Please help dyslexia and GCSE language year 10 mocks

[kleeopatra]

Hi
I am desperately seeking some advice as to how to help my daughter to pass GCSE English language with dyslexia. Just got her mock results back and she got a 3 - she has been getting 3s pretty much all year, this was maybe a slightly better 3 (3S) but this is not much comfort! She has had an excellent English tutor since last September but the problem is with her processing. She has extra time and a computer reader but unfortunately the computer reader didn't work in her language paper 1 (which is her stronger one) so she couldn't use it (it is new to the school and there are teething issues). In the paper 2 it worked but was glitchy, so I have asked them to try to sort this out.

She was not diagnosed with dyslexia until year 9, and only because I noticed it and paid for an assessment. This showed her reading processing to be on the first centile. The problem with English language is that you have to process a huge amount of previously unseen text - frequently if she us 'read' something she has no idea what she has just read let alone be able to answer questions analysing it. Literature is marginally better (she got a 4) and I think she can improve this with practice as it does not require a lot of reading new stuff in the exam.
She got relatively better marks (though still not great) in the creative writing and report sections (she is articulate but can't spell!)

In her other subjects (apart from French!) she is getting 6s and 7s. She would like to do A levels, but for 6th form she needs to get at least a 5 in language or literature. And realistically needs a 5 in language for pretty much anything thereafter!

Does anyone have experience of this type of profile and how I can help her? She hates English, which does not help!

Ds1 went from 3s in English lit and language y10 to getting two 5s at gcse.
What helped was concentrating on the literature texts first and finding other sources of the text - so we had comic strip version of frankenstien. Watching films of the text and then YouTube clips of how to answer questions. This helped specifically with the literature texts but also generally with answering gcse questions. We also got him to type his revision notes so he could read it and stuck them all over his bedroom so he'd read them.

Thanks @Pleaseleavemealone0 that's helpful to know - I am aware that grades, especially English, can go up quite significantly between year 10 and 11, I'm just worried that her dyslexia may be specifically interfering with the possibility of this typical progress. It's a good idea to watch the language videos, I have found some on YouTube by someone I have often seen recommended. We have the cartoon Frankenstein and Inspector calls, but she won't read them! We have watched the films at least.

@TurtleGemSaturn thanks, that's v impressive of your dd - I will have a look. Her tutor has worked on the questions with her and how to answer them, but these are in sessions where she is being supported, I think when she gets into an exam and is on her own she panics and loses all sense of how to answer. I guess it is partly more practice, I just hope the school can get their finger out and sort out the reading software.

Head of English here

they need to get the reader sorted stat as she needs to practice with it. She also needs encouragement from you to say she can’t complete assessments without it or a person reading it to her - if that’s what she needs then it should be provided

tbf she probably hates English because it’s insanely hard for her. Lit is def easier as it’s very learnable and the essays have a clear atructure.

language - all questions have very clear requirements so she needs to know exactly what’s being asked of her in each one.
Read the questions first. follow the text and annotate it as it’s being read to her. The creative writing is worth 50% of the grade so it might be worth spending some more time on that as well making sure she can ‘tick boxes’ of using the right punctuation etc. she perhaps needs someone to walk through what to do and write the steps down. Then it really is a matter of practice tbh.

does she read much? The language paper is immensely easier if you’re a fiction reader but appreciate that’s prob a lot harder for her.

Thanks @LottieMary I have emailed them again today about the reader software - I am a bit annoyed, they contacted me to apologise that it didn't work for paper 1 (something to do with having to log in for the exam) and then I emailed to say that for paper 2 it wasn't working properly and they said they would consult IT but I've heard nothing more. It really needs to be working completely consistently and predictably. I don't think she can have a 'human' reader for English language (at least I have read this somewhere). She doesn't need the reader for anything else, she has a reading pen but it is too slow for the quantity of text in the English paper. Her English teacher knows she is supposed to use the software for assessments, but she has only really had the chance to use it a couple of times before as they got it fairly recently.

The tutor has done lots of practice with her on the language questions and on literature, not so much on the creative writing but I have tried to do that with her and we wrote out a template story that she could use/ adapt in the exam. Good idea to spend more time on this.

She doesn't read, and has never been a reader - despite lots of encouragement and being read to and having lots of books from a young age. We are a book loving family so this was always odd to me but I put it down to different personality (more extravert!) until I realised that reading is actually really difficult for her and not remotely fun. Unfortunately she won't listen to audiobooks
either, I ended up reading Frankenstein to her but it was slow going and we got about a third through (so far, need to find the motivation to keep going with this!)

I have a severely dyslexia DD in Y10 who finds reading hard and refuses to use audio books (have no idea why). She has 25% extra time, a reading pen and a laptop for all exams. Her main problem is working memory.

The laptop she has had since Y6 and made a huge difference to everything. There's a read back function that is as robotic as the reading pen, so quite handy to practice with.

Somehow she is getting really good grades for English, she does have very high VR/NVR scores, but is still doing better than I would have ever expected given her degree of difficulty.

She uses films and YouTube for a lot of things. So while she won't listen to an audio book of Macbeth, she will watch it as a film or in the theatre (btw the Globe is running a GCSE workshop on Macbeth which I've booked DD on in the hope that that may help her a bit as that's the text she finds hardest), or use YouTube clips.

Otherwise exam strategy seems to have helped a lot.

Another thing that I've found useful is telling her to turn all the questions into the kind of thing you would ask an actor or film director. So consider everything as the actors internal motivations when playing the part of x or y. This seems to click with the way DD thinks and so turning the question into something relatable for her means she can then get the right information down on the page (if that makes sense).

Thanks @OhCrumbsWhereNow , that's good your dd is doing well despite dyslexia. I think it can present in so many different ways, and I'm not convinced my dd's teachers, particularly her English teacher, really understand the issue, which in her case is processing. Her working memory actually tested ok, but phonetic awareness was also really low, and this is reflected in her spelling. Every single teacher without exception has been obsessed with trying to give her coloured paper, which I think is a bit of a red herring personally, although after a trip to the optician she now has blue paper, which possibly helps very slightly (and makes the teachers happier!)

The reading pen and extra time have been great, and really helped in science and maths, where she was struggling with wordy questions and running out of time. She has, however, decided she prefers to write rather than type as she has more ideas when physically writing - I can kind of relate to this as I think I would be same in exams, but it does mean she can't use read back.

The Macbeth workshop looks great, though we are not in or near London! She hasn't started Macbeth yet, kind of dreading this as I suspect it will be challenging. On the whole am less worried about literature though - good idea to think of questions from point of view of actor or director, might try this one!

I suspect she thinks that because she had a tutor this has exempted her from any other work or revision for English (I have told her the tutor should be on top of her working herself!) so don't think she did a huge amount extra except what was set by school and what I made her do, learning quotes and talking through themes. I've had a look at some of the videos, Mr Everything English seems to explain English language quite well so might get her to start using these kind of things too. It is just so stressful, I genuinely don't know whether ultimately she is going to get the required grade, so will be pretty much stressed until next August!

My DS is pretty much like this. Dyslexic but his reading is ok and he’s bright but his processing time is super low. He’s just sat his GCSEs so waiting for the results. He improved a lot in the nine months or so before his exams so I’m hoping he’ll do ok. We found an English tutor who did a lot of practice questions with him - timing each one and showing the marks he’d get in the time available. Just going over and over the type of questions he’d get seemed to help. He really needed about 75% extra time though! He found the descriptive essays and persuasive writing questions much easier as he didn’t have much to process.

My dyslexic DC also can’t use a laptop for similar reasons and will have a scribe for GCSE and A levels, so they will never lose points for SPAG. They also do much better transferring thought into oral words than into written words. Their assessment report said they should have oral exams- which isn’t possible for GCSEs and A level, so a scribe was the next best thing.

https://thinkstudent.co.uk/can-you-get-a-scribe-for-exams/

Thanks @Pottingup , that gives me a bit of hope! Her reading is fine - ie, she can read - but ask her to explain what she has just read and she will struggle due to the processing. The clunky reader software also does not help. I downloaded it to my laptop to use at home but unfortunately it is quite glitchy. Also tried to do timed questions on language with the tutor but this led to a meltdown as she found it so stressful (not helped by problems with the tech) but will probably need to keep trying with this .
I agree about the time - even with the extra 25% she ran out of time in both language and literature. It wasn't really an issue in the other exams and the 25% extra seemed sufficient. I know some people (I think it's quite rare) get 50% extra but not sure how you qualify for this - and she also doesn't really need it except for English.
She is definitely stronger in the creative and persuasive writing - did ok-ish on this despite not a huge amount of practice- and the literature so it is definitely processing I think combined with then panic in the exam.

Thanks @SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice - was aware about possibility of scribe but I'm not sure she needs this. But then I'm also not 100% sure if writing rather than typing is best thing, but this is what she wants to do at the moment! It is definitely more of an input than output issue - ie, understanding the text enough to write about it, though spelling is also a problem.

Your tutor can do a series of practice questions where your DD writes the answer vs others with the tutor acting as scribe, then see which method results in higher marks? And which the DD feels more comfortable with?

btw, the input issue could be decoding writing- a scribe will also read the question out loud as many times as needed. So if your DD understands what is read to her easier & better than what she reads with her eyes, a scribe helps with that too.

Invigilator here. There is a reading section on the paper (aqa at least) that can not be read by a human. A computer reader is fine as it removes all emotion. My SEN leader said the actual exams were brilliant with computer readers as all the software is aligned correctly, the problem is mocks where the teachers make the papers and the software struggles with this. Is that the issue here? I had a computer reader issue in an exam. I stopped her paper timer until it was resolved.

One of DD's friends has speech to text software for exams as he's better at doing things orally than writing/typing.

DD struggles with the reading - has to read everything about 5 times in order to get the sense which slows things down.

Coloured overlays didn't help at all. Spelling is a total disaster so everything is just phonetic.

If we had an issue with a computer reader we would stop the exam until it was resolved, even in a mock. IT would come straight over, we wouldn't let a child struggle on without it working. If it took an unreasonable amount of time to resolve in real exams then they may get special consideration (although this would only be an additional 1% from what i recall). There are always more issues with mocks - for example reading labels on photocopied pictures - but they need to make sure the software works properly in general and that IT are on call to come and sort it immediately if it's not working.

Mocks are the chance for the students to get used to using a reader so that's bad enough - but it will be completely unacceptable for your daughter to not have access to a reader that works properly in her proper exams - or a human reader if it doesn't work. A computer reader will be better for Eng lang though as a human reader isn't allowed to read one section but the computer reader can read it all.

We tend to not put spell check on for Eng lang in particular because so many marks are lost for it - 25% if I remember correctly. It is better for the student to spell incorrectly as they will probably still lose less marks.

DS for his English lang wrote a couple of very descriptive stories beforehand that he could hopefully fit into the very broad story title offered. One was about waiting for results in a hospital and one was about a mythical creature. He was then able to work one of the detailed descriptions into his exam - obviously there is some risk with this strategy but I'd say have a description of a real life even that could turn out good or bad and have a fantasy description. The title/picture inspiration is just a starting point so you can go anywhere with it really, and if you're working in a description you've written previously then you're less likely to answer in a predictable way that every other student will be. After writing the stories get dd to look back at old papers with you and think about how she could manipulate them to fit. It takes a bit of lateral thinking in the exam but worth considering perhaps.

Mr Salles on youtube has a couple of books - one on story writing and one on persuasive writing that we found really useful - DS used one of the persuasive writing examples given as a basis for his answer in the real exams.

Thanks @SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice that's an idea to maybe try. She has a reader pen which is sufficient for the questions and that has really helped in other subjects, it may be a decoding issue I guess.

@chickenpieandchips it's good to know the software works better in exams. I have downloaded it at home and it does struggle depending on the format of the paper, so that is definitely an issue. But she also needs to use it to practice so that needs to be sorted by IT ideally.

@Beth216 I think they had a half hearted effort to resolve the issue in the mock, not sure if IT actually attended. But I do feel they could have tried harder. Good idea about the stories, I already encouraged her to write one which she was able to use in the mock, but probably worth having a couple. Will look at Mr Salles books too.

Have now spoken to SEN about the reader software again and they have had my dd try it out again with the exam sign on - as there were issues with it in the mock which meant she couldn't use it. I also told them as far as I was concerned her mocks were invalid as she did not have her access arrangements (not sure how much they took this on board).

The software is Read and Write, which as far as I'm aware is the usual software that schools use for computer readers. They have realised the issue is this software doesn't work on pdfs. All the exam papers are pdfs! Apparently through trial and error they have now a way to make this work on a pdf but it worries me this was an incidental discovery (involves highlighting all the text then clicking on something), who knows if this approach will be consistent! I suggested they ask other SEN departments already using the software what they do. Apparently feedback from those already using it is that it is clunky and slow. SENCO said would also speak to the exams officer about issue of potentially slow software but not sure what this will achieve realistically.

All this is not filling me with confidence! Though they have been good about saying they will give her more time to practice regularly with the software and even do another full paper which they can mark (not another mock just to test it). I wondered if anyone else has experience of Read and Write or of students using this? - @chickenpieandchips you mentioned as an invigilator the software tends to work well in the actual exams, do you know if this is the software that is being used where you are?

The issue is with pdf, the actual exam software is set out correctly. It's when teachers chop and change papers and send them in pdfs to the exam office.
We used claro read? We had issues with mocks but I think they worked them out (first year we had computer readers).
For the actual exam the SEN leader gave them all a lesson on how to work it and she was pleasantly surprised that it all worked! The issues I had in actual exam were the exam board couldn't send the paper out in reader format (only 1 exam) and the computers would freeze (easy fix once we knew what to do).

But I would always pause time for any technical issues.

@Beth216 just reading through your comment. When is spellcheck used? It's meant to be disabled for all exams. We have 'glorified' typewriters!

You can have spellcheck enabled and lose all SPAG marks.

I had the discussion with school for my DD and they did some tests and advised not having it disabled as she was likely to pick up a few marks. I was more concerned whether an examiner would get fed up having to read scripts that were written entirely phonetically and she would lose marks due to exhaustion/exasperation.

Thanks @chickenpieandchips sounds like you had different software but maybe similar issues. I just hope the school can get to grips with it before the next mocks. They would stop timing if there were issues but this probably isn't going to help anyone's mindset in the exam with all the extra stress!

I don't think it's worth enabling spellcheck and losing all the SPAG marks - surely if you can pick up any that's better than nothing!