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

H

You sound like very supportive parents, which is excellent. Encourage more reading (not just reading aloud, but reading silently so she can focus on comprehension rather than decoding) and maybe reading in bed at bedtime together. Remember, all children progress at different rates so it may just be that she is taking a bit more time at this stage and will catch up soon. Be sure to keep her self confidence high and self esteem intact. She needs to feel that she is making good progress and catching up her peers. If she thinks she is lagging behind, her anxiety will increase and this in itself can affect progress. Get the tutor to focus on growth mindset activities to help with this.

Assuming the tutor is a qualified teacher, it may be an idea to ask what he/she thinks your daughter's key difficulties are and how best to build her rate of progress. Whilst teachers cannot diagnose a specific learning difficulty, they know what to look out for and can flag up areas of concern.

Finally, in terms of getting one to one support, it is highly unlikely with school funding being so appalling bad at present. It is only children working below NC levels or those who present a danger to themselves or others that seem to get individual LSAs these days.

Unless it's changed, reading seeds/eggs isn't phonics based and children with dyslexia need more emphasis/help with phonics.
We've found the website Books For Topics good for choosing books according to a child's interests.

She could have an auditory processing disorder which means she struggles to follow teacher talk or concentrate if there is too much background noise. This might reveal itself as poor memory or unable to follow instructions if they are complicated. They can be caused by chronic ear infections.

Hello, how would we assess that? Would she need a hearing test?

A hearing test would check if her ears were working, but a processing disorder is when the sounds are misinterpreted by the brain, so the hearing test would not pick it up. There might do a learning assessments at school that would show if she was taking longer to carry out certain instructions, so testing how her brain processed the sounds she was hearing. It is the sort of thing that gets students extra time in their exams, but it can mean a student will not perform academically as well as expected and take longer to grasp new content.

@Ouuc processing speed is another thing an ed psych assessment would look at -I believe looking at visual and auditory separately.

It's a specialist assessment, some audiologists can do the assessment and so can some speech and language therapists.

Very unlikely but could she be having absence seizures which are stopping her from following what is happening in class?

Do you have lots and lots of books for her age at home? Charity shops are great or sign her up with the local library.

If she sin't reading, what does she do outside of school? How does she spend her time? Any hobbies? How much screen time and what type, e.g. TV /gaming etc.

No, I don’t think so. She is usually very alert.

Is an educational psychologist the only person who’d be able to diagnose any sort of progressing disorder?

She spends allot of time on the iPad, colouring (she loves colouring) or playing in the garden or going to the park. She is pretty active but probably spends too much time on her iPad.

We have books but she stops reading a quarter of the way or sometimes after a few pages, saying the books are boring.

I have ordered a bunch of books from the library, and hopefully she will find something she enjoys.

Oh, that's why I did ask. Your daughter is getting her information / entertainment fix form the iPad. No more iPad as a first step, you will ruin her eyes and her brain.

Whatever she is doing on the iPad whether she is watching, scrolling or full on social media tic toc etc it is eroding your poor dc's ability to focus and learn due to the constant instant gratification: iPads provide quick rewards which can make traditional learning or reading where rewards come more slowly seem boring. Fast-paced apps and games (including tic toc) constantly trigger dopamine, which reinforces a need to keep using the device, they get addicted. and crave that quick dopamine hit so lose interest in slower, less quickly stimulating activities like reading.

Lock the iPad away, better still sell it and sign your dd up for some proper activities such as as sport, music, brownies.

If she still has a problem after no iPad for say 6 weeks you can think again.

Adding

Also take her to the library after a couple of weeks of no iPad, make it interesting and engaging, walk to your local book store and treat her to a hot chocolate and browse.

Adding further
Is she socialising? Does she go to the park with friends or are these solitary activities? Socialising is so important for children's wellbeing and socialisation. Activities like brownies are great for making friends and learning new skills, developing confidence. I highly recommend

I’ll ask again, are you reading to her every night? If not, what age did you stop doing that?

She goes to the park with her brother, and occasionally she will see her friends there. She goes to gymnastics club as well, so we are doing some activities.

But she is painfully shy at first, and it takes a while to make friends.

i agree with the iPad and I will start to wean her of it.

No I am not reading to her every night. I think I stopped when she was 4 or 5 as she just wasn’t interested in being read to.
thanks for your advice, very compelling.

Well, since you didn’t answer when asked, I couldn’t give advice. There was no point writing a paragraph about the benefits of reading to her if you already do it every night. But since you don’t, that’s a massive problem. And you stopped when she was very young. That was a mistake. Replacing reading to her with an ipad?

I won’t bother with the advice now though. If you wanted it, you’d have responded to people asking questions because they’re trying to help you instead of just being snide (and i think you ignored the question and then responded the way you did because you know you’ve made a mistake with the reading situatuon).

Read with her every night. Put your finger under the words as you say them . Then do the same but ask her to read the words helping her where necessary. I used to lie in bed with them so we could both see the book. 20 minutes will help so much.

That's great, don't wean her off though go cold turkey say it's bad for her eyes and she will struggle with eye sight (this is true, loads damage eyes). Reading is not for everyone and maybe she prefers practical activities but small screen time does not help nor does excessive game console playing all incredibly addictive and damages attention span and ability to find fulfilment in rl.

Sorry, I thought I was responding. Thank you for your posts.

We started doing this in the mornings before school. I sit with her and listen to her reading aloud.

Do you mean in terms of absorbing information and picking up things?

Can I ask who diagnosed your child visual impairment? What it an educational psychologist?

My DS was assessed as top 10% of his year but was assessed as working bottom 10%.
We paid for a “proper” dyslexia report and voila! we knew and he knew what the problem was. He had extra “lessons” in coping with and working around his dyslexia and he’s not looked back since. He uses coloured plastic sheets when he has to read long reports for his job, whether this is on paper or on the computer (obviously he changes the background colour on his screen). He says this was the best tip he was given and has used this since he was 12.

My child had a visual problem. He had difficulty tracking with his eyes. Basically his eye muscles would get tired very easily.

he was diagnosed by a behavioural opthalmologist who we went to see for a much more detailed eye test.

the nhs will pay for a fairly basic eye test that lasts twenty minutes utes or so. We got a longer assessment.

she then gave him eye exercises that he did d with day, we saw her every couple of weeks for therapy where he did more intense exercises and she changed the daily ones.

it was like physio for eyes.

https://eye-expert.co.uk/behavioural-optometry/

not cheap and not available on the nhs.