Dyslexic dd v. upset at school

[YeahBut]

Hi, I've also posted on the SEN board but wondered if I might also get some advice here.
Dd2 is 8 and in Yr 3. We've recently moved and she is at a new primary which has a "whole school" approach to spelling. This means that all the children in the school have their spelling ability assessed and are then placed in spelling groups based on ability rather than age or yr group. Obviously, as a child with dyslexia, dd2's spelling is pretty atrocious. She's completely despondent because she's been put into a group with kids in Yr 1. I've just been into her room to check on her and found her sobbing her heart out because she's "so stupid at spelling she's with the little kids" and "worse than everbody else in her class." I've tried to explain that dyslexia means she learns differently to other people, but that is is a really bright child. I also tried to explain that spelling and reading are going to take a bit longer to click for her.
Any advice would be appreciated. Is it even worth saying anything to the teacher?

definitely say something to the teacher, tell her how your DD feels and ask if it can be changed. That is utterly humiliating, I feel so sorry for your DD. I hope the school understands but somehow I doubt it will.

This is bloody cruel. I have 3 dyslexic sons and they struggled and felt humiliated at times. This sounds awful. You must go into school and make them understand what they are doing to DD.

Also try to find something to build DD self esteam (sp?) My sons excelled at sport but it could be music, dance anything like that.

It sounds like the school might have a rather well-organised programme if children are taught systematically in ability levels. I'd be surprised if the school was unaware that this type of thing is common amongst children, a type of bullying I guess. (I saw it in my own class last week, one boy sneering at a younger child about her 'big, ugly writing and at another boy over his type of reading book)
It's a fact of everyday social relationships with children, which all adults need to repond to assertively.
As for the child's spelling. the sensible thing would be try to promote her through the levels by teaching her what she does not know. Children who are 'behind' won't 'catch up' without extra time and effort being put in.

I would go to the school and point out the effect of their actions on your daughter. Ask that as she has dyslexia (I assume it has been diagnosed properly) what are they going to do to help her. Ask about them setting up an IEP for her, and the other ways they are going to help her with spelling.
Also ask if the hae any special strategies to help her learn spelling? Do re-enforce the fact that "Look, read, cover" is not the best method to teach dyslexic children spelling.

Good luck!

Malaleuca, do you know what dyslexia is? It doesn't sound as though you do, from your post - it's not that the OP's DD doesn't know stuff, she has dyslexia - it affects her ability to see the letters in the right place. I'm sorry if I'm telling you stuff you know, but your post actually made me go at your apparent lack of understanding of the issue.

OP - so for your DD - am quite surprised that she is the only one who is in this situation but it must be very embarrassing for her to be put "back" 2 years for something she has no real control over. Not convinced that the school has the right answer or attitude to her issues there.

mum to a dyslexic DD here.
Yeahbut, I think this is an awful way to orgnanise spelling groups. It was bad enough for us when DD was bringing home far easier spellings then her little brother and sister, but that was at home, not highlighted within the school! If it was me, I would go into the school and say something, but then I always find it difficult to keep quiet.

Malaleuca, I found your post a bit , too. No matter how much time we spent with DD3, there was no way she would have been able to "catch up" with her peers. Any promoting through the levels has been done at her pace and as the years have gone by she is, in effect, more and more behind. You say "in my own class" Are you a teacher/LA??

"I'd be surprised if the school was unaware that this type of thing is common amongst children, a type of bullying I guess. (I saw it in my own class last week, one boy sneering at a younger child about her 'big, ugly writing and at another boy over his type of reading book)"

the humiliation exists for the child even if there is no teasing or bullying by other children. If the school cannot understand that, which is apparent by its ridiculous policy, then these adults are not fit to run a school. How on earth are our schools allowed to get away with policies like this?
Is there no one with an ounce of common sense? This is cruelty pure and simple, and the child is suffering and crying at home, and these righteous adults hold meetings at school and pat themselves on the back, pleased as punch over their pathetic policies.

You do get very unsympathetic teachers unfortunately. They put reading difficulties down to DC being lazy, summer born, no help at home etc.
I have 3 dyslexic sons. All had the misfortune to have a very dismissive teacher in year 3, probably the most important year for spotting this kind of difficulty.

OPs DD will find things extra hard because chances are she is the only girl in the class expiriencing problems. Boy dyslexics out number girls 3 to 1.

OP - I am appalled on behalf of your daughter. Dyslexic children need their confidence boosting not destroying.

My DD's class has 4 dyslexic children (including DD) out of 30 kids. Her teacher regular does a stupid spelling challenge where as soon as you get a spelling wrong you are "out". Guess which children are always out in the first round? Yep, you got it...

Cue DD coming home in tears for the humiliation and lack of potential to get a sticker/prize. I have told the teacher how soul-destroying it is but the school know best apparently. Which is why she is leaving as this is just the tip of the iceberg - when she is "behind" on her work, they make her stay in at lunchtime to finish it. Obviously a really great strategy for a dyslexic child who is beginning to be teased for being different and left behind by her high-flying friends!

I don't think schools do know best. It is daily humiliation for these poor kids. It does lead to them being bullied too......Infact it's child abuse.

agree with cremeeggs and notagrannyyet. It is as if some of these people have been taken over like in the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". Their critical faculties, empathy and humanity have been sucked out of them and they are convinced that they know best and are doing the right thing, blind to the humiliation that they are inflicting.

A child in Y3 who is well behind the bulk of her agemates does need a fair amount of time daily devoted to reading and writing - in a mass system iis it likely the school can provide the individual tuition required on a on a regular basis?

Organising children in homogeneous groups does mean that instruction can be carefully targeted, and usually there is movement from group to group.

Dyslexic children can and do learn with systematic instruction, as do any other children with reading difficulties. G3 seems a bit early to be writing her off! Low expectations can be self-fulfilling.

Give teachers some credit for spotting when children are upset or are being bullied. They deal with this day in day out.

Um ... the OP didn't actually talk about her daughter's reading and writing. She talked about spelling. And who said anything about writing her off?

I don't honestly see why a dyslexic child in an age of computers and spell checkers needs to learn to spell perfectly. Of course it's nice to be good at something, but why not promote coping strategies to get around the problem? Why not reassure her she is trying her best and spelling is not the be and and end all, instead of talking about 'writing her off'?

At the risk of being flamed I would say that Malalueca has wrtten the only sensible posts on this thread.

I would suggest that you speak calmly to your dd's teacher and find out exactly what programme the school is teaching, how many other children are in groups 'lower' than their year group and start thinking about the possible educational benefit to your child of this grouping. Also consider that your dd may well be over dramatising the situation. If none of this 'fits' then start a dialogue with the school about your dd's self esteem.

Dyslexia is not an incurable life threatening disease, it is a symptom of either an underlying difficulty or poor initial teaching. Judging from what I have read on these forums over the past few months about how people's children are being taught to read I would say that it is a very high probability that your dd suffers from the latter..

maizieD Here is your flame. As the parent of dyslexic children who have been taught very well (synthetic phonics from the start). I find your post ignorant.
ADmittedly my children could decode phonetically in year 2, which the OPs original daughter can't. This is obviously what the school need to work on, but without humiliating and upsetting the child.

I don't understand how the posts on this thread gave you the idea that anyone thought dyslexia was an incurable life threatening disease, Maizie?

It actually sounds as if it is Malaleuca who thinks the situation is the more serious: she's the one who assumes the child has reading and writing problems not mentioned in the OP, and the one who assumes a child needs hefty amounts of remedial teaching in order to learn to spell. What would be wrong with asking the school to be more laid back? And avoid the humiliation that mummytime is describing?

It is the ignorance of people like you maizieD and Malalueca that have made my DDs educational life so difficult. Just because DD is dyslexic does not mean she thinks she has a life threatening disease, it means she has to struggle more at school and work twice as hard as other pupils, for anything she achieves.

The most has been achieved with teachers who understand dyslexia and understand how hard DD has to work at any sort of reading/writing/spelling. And these teachers have always been very encouraging about all the positive aspects of DD, of which there are many, to help her feel good about herself.

She has also had a teacher call her "the thick one" in front of the class because she could not read her part in a play, which destroyed her no-end and will live in her memory forever.

I presume neither of you have DCs that have dyslexia??????

OP, do you know which whole-school system your DD's school is using? It may be something along the lines of the Ruth Miskin literacy (Read Write Inc) scheme which groups children according to their current phonic level and teaches them in small groups based upon that rather than on age.

If it is RML then children will be assessed regularly and should move up through the groups pretty rapidly. It's something that definitely needs raising with the class teacher though - does s/he realise that your DD is dyslexic? Chances are that children were all spoken to when the system was introduced and care will have been taken to explain that it's not about 'easy groups for thick children' but about helping everyone to make progress rapidly.

Meet with the teacher, explain how upset your DD is feeling and ask if s/he could explain to you how the system works and seek some reassurance that your DD will be moved to a group with more children of her age as soon as possible (schools that run these whole-school schemes will often have more than one group per level so hopefully they'll look out for a new group to slot her in to which has more KS2 children).

As a teacher I get my entire class to use rainbow writing as a way to help them learn spellings... apparently it's particularly effective for children with dyslexia as it trains the brain to recognise a pattern (rather than individual letters which can become 'uncoupled' as they are retrieved from the memory) in much the same way as a musician will practise scales.

She will need 4 or 5 different coloured pencils. Using joined up writing (this is crucial for pattern recognition) write the first word in red (or whichever colour she fancies) saying aloud each letter as she goes i.e. b-e-c-a-u-s-e then say "because" as she comes to the end. Take the next colour and write over the top, repeating each letter and the word as before. Repeat with all 4/5 colours until the word appears to have been written with one of those rainbow pencils (where the lead consists of 5 or 6 colours).

It looks pretty, can be quite therapeutic and is something that can be done alone! I use it for the whole class because I think it's beneficial for everyone to have a more physical way of rehearsing spellings and it allows children to focus purely on the word instead of having to think up sentences which require punctuation etc.

Do speak to her teacher though, I'm sure s/he wouldn't want to think that someone in the class was feeling so low about school.

"It actually sounds as if it is Malaleuca who thinks the situation is the more serious: she's the one who assumes the child has reading and writing problems not mentioned in the OP,"

As the only universally agreed definition of 'dyslexia' (the one used by research psychologists and nueroscientists) boils down to "a difficulty in acquiring reading and writing skills" then I think that, as the OP said her child is dyslexic, Malalueca is perfectly justified in her assumption.

@PositiveAttitude
It may surprise you to know that my working days are spent teaching secondary age children to read. I know a great deal about the topic of 'dyslexia' and also a fair amount about how to tailor my teaching to the needs of the very few individuals who have difficulties over and above those caused by poor initial instruction.

I know just what it is like for children to struggle with reading and writing; the appalling effect it has on their self image, the narrowing of their aspirations because they truly believe they are 'thick' (which they most certainly are not) and the contraction of their entire intellectual and cultural experience because they cannot access books, magazines, newspapers, the internet etc.

I really wish that parents understood more about the real reasons for most of their children's difficulties with reading and writing and turned their anger against the schools that created the problem; not against the people who suggest that 'dyslexia' is perhaps not a 'condition' at all...

The head of English at a high school DS1 attended briefly (Y8) told him in front of the rest of his class that dyslexia was no excuse for poor spelling, then argued with me when I complained that I clearly hadn't spent enough time with him doing look/cover/write/check. I removed him from the school two weeks later - the level of ignorance around dyslexia is quite depressing sometimes.

Trouble is, if they group your DD on spelling ability she will possibly still be with the Y1s when she's in Y6. You do need to speak to the teacher to work out a better arrangement for her. Ultimately modern technology means that poor spelling is no longer the end of the world for dyslexic kids but the damage that is done to their self-confidence can be hard to repair.

Self esteem is key for dyslexic kids to make progress IMO. Your poor dd will find that most of her year 1 companions make better progress than she does. I think this arrangement is appalling and humiliating for your dd and you need to take this up
with the school. My dd is in y5 and I have been paying for a private lesson each week for 2 years. Her spelling will never be brilliant but she can now spell phonetically so other people can understand what she has written and is makng real progress in mastering trickier spellings. In y3 she couldn't read back what she had wriiten because her spelling was so poor.

I suggest you tackle the school and their senco and ask what their dyslexia strategy/ approach is. If you can stretch to private lessons I would recommend.

I feel furious for your poor dd

'"It actually sounds as if it is Malaleuca who thinks the situation is the more serious: she's the one who assumes the child has reading and writing problems not mentioned in the OP,"

As the only universally agreed definition of 'dyslexia' (the one used by research psychologists and nueroscientists) boils down to "a difficulty in acquiring reading and writing skills" then I think that, as the OP said her child is dyslexic, Malalueca is perfectly justified in her assumption. '

Maizie, there is no universally agreed definition of 'dyslexia'! Anyone with any knowledge in the area would recognize this.

Besides that, the point is that dyslexic people learn to cope around their difficulties (and not usually by being humiliated and made to work in a way that doesn't suit them). There are millions of dyslexics who have mastered reading but not spelling, or spelling but not grammar.

I know you said you were inviting flaming, but you are coming across as ignorant and judgemental of a condition with which you are clearly not very familiar.

Ah but LRD - she says she works with children who can't read well at secondary school (and likely have "dyslexia") - but apparently she doesn't believe in it. That's far more worrying, imo.