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?

The fact that you teach in Australia explains a lot about your lack of knowledge of UK teaching methods.

I'm not sure then that it is appropriate for you to advise parents on current teaching methods without mentioning this - it's definitely an important factor and colours the advice that you give, since practices are clearly very different.

...I'm not advising I'm offering opinions, along with all the other opinionated folk on mumsnet.

Malaleuca, if I may come back to something you said earlier, you say 'guessing is a poisonous strategy'. I don't know if you're responding to me talking about working out what a word is from context? (which I wouldn't call 'guessing', really). If so, why is it bad? The teachers of adult illiterates I know find this is a really helpful, practical tool - if you know roughly what a word should be, it gives you confidence while you sound it out.

Multiple strategies for reading are used by all fluent adult readers, so why are they bad for children? Indeed as I understand it, the current 'best model' of how literacy works on the cognitive level, posits that the brain uses a dual-access system, relying both on phonetic and on sight-vocabulary tools.

Hi - just wondered if the OP is able to make any other choices if the current Primary are intransigent on their methods? Don't know your area but there may be other local schools far better at understanding and supporting dyslexic students than the one you are in. I know it's a big wrench to move a child - but, if it is poss may be a lot better to do now than before DD self esteem is totally shattered.I teach in a CRESTED secondary school and alot of our dyslexic students have had such negative experiences in primary it's heart breaking, and takes a lot to climb over. Lots of parents think if only we'd moved them out of the negative environment sooner. We have a v mixed ability cohort and all our teachers are trained to really understand how dyslexic's brains are wired - and the frustration of often being v. bright but unable to demonstrate it in writing. Our value added score is amazing - and it's fab to see the boost succeeding gives those children.
So, there are good schools out there - if you are able to move DD to one. Hope things work out for you.

Why is guessing bad?

It depends what you are guessing at. If you are guessing at the meaning of a word, that's one thing. If you are guessing what the word says, that is something else.

In the first case, meaning can be checked if you ask someone or look in a dictionary. In the second case you may not know if you have guessed or not so cannot check. When children read aloud and make a guess (as opposed to sounding out incorrectly)the listening adult knows it's a guess because it's incorrect. However, children can still guess and say the word correctly. It is still a guess and this type of inaccurate reading may become a habit, I believe.

Words that are frequently guessed - when/then, for/from/of, what/that, was/saw, spotted/stopped and others of course. Often it doesn't matter much to the sense of the text, but there may be times when it does matter a great deal. (high stakes testing, multiple choice questions, medical prescriptions spring to mind)

The brain of a novice is different from the brain of an expert so comparing an adult with a child is not helpful. Stanislas DeHaene( author Reading in the Brain) says "Reading via the direct route, which leads straight from letter strings to their meaning, only works after many years of practice using the phonological decoding route."

Well, thanks to everyone for listening. I've had a brief chat with the teacher who is very concerned about the effect on dd2's self-confidence. We're having a more formal and in depth meeting with the teacher next week to discuss her IEP and the best way forward.
Independently of the school, I've arranged for specialist tutoring once a week for dd2 because I'm not convinced that they will ever have the time and resources to give her the one to one intervention that she needs.
I really appreciate all the advice and your concern for dd2. She's such a lovely, bright little girl and despite all she has to deal with, so full of joy and life. Which makes it all the harder to see her upset and struggling.

I don't think I agree with you about guessing. Personally, I find it almost impossible not to have a preconception about what the next word in a phrase will be, don't you? And though I still have to sound it out and check I'm right, I think it's natural to have an idea of what the word will be.

The thing is, fluent readers usually develop all the different kinds of reading needed - very careful accuracy for a prescription, skim-reading for, say, a news article, sounding-out for unfamiliar words, etc. Sure, some people will find all of these come naturally, but others won't and will need to be taught all the different strategies. I've even come across a couple of university students who basically had to be taught to skim-read!

What I'm getting at is, novice readers (ideally!) turn into adult, fluent readers. So we need to think about how that process is going to work. I don't want to compare as such, just to think about how you get from learning to fluency.

OP I am so pleased that the teacher has taken your concerns on board. Good luck for your daughter!

I never said you shouldn't offer your opinion - I said you should qualify your opinions by mentioning when advising parents about UK teaching methods that you don't actually teach in the UK.

Hence your unusual approach to Maths teaching and your (quite wrong) assertion on this thread that schools don't have the time/resources/inclination to put in an individual programme for this child.

The generally poor readers I see do frequnetly jump to conclusions about words, often inserting words like 'to' after certain verbs ('want' , 'try'). It's not something I'm aware of in my own reading, but then I rarely read aloud, and the last word I had to sound out was 'sesquipedalophobia'. and to be honest I didn't bother sounding it out but just skimmed over like I used to those Russian names in War and Peace. When I needed to spell it I then had to go and find it so I could roll it around and then spell it.

It's hard to be objective using one's own experiences of reading and spelling, and I'm not sure how useful it is. But I do know that any novice to become expert in any skill needs lots of focused practice. It's hard to measure the amount of useful practice children get in spelling or reading, because a school has no knowledge of what happens out of the classroom.

And re our unhappy 8 year old, it seems that something good is going to happen, and I am very pleased to hear that.

Yeahbut - they have to ensure her IEP is adhered to properly, and if they don't do this by putting her with the younger children then they must find another way. An IEP is just that - an individual education plan, and it has to be delivered.

Feenie - do you know anything about teaching in Australia? If you don't then you are making assumptions about it being so very different from UK.

There's nothing unusual about my Maths teaching, it's commonplace with parents and teachers of low-progress children to teach children how to do 'sums'- sometimes because schools don't!

I made no "assertion on this thread that schools don't have the time/resources/inclination to put in an individual programme for this child."

It is true to say that I pointed out some of the difficulties in accessing individual help for children who require a lot of it.

Ah, see I cross-posted with you earlier YeahBut. Sounds like things are looking up if the teacher is worried too. Good luck with it all!

You said this:

"To provide regular individual help is a luxury that many systems cannot afford, mainly because the tax payers protest, or other parents whose children are not similarly privileged (maybe they are a different category of need) also protest."

This advice is incorrect - because the OP's child has an IEP and is on the SEN register, by law it has to be delivered.

"Sums" in the UK refer only to addition, and it's inadvisable at best to advise a Reception/Y1 parent to practise formal column addition at this stage of learning, and could actually damage her Mumeracy learning.

OP - I'm pleased to hear that you have got a way forward. Your daughter is dyslexic and does need specialist teaching - she also needs the support from an appropriately delivered iep.

I was just discussing the issue of whole school spelling with our advisor this week. She said that the SEN dept view this as 'quality first' teaching (ie, for all children, rather than specialist teaching). Dyslexic children require spelling tuition over and above this, which should be multisensory teaching following a cumulative scheme, with plenty of opportunities for overlearning - and with strategies to maintain self-esteem (as has been pointed out above by others).

Best wishes, brambles, M.Ed.(SEN), AMBDA

Numeracy!

great news for your DD, YeahBut

'As a Literacy co-ordinator, I would also strongly suggest that this kind of delivery is very poor. It may undoubtedly be very efficient, but totally fails to take into account this child's self esteem, which is also a hugely important factor in teaching. She is obviously bright, and the implications of shoving her in with 'little kids' are devestating to her. We would never do this in our school - I agree with LittleeEd Dragon, it's just cruel to put a KS2 child in with KS1'.

Couldnt agree more!

"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."

It makes no difference if Maisie believes in dyslexia, whatever it is; you teach all children who can't read in exactly the same way.