Dd (10) used the Nessy website dyslexia quest for the first time. Her scores were on the low side but average with her best score rapid recall of colours (57) but a very low score for phonological awareness (4)! It suggested her dyslexia risk is high based on this one very low result but that her other scores were now low enough for referral? How accurate is the screening tool? Also how do these low average scores link with IQ? In year 1 I was led to believe they were separate tests? The phonological awareness result did not surprise me, the working memory one and rapid recall did.
Her school work reflects difficulties in this area and perhaps others. Her sentences are muddled and convoluted versus an oral discussion of her ideas. She can't seem to tell or even hear when reading her own writing aloud where full stops etc should go. She struggles with the poetry component of the English syllabus, can't hear syllables, can't rhyme at all. She also can't spell very well (years behind despite lots of input). She sight reads (very well, and possibly has the ability to break words into visual chunks) and spells (badly) from memory. She also can't hear notes in music accurately or remember songs or nursery rhymes.
She has had phonics intervention since year 1 when again her dyslexia risk was flagged as high, showing a big discrepency between her cognition and visual and working memory and phonological awareness. The school would not fund testing then and we couldn't afford it at that time. Interestingly it seems some of these results have improved?
She reads advanced books now without difficulty although she clearky understands meanings of some words in context but can't pronounce them correctly at times, and shows good comprehension and is more than a year ahead in this respect.
She also struggles to keep her work organised and often misinterprets or forgets parts of long multi part questions she has read/heard, but the screening results do not support this.
Is it worth paying for testing with an ed psych? I doubt this will qualify for a dyslexia diagnosis? I have suspicion it may just say she has some difficulties but not enough to get any extra time or help so...oh well. In which case we would have to just continue to support her as best we can. I just wonder because she has been to two schools, neither have prioritised her for testing but she has struggled despite her year 1 test results showing a big difference between general reasoning and some of these other scores? I'm not really sure what to do with this screening result really.