Book bands and general concern.

[gertrudemortimer]

My ds 6 year 2 June born is struggling a lot with school and learning. He was below average in every subject but pe at the end of year 1. He finds writing and reading difficult which has a knock on effect throughout his lessons. We get through 3 reading books per week and he does extra reading in school too but it just doesn't seem to be coming together. He's on the SEN register and gets a lot of 1-1 and group support. School advised me to take him for an eye test and he got nearly every letter wrong, he knows all of the letters so I think it was down to his eye sight. They shone a light in his eyes and said he's on the cusp of needing prescription glasses but not quite there, we're off back in 6 months to check them again.

School have now given him an overlay to put over paper and said he's potentially got moderate dyslexia but also said it's hard to tell. The overlay sheet is pink so he doesn't want to use it in school...

We did another reading book tonight and I've checked the level, it's a Band 2 red A, I think this book is easier than normal, I think he's normally on band 2 yellow. This isn't right is it for him to go back a level? I'm at a loss and I think school are too. He's a really good boy and tries so hard, he's shy with adults but has lots of friends in school and enjoys going. There's nothing obviously wrong with him and he's getting so much extra support. Should I just wait and see? I'm worried he'll have years of struggling to catch up with his peers.

Gosh no help but does sound like dyslexia maybe

Get different colour overlays. My dd finds red overlays best but they give her a headache. Yellow overlays help too.

My DD is dyslexic, she wasn’t diagnosed till college! In primary school her year three teacher wrote her off as ‘slow’ the ta didn’t. And once we found books she loved she started reading because she wanted to. She would read using a ruler and was very slow.

Dyslexia itself isn't a vision problem, so coloured overlays are not going to help. They might help if he has a visual perception problem.

I don't understand - he got every letter wrong at the eye test but they haven't done anything to try to correct his eyesight?

@snowtrees school are saying the same, they said it's difficult to correctly diagnose at his age.

@frazzledasarock school used the different colours and ended up on pink been the best. My ds also agreed but I don't think he realised what they were doing really. I'll order some overlays and judge it for myself at home. I'm sorry your daughter struggled through school as well. It affects every aspect of school and it's quite disheartening when you can see how hard they try.

@shimmerbubbles yeah I was confused too, the optician was asking him how he felt about wearing glasses etc and I thought we'd be leaving with some but I also understand they can't just give every child glasses who gets the letters wrong. They seemed to base it more on the way a light was shining in his eyes. I don't have glasses so it all went way over my head to be honest with you. Is it worth a second opinion do you think? He was getting the c's mixed up with o's (only ones I can clearly recall!) and other similar looking letters which he'd normally get right when reading but they were obviously further away.

I think they don't generally diagnose til 8

Look up monster phonics

It coulee coded and really helps with reading.

Ask if school can sign up for a subscription.

Coloured overlays and printing on non white paper can help If you’re dyslexic but I think it depends on how dyslexia affects you. It didn’t make any difference to me.
Has he had his hearing checked recently?
Are the school now using a different method of teaching reading than phonics?

@GoldilockMom I've just googled it I'll have a proper look tomorrow thank you for the recommendation.

@Orangesare yeah I've looked in to the overlays and it seems to be quite a heated topic in the dyslexia world. I'll continue with it at home for now whilst school use them but if I think they make little difference I will raise it with the teacher.

They changed their method in the middle of year 1 to try and get him to learn words through memory/sight. He uses sounding out and blending on words he's unsure of. He's encouraged in school to read a page repeatedly and he has to read each book 3 times until they change it. I'm not sure if this is a good method or not as like I say progress is very slow. He had his hearing checked quite a few times from nursery to reception and was in a speech and language class for two years to improve his speech. Hearing always came back fine he was just a slow talker

That does seem to be the method currently favoured if you don’t succeed with phonics.
They are now considered very old fashioned but have you looked at the ladybird key words series. The early ones can be picked up second hand cheaply and they are very repetitive as they are based on the most common words in the English language. My ds loved them and the illustrations.
I bought quite a lot of reading books for at home and in addition to reading the book from school he can read other books, usually easier to offer constant revision and a bit of variation. The songbirds series are good stories. WH Smith’s usually has a good range of reading books you can look at. Many I bought second hand

Do you play games with words such as word bingo? Label things round the house, sometimes you have stage it a bit so the word and item are seen together. Make a simple treasure hunt with clues he has to read.
The old fashioned word tin is useful.
Write very short stories about his toys for him to read.
If he has trouble with information sticking in his mind you have to keep going over it until it’s in and then revise it frequently. I had this problem with maths at school. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it but I couldn’t remember how, once I knew how to I could.

I didn’t want to read and run.

On the eyesight part, it’s quite common for kids to not get everything right in the reading parts. Did the optician use drops before using the light? That’s how my sons glasses prescription was determined.

Has anyone checked for nystagmus? I knew a lad who was first thought to be "just a bit slow learning to read", then they identified the short sightedness, and he was about 9/10 before anyone realised he had nystagmus as well.