Possible dyslexia? Struggles with reading

[Em1988x]

My dd age 9 year 4 has recently had someone from the learning support advisory team come and assess her reading. It has only been flagged the past 4 months that she is behind in her reading speed. I assumed she read just fine 🙈 After assessment they’ve said she is 1 yr 3 months behind her reading age and reads at 33 words per minute. Her standardised score came back at 83 and when I’ve checked the scores on the assessments, she’s in the average bracket, but can’t afford to slip down further. They have given her a green overlay and starting her on green paper for writing. She goes into a small reading group couple times a week and is going to be taught again how to use decoding techniques. I’ve bought her books she is interested in to encourage more reading at home and school. She doesn’t enjoy reading tbh and would get out of it if she could. School have said she scores well with spelling but is unable to apply high frequency words within her written tasks. I have seen her struggle with some bigger words but tbh thought it was normal. Is there anything else I can do with her to help her come along and not fall further behind. Does it sound like dyslexia and is it worth a screening test to rule it out?

Maybe! School might well be able to do a few dyslexia screening using yeti mountain I think it's called, by nessy. It should show if dyslexia is likely or not.

Yes it’s worth a proper assessment for specific learning difficulties and also visual stress. I think they should be at more like 90 words per minute in Y4 so worth looking into what is holding her back.

Irlens syndrome, which advises people to use overlays and coloured paper, is actually a visual stress disorder which can only be correctly diagnosed by private individual specialists or Irlens centres. It is incredibly rare. What may have happened is that a teacher specialising in SpLD has screened your DC for dyslexia and tried a few coloured overlays to see if it makes any difference.
I can recall one child I taught whose parents had paid a lot of money for a private assessment and specialist glasses with coloured lenses. I was carrying out a reading assessment on him in preparation for access arrangements for SATs. This particular day, he had not brought his special glasses to school. He was disappointed that he couldn’t do the reading test so I let him have a go without them. The following day he brought the glasses into school and repeated the test. He scored better on the test without the glasses than with them. His reading speed wasn’t slow enough to meet the threshold for extra time in the SATs either way.
I have noticed that when you ask a child which colour overlay they prefer, boys never choose pink, girls almost always do.

For reading books try the books published by Barrington Stokes. They are dyslexia/visual stress friendly and made a huge difference to my daughter’s love of reading - she loves ponies so the Meg and Merlin series were v much loved but the Gillian Cross stories were also really popular. Our independent bookshop stocks them.
See if school can recommend a good local optician who can look into visual stress (but also have an eye test in case this is affecting her) and see if school do any screeners which can’t diagnose but will give a good idea of the issues.

My daughter was suspected Dyslexic from yr 2 and diagnosed yr 5. The support she has had from school has been amazing and though she still struggles she is happy to know why and is a much more confident learner.