Dear (named) SENCO,
I would like to raise an increasing concern I have about my son regarding his problems in Literacy.
As you know, following an assessment back in December '10, his written English was at 2a level (he scored '2' in his KS1 SATS at the end of Y2 at his previous school).
He has had a 10 week block of 1:1 tuition with (named tutor). I do not know if he has been 'officially' reassessed since then as no 'target level' was set. His class teacher told me at Parents Evening that she would be setting an essay for the children to do before the Easter holidays in order to assess DS2's progress but I am not sure if DS2 has done this yet; but I am aware that in the next piece of written work I saw, being last week's homework (on the art of persuasive letter writing), DS2 did not do well at all. He appears to have entirely missed the point of the learning objective! I am not suggesting the 1:1 tutoring was not useful but I wonder if it was targeting the correct problem.
I am beginning to wonder whether DS2 may have some sort of learning difficulty. I am concerned about his apparent lack of adequate progress in his written work, and I am wondering whether dyslexia might have some part to play. The term has been mentioned, on and off over DS2's entire school career but evidently he hasn't been 'officially' screened for this. I recognise that it can take some children longer to 'get' reading and writing, but DS2 is nearly 10, now, and his 2a reveals the ability of a more or less average 7 year old in this subject.
These are my reasons:
Whilst I am realistic about DS2's overall academic ability, I believe he is capable of achieving level 4 in his KS2 SATS. I am aware that he apparently can hold his own in Maths, Science and I gather his English comprehension is deemed to be of an acceptable standard for his age. His reading is, on face value, 'OK' but:
-He makes endless mistakes with 'little' words, e.g: is, in, it, and, the, to, of, from.
-He needs to concentrate very hard to read: by the end of a page he tends to stumble.
-He can easily lose his place in the text without a guiding finger.
-He makes guesses at longer words. The text will say 'diagonal', he will say 'diagram'.
-He endlessly guesses the tense ending of words, like will read 'leaves' when it says 'leaving'.
-He doesn't seem to 'learn' from one corrected mistake to encountering exactly the same word again a paragraph later.
In his written work, DS2:
-Spells phonetically. He proves he can spell many words when they are given as single word 'spelling tests' but once writing those same words, it's all guesswork.
-Will spell the same word with the same meaning different ways throughout a block of writing.
-Cannot punctuate as he goes along, but like with 'spelling tests', can go back and edit his work for punctuation, afterwards.
-He reversed letters until about a year ago ('b' and 'd') but still reverses letters in words so would put blub for bulb, even after having sounded it out loud to me.
-Writing tasks, as homework, cause many issues at home. DS2 really struggles to get such tasks done.
-Produces very little actual work, struggling to get ideas onto paper. He tells me his head is 'full of thoughts' but he can't get the thoughts written down.
I wonder if the effort of actually getting words onto a page is such that he completely forgets the 'rules' and even the content of what is expected of him?
As you can imagine, I am becoming rather concerned that as DS2 is heading towards the end of his primary school career, these sorts of problems with his English are beginning to frustrate him. He has begun to realise he is struggling rather more than most of his peers.
I have not spoken directly to his teacher. I am grateful for the time she has been able to give DS2 and for raising her concerns regarding his low attainment in his pre-Xmas test, but I am feeling that now is the time to look in greater depth into whether DS2 is in fact, dyslexic thus will require different interventions to assist him.
I would be grateful if you would please consider the issues I have raised then I can make an appointment to meet with you early in the new term, if possible.
Regards etc
What do you think?