Any good eng Lang gcse revision tips for a dyslexic child who’s doing v badly?

[reup]

His school won’t put him in the compulsory intervention group becauses he evidently not underperforming enough despite getting a 2 in his first set of mocks and being predicted a 4 based on ks2 SATs.

I presume they are giving help to the ones who are predicted a 5 or higher.

I had thought of getting a tutor but most are booked by now and I would want one who knew about the AQA exam and dyslexia too which would be difficult. I have a friend who’s has been head of English in several secondaries who cheerfully admits he doesn’t know anything about dyslexia.

Any way so I’m helping him with old papers etc and I’ve bought a model answer book.

Any good website/ books etc which might help?

Thanks

you could try an online tutor? this one here has had a lot of experience with GCSE english and has worked with dyslexic pupils before. all the best x

Thanks - that’s a good idea!

I guess it depends what is going wrong.

DD1 (dyspraxia) needed massive last minute intervention for her English Language paper (under the old system where there were CAs too).
She just hadn't grasped how to answer the questions - what to look for in the texts, and how to formulate responses.

We threw everything bar the kitchen sink at it from Feb-June and just scraped enough marks to pass. Revision sessions at school, home working with me etc etc.

Mainly we did 'questions by numbers'.

So Q1 was (then) about information. So highlight all the facts in the text. Then describe the facts, quoting along the way.

Q2, thoughts and feelings. Look at descriptive / emotive language. Highlight it (different colour to Q1). In the margin write down what emotion this shows. To help, think what would be different if a different word had been used. e.g. waves crashing loudly v waves breaking gently -> the first is scary, the second peaceful. Then write it up showing how you know the emotions with quotes and how they change throughout the piece.

Lots of practice. At both identifying from the text, and only when can identify, practicing the writing up.

Now DD2 is likely to have different issues, as she's quite good at grasping stuff from the text, but her SPaG is very weak. So I can see the focus for her will be on checking quality of written work. e.g.

1. Check capitals and full stops.
2. Check no more than 2 lines in a sentence without additional punctuation.
3. Look at each word individually and check it is spelled correctly, or at least you've got letters in there for each syllable.
4. Check the sense - have you said what you are talking about, or just assumed the reader will know.

Have a search for Mr Bruff.

Thanks, that was v helpful. I think he has both of your children’s issues!