Worried about what teacher told me about ds

[goodfornothing]

Hi

I recently spoke to my ds teacher about his reading and writing ability as I suspected it wasn't really as advanced for his age as it should be. He has just turned 7.

She explained to me that there is a gap between his ability and fellow classmates.
she also said that she had come close to putting him into the special needs group.
She did say however that he is not the only one.

So far he has managed to just about keep off the special needs group.
He is apparently making very small progress.

My son doesn't seem to have the ability to sit down and write a simple paragraph unless if he has it down in front of him to copy.
He also only seems to know how to write down simple words such as dog, cat, etc.
When it comes to more complicated words he needs prompting on the spelling all of the time and doesn't even try to think it out himself.

He also seems to have difficulty applying what he has learnt and thinking it out in his head and putting it to paper.

I have tried to do small writing exercises at home but he goes into really awful tantrums and the pen gets thrown across the room.

Half of the time he just cannot be bothered
and his teacher did say that is a big part of the problem.

I have tried to give him a boost at home but what is one to do with a bad tempered, uninterested, seven year old.

His teacher suggested that I start up a reward chart for writing a sentence each day and if he does it he gets a reward at the end.

This I did and for the first 2 weeks it was going great but now he has lost interest.
Is anybody else having similar problems with their 7 year old.
I do have similar problems with his reading where he doesn't even try to sound out the words and interpret what they say.

You can but Write from the Start from Amazon, there are 3 books in total, but they do 'stand alone'

An IEP is an individual Education plan,

This is a working document for the school.

It should outline your son's problems, agree some targets and a time frame to meet them, and give ideas to the teachers as to how best help him.

Targets need to be Short term, Monitorable, Achievable and reviewed regularly. So they can't be silly vague things like, 'Concentrate better'. they have to be things like, must sit and listen for the first 5 minutes of the lesson (or 3 minutes if that is too much, or whatever).

When he's met the first targets, you make some more at each review. You should agree these with the SENCO/class teacher

Just want to say I loved your post, Shabster.

Forget about the label, concentrate on what help he might get. Do something different at home. Good luck.

the best advice I got when dd1 was struggling was to encourage her to write a diary, every day, but one that I didnt read, it didnt matter what she wrote about and didnt matter if she didnt write at all. It really helped to take the pressure off her from doing it correctly. I bought us one each and made 5 mins in the evening to sit down, she would say I can think of what to write about and I would say neither can I so I am just saying what I had for brek/lunch/dinner.

Thanks
for all of the suggestions.

I have tried to get my son to do some simple exercises such as writing or anything really which may help him intellectually but its such a battle getting him to do them.
He moans, cries, and shouts, about having to do it.

I don't know how to get through to him that its for his own good.
I have spent money on numerous books that his teacher suggested and so far have not managed to get my son to do them so feel reluctant to keep wasting money on books etc.