Anyone got any experience of dylexia in first years of Primary?

[haggisaggis]

dd is 5.5 - started school last August (SCotland so in P1)
Right from the start she struggled with learning to read. With a lot of extra work she can now recognise most phonic initial sounds. She can still not recognise all the numbers from 1 -10.
The school have given extra support and she sees the learning support teacher once a week. The learning support teacher says she is probably dyslexic - but it is too early to test. dd really struggled with the "sight" words in ORT - I bought some Jelly & Bean books which she can sound out. SChool has asked me to stop using these. THey have moved dd to an alternative scheme as she was aware that everyone else was on a higher level of ORT than her. The alternative scheme is Ginn - again not a great phonic scheme. I really think that dd should be on a very phonic based scheme so she learns to read by decoding - the learning support teacher disagrees and says she should be learning the "sight" words so she progresses more quickly. It takes dd a very long time to learn words by sight - she usually tries to sound them out. (I'm talking about basic words here - "look" "and" "the" etc). I feel she is going to end up getting really discouraged by this - but I am trying to be a "nice" parent and am going along with it at present.
Has anyone any experience of teaching dyslexic children in early years - should I start pushing for a more phonic approach or should I carry on sitting tight and do what the school suggests.

i'd have thought your daughter would do better with a phonics approach such as jolly phoncis os similar. Ok she sees the teacher once a week but I would hope she has 1:1 with someone everyday for say 5 minutes.

UMM - thinking off the top of my head I do thinks like onset and ryhme words with my children that struggle - such as at - and then put a c in front cat, bat, mat etc. We make word wheels.

What are they doing to help with these sight words - can she find a little word in the big word to help her read it (e.g. [and now I can't think of one] can - an etc). Or recognise word shapes - match up the shape to the word.

Sorry am trying to breast feed and listen to dd1 and think for you. Will try and come back later.

We had a battle royal about this very issue haggis (we are in Scotland also) - we found the education authority 'less than helpful' so took DD for an independent test which was just as well as the local authority finally got round to testing her FIVE years later.
Can you approach your local Dyslexia Association and ask their advice? They were very helpful to us and were able to help our daughter.
She is now in P7 and still struggles but has been given a lot of support plus the recognition of having dyslexia.

dyslexia Scotland link

cazzy - she gets 1:1 with either the class teacher or the TA every day - they may do phonic sounds (initial sounds only, as far as I can gather) or reading or learning "sight" words. They seem to really discourage sounding out / blending at this stage (which seems to go against how reading appears to be taught in England). They do Jolly phonics - but it seems to me very stand alone - ie they learn the initial sounds then move to whole words.
Sight words - I'm not sure what they do at school to help - I have her jumping around the kitchen onto words I've written on big bits of paper which seems to go down quite well!
Thanks for your help.

GentleOtter - I have contacted Dyslexia Scotland and they want to wait until dd has had a full year in school before testing her. I am happy to wait - although as time goes on I am getting more and more convinced she is dyslexic. The school are very supportive - I go in every month to meet the class teacher and the learning suport teacher. It is just how they are actually tackling her teaching that concerns me as I am not convinced it is appropriate.

Absolutely, continue doing phonics at home and insist on it in school My daughter is not dyslexic (but bilingual and not great memory for symbols), but she struggled with sight words and was doing zero progress with ORT. The moment I moved to Jelly and Bean, Songbirds phonics, Ruth Misking books and the like, progress has been amazing!!!
Sight words will come once she feels more confident in reading and putting sounds together. Now she is not scared of words, she know she can decode and if it takes time fine, but she sees the light in the end of the tunnel.
Also, I got an American system called Hooked on Phonics, and it's great. They have lots of practice with words, e.g. they do a page on at. Cat, mat, rat, fat,etc, then a story and a tiny simple book based on those, the repetitiveness gave my DD lots of confidence, may be faster children would get bored with it, but not mine

My DS 12 struggled with word recognition, but thankfully was taught jolly phonics properly,His reading clicked at 7, but he still has problems with spelling and is being assessed for dyslexia now. The school did recognise he had a specific learning difficulty and gave him a lot of extra help with spelling.

My DH was taught Look and Say in the 60's which was a sight recognition scheme. His teacher said he would never learn to read using this method, but she wasn't allowed to use any other method. It was a complete disaster and he didn't learn to read until they taught him phonics when he was 10.

There has been a lot of research lately that shows the word recognition part of the brain does not work properly with most dyslexics, which is why dyslexics should be taught phonics.

JP has been shown to work with dyslexics beccause its multi-sensory. I think the school are wrong to be going down the sight word route - read the rose report, but there you go. I actually think children need to learn a varietyy of different ways to read, but phonics is so uiseful for spelling as well. I hate ORT....why don't the school want to use the Jelly and Bean books - is because they are afraiud you will teach her wrong - ask for guidence. Similar books are the bob books (be careful though some have american spellings), Oxford readiong scheme now has some phonic books (songbirds (and some with floppy althogh I have not seen any of these), Jolly phonics has some good ones although there are quite advanced. You could also make your own simple CVC and CVCC word books with your dd. Write the word and she draws the picture.

I would try and do as many multi-sensory methods with her as you can - the jumping thing sounds great. Also writing the sight words in different media (oil, shaving gell, sand, soil), making it out of playdough etc etc. Write them in teh air, paint them. Play snap with the words, can you find me something in the room beginning with (as well as eye-spy). Start with inital sounds and move to end sounds (mcuh harder).

The Ruth Miskin scheme is also similar to JP. The letterland stuff is OK (some children find ti hard to seperate the same of the letter charater with the sound of the letter).

Keep reading to her.

Make sure you keep the phonemes short - e.g. M is m (not muh)

BTW I am not a special needs teacher, but these are what I suggest for my weaker children.

My DD now 7 RA of 5 has always struggled with literacy despite lots of support as i am SEN teacher for the authority. Children need phonics and sight words using multi sensory methods with lots of overlearning but also need to read and re read real story books. The pcm books are good also big cats for early reading. Also helpful is getting children to dictate their own sentence to you which you then cut up and they re arrange and copy/re read. Try teaching sight words on computer in funky colourful font and cutting up words into a jigsaw one letter a piece to reassemble. Good luck and persevere their confidence is everything and they will learn.

haggisaggis, I'm an experienced, specialist, remedial reading tutor. My website was written especially for the parents of struggling readers and is completely evidence-based.

Start with: 'Should I have my child assessed?'

www.aowm73.dsl.pipex.com/dyslexics/should_I_have.htm

HTH

Hi,
One of my lovely trio is struggling at school with his writing, reversing odd words, letters, handwriting is appalling. He is yr 5 and I have been saying for the last 5 years could he be dyslexic? Each teacher has said no, its quite common to still reverse letters at his age. He is very intelligent, has no problems with reading, in fact out of the three he is my best reader. Feel now though he needs properly testing, feel it should have happened before now.

haggisaggis,

I haven't read all the posts, just your OP, but wanted to offer my opinion.

I am a Teaching Assistant, starting a Primary Teaching Training course in September. I am also a private Reading Tutor. I don't specialise in dyslexia but personally, I would recommend you ignore the school-teacher's comments about using sight words, and persevere with phonics. It is the best way to teaching reading, and, for children who struggle, often the only way.

Jolly Phonics do a range of books where the letter shape is "cut out" (indented) of the page, so your dd can trace it with her finger. There is also an action for each letter-sound. Both these things will help her to remember which sound is which.

When she knows her sounds, encourage her to sound out words, as you have been doing. Begin with CVC words, then go on to CVCC and CCVC. There is guidance on the Jolly Phonics website on how to do this.

Ruth Miskin has a series of books that will be suitable for your dd when she knows the alphabet sounds and the consonant digraphs: th, sh, ch, ng. This is the link to the website: www.readwriteinc.com (sorry, my links never work). You can order the books there - they are less than £10 per set and you can buy the sets one at a time.

I am working with a 7 year old at the moment and he has had two and a half years of sight words in school before coming to me as a non-reader. If he had come two years ago he would pick up what I am teaching him so much quicker because he would not have learned so many bad habits - mainly guessing. I would not want this to happen to your daughter.

Good luck. You are doing the right thing and can teach your dd to read yourself. I started by teaching my son, three years ago, before I was a teaching assistant, and I knew nothing...

If I can help in any way, please CAT me or post on here.

HTH