well as reading.

There is a 37 point dyslexia page in dyslexia.org

Oh and if you want help will spelling I suggest getting to do a touch typing coarse - typing.com is free and split into lessons

Fingers learn to spell!

Poor working memory can also be a feature, apparently.

Phonological awareness doesn't necessarily translate into fluent reading with dyslexia. I don't know why. We were confused because our child could do some things but it didn't lead where we expected. They can also ace spelling tests but not spell the word correctly if they have to recall it for writing. It is a mystery. They can predict the.narrative in a story in conversation but struggle to scan for simple information in a literal question. It's very hard but it helps to focus on can be done and look at ways to either intervene or level the playing field (with adaptations) where there's a difference.

Regarding times tables, struggling to recall them quickly enough to use them in problems can also be a feature of dyslexia.