Daughter (9) is a year behind at school

[Ouuc]

My daughter is in year 4 / 9 years ago. At home we are working through year 3 CGP books (maths and English) and she finds some aspects of these challenging and her reading level is Oxford Level 12, which is about a year below where she should be.

Her school added her to an English booster club during the Spring term, and she also has been seeing a private tutor since January.
However, she is still finding things a struggle.

Inknow some children have a 121/ group LSA. I was wondering if I should ask the school to incorporate some sessions with the LSA or am I barking up the wrong tree.

. She is generally better at arithmetic, where is is working at her expect level. She has had a negative dyslexia screening at school

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Glad your DD has gotten a diagnosis. How in the school helping her?? Thanks

@Ouuc DD went under in Secondary (not helped by the pandemic). At college she got an EHCP, is now doing courses she can do rather than a bunch of stuff she can't do.

Get an assessment now if you can afford one. If there are learning difficulties find out now before Secondary.

Hi OP.

if she is behind there are a few easy things that you can check that might be impacting her performance.

first thing is get her eyes and ears tested. Children who have or develop problems seeing don’t like reading because they find it hard. Equally, if there is a problem hearing (glue ear is common although usually at a younger age) it’s hard for them to work out what is going on in the classrooom.

so get those tested.

then, how did she do on her phonics test in year 1? Has she always been behind as it were and is making progress but staying a year behind, or was she tracking at expected/age related expectations and has dropped back?

by year 4 the focus on English is much more on comprehension and writing than on straight phonics. This has good and bad points - it means audiobooks and films can help your daughter understand things like story structure (what is the overall plot? Why do things happen the way they do).

tutor is a good call.

tas in primary generally run specific interventions for different groups of children at diffferent times. If she’s in an English booster they obviously recognise she is behind. No harm in emailing and asking for extra support though.

These are fine.

How hard was it to get an ECHP?

I would up it to at least 20 min a day. Imagine an adult reading just 10 min at a time it would be hard to get into a book. How many pages is she reading?
My 9 year old (who actually doesnt really like reading) has read the first percy jackson, harry potter 1&2, and several other books. They do read their book quite a lot at school though.
Mine became a free reader start of y3 though could read chapter books in y2. The other dc was start of y2. Most of the kids seemed to hit it y2/3 however 1 child was really behind in y3 - but still managed to exceed y6 reading SATs so theres still plenty of time.
Its actually the comprehension mainly assessed so any reading you to her helps too. (My dd teacher was surprised her reading age was higher than her age and seemed to have improved despite us not logging kuch in the reading diary. Ive read dd even more of the HP books and percy jackson. And been asking a lot of understanding and vocab questions.

@Ouuc Amazingly easy for DD to get an EHCP, but
. that was 4 years ago
. it wasn't just dyslexia there were learning needs, but also massive MH issues and access to education issues
. It was obvious that college couldn't do what was needed without the EHCP (their answer to all requests was 'does she have an EHCP?')

It hasn't cost college a lot for her to have the EHCP (as in the provisions aren't expensive to provide, they are mainly simple adjustments and flexibility) but it has made an immense difference to her.

OP, my reluctant reader finally got into books at 9 after we came across the graphic novel babysitters club books. It sparked her off to finally read of her own free will. Dog man, etc was also popular with her friends

Audiobooks can help vocabulary development for more reluctant readers.

I would get an educational psychologist to do a full screening for dyslexia, dyspraxia etc. The basic screening done in schools by SEN staff doesn’t always pick up on dyslexia or dyspraxia.

I would also consider a screening for ADHD and ASD because what you have is either a learning difficulty/disability or ND

She isn’t summer born, with a December birthday she is older than most children in her year so she really should not be so far behind.

Has she got a processing issue

Sorry, no idea what that means? They only screened for dyslexia and that was negative.

She was on target in year 2 and in year 3 she was off ill for a month and she has been behind ever since.😞

She has regular/ daily meltdowns at home but at school she is perfect. Could this be a sign of something?

There are a whole host of specific learning disorders, of which dyslexia is only one. My dc has a visual processing impairment, which means her eyes and brain don’t work well together. Her vision is fine (perfect 20/20) but she has trouble tracking objects, trouble refocusing between distances, an inability to visually sort. It affects a great deal of her school experience including reading, copying from the board, ability to process information on a page.

there are other splds that have different impacts. An educational psychologist can assess strengths / weaknesses and even if nothing to diagnose can help you understand dc learning needs,

That sounds very good… is this something I can ask the school to do or NHS?

Yes that is a classic autistic trait.

Schools buy in a certain amount of educational psychologists time per year.

They usually get them to look at the children who are furthest behind/causing the most problems.

you can go private. We did this about ten years ago and a full assessment was about 600 pounds.

Yes. It's called "restraint collapse" or more colloquially the "coke bottle effect" - the effort it takes to cope and seem okay at school means she falls apart at home.

This could be any number of different things or a combination of them.

If she was achieving at expected levels in y2 and has then fallen behind then it's not a problem with her cognitive ability or you would have expected to see it in reception onwards.

It could be ASD / ADHD. She might have a specific learning difficulty (dyslexia, dyspraxia etc). She may have difficulties with executive function, or slow processing, or working memory - you need a really good Educational Psychologist assessment otherwise you're just wandering around in the dark. They're in short supply so if you can possibly afford it go private.

All the ND kids in my child's year are reading the Warrior Cats books so if she's a reluctant reader you could try those.

Thank you!!!

Maybe give Melissa de la Cruz a shot. She’s written a series based on Disney’s Descendants. They’re a good step up from the fairy/ unicorn books, still familiar fairy tale characters but a bit more grown up and a lot better written than J Wilson.

My autistic DD loved ElfQuest by Wendy Pini. It’s a series of graphic novels
https://elfquest.com/

School expectation level is just the average. They know that a certain percentage of kids won't meet that level. Middle class parents try to even it up when their kids underperform with tutors, clubs, or diagnoses to get assistance at school. But at the end of the day, the poor kids are playing a rigged game, being judged by standards guaranteed to fail some of them.

You can ask school or you can go private. Where I am there is about a 1.5-2 year wait for ed psychs via school and you might not get prioritised as there is a severe shortage in many areas; private is more like 3-6 months.

I would add that dc also had regular meltdowns after school but not ASD or adhd. She is just working twice as hard as everyone else at school and it wore her down.

the good news is that once we had her full learning profile we could tailor interventions to support her specifically. There are things that will always be harder for her than others, but we have a better sense of what they are and how to adapt. There best bit of the assessment were highlighting her strengths - she’s quite gifted in some aspects of learning but this wasn’t readily apparent as her weaknesses hid her strengths and her strengths compensated her weaknesses. It means we are able to double down on the things she is really good at and help build her up a bit.

Do you mean she has been tested recently or that you haven’t noticed a problem at home? Children often do not realise they should be able to see better than they can across a classroom or be able to discriminate similar sounds in a busy environment. Difficulties enough to affect learning but not everyday life are surprisingly commonly missed without testing.

Once you have properly established that both her eyesight and hearing are fine then arrange to meet with class teacher and Senco and ask what is being done in school and what you can do at home to support.

It doesn’t sound as if she is working far enough below expected levels to be assessed for an EHCP at present. It isn’t the legal test, but a Local Authority would likely decline a request (a decision which you can appeal) if the school can not evidence that they have been putting in place appropriate provision or interventions but progress is still not being made. You would know if they were putting in place interventions, which can take a variety of forms, not necessarily involving working with a TA, as DD would be on the SEND register and have an individual learning plan (which may be called something different from that), which is reviewed termly or half-termly with you.

Bear in mind she is probably working harder than her peers and not seeing the reward for her effort, so get her involved in activities out of school where she will make tangible progress and success for her efforts.

Do you read to her at night? When did you stop doing that? She is a reluctant reader so you should be reading to her every night, pick engaging books which are maybe a little more advanced than the fairy/unicorn books she is currently reading; there are endless choices of fantasy books for that age group bur you need to be reading to her.