SENCO meeting later today, need advice re. "dyslexia" please

[sugarpiehoneybunch]

sorry for not trawling the threads, I'm hping for some words of wisdom please. DS (8.7) is on SA+, I am not sure how many hours help he has a week.

I have tired of waiting on the school to act, so i had a referral via GP for the Paediatrician. Report has 'labelled' him as having SLD with relative weakness in lang. skills (he had to have a lot of speech therapy) / SLD (dyslexia) with poor ability to use phonoligic rules.

I was very concerned about his reading, his SATS levels when he was 7.2 came out at 2C, which I understand is below average, maybe 6 months behind, i.e. aged 6.8 (is this a correct analysis??)

The school at my request did a sight read test last month which came out at age 6, I had a contact in education do a GATII test which came out at 6.2, so he is in Y4 and would appear to have regressed to below the standard he was in Y2.

I am trying to get the school to involve Learning Support, apparently I need to fill in some form (?), which has been talked about since July but still the SENCO hasn't done this with me.

The paed says in Report that with 'appropriate intervention' DS will read at the level of his peers in 2/3 years time, but what should I be doing (either via school or privately) to achieve this?

NB he was (aged 7.8) on 27th percentile for ability to understand instructions and 92nd percentile on an assessment of non-verbal reasoning skills, so that gives me hope!

Hi. I'm not an expert, but I think that you need to apply for a Statement Of Special Needs. This is the next step, after SA+, and the statement is a legal document which outlines the help which school should give your child. It will usually specify a number of hours per week that your child will receive extra support, and the statement provides the funds to pay for that support. The SENCO will help you with this.

hiya

OK sa+ weill only get him hours of upport in a rare and generous school; the level he is at is unlikely to get him a statement (like bloody gold dust) but look on ipsea for more advice on that. Only a statement will gurantee actual support.

The IEp forms you should have from the school should utline what they are doing in erms of help and support in class, with targets for the, if you don't have these request- they should be filled in at SA+ level.

Chase up the senco for the forms; some are great, some are useless and need you to chase up every detail.

You migt want to think about some nput from elsewhere- I would recomment BIBIC as they deal with dyslexia (don't be offput by the name, they started out with brain injured kids and exanded massively and now include dyslezia support). But ask your SENCO for what runs locally as itdoes vary and some palces run weekly things- my friends son goes to a weekly group and has come along hugely.

Thank you - havve just been speaking to Dyslexia Action, anyone used them? Their courses are run on school days, i.e. an authorised absence of 1.5 hours as they say the children would be too tired after school/weekends, makes sense I guess. Will let you know what SENCO has to say.

Do have a read of the following:

www.aowm73.dsl.pipex.com/dyslexics/should_I_have.htm

Hi Maverick (I've gone back to Jodee btw), thanks for that link - I don't seem to be getting anywhere with school. I;ve just ordererd Toe by Toe as I need to do something; I'm looking at tutors now, but noticed on other threads you talk about the Butterfly book and SRS - wondering whether to get Butterfly Book to help with writing and/or look for an SRS tutor??

Statements are virtually impossible to get. My son was graded E on a scale to A-F, he was over a year behind by year 3, school had barely registered it. They also buried their head in the sand and refused to do anything until he had failed two years' worth of IEPs (approaching secondary school age). So we had a private test done and voila, help appeared. However we were 'off the record' told to keep paying for private tuition as you never knew when the LEA funding might dry up or be withdrawn.

I was a full-time student so financially it was hard.

So my experience is 'know your enemy': don't expect much from the state system. DS now has private lessons twice a week and help at school (which personally I don't rate, but private tutor is brilliant). My husband is also dyslexic and has a massive issue with being defined by his dyslexia and being treated differently at school and doesn't want that for DS1, so we work towards the dyslexia being 'quietly supported'.

jodee, in my opinion the Butterfly book is much better than Toe by Toe. It is very cheap too.

Why don't you have a go with the Butterfly Book for a few weeks and see how it goes?

SRS tutoring is really the Rolls-Royce of remedial reading instruction but, being one-to-one teaching, it is obviously fairly expensive. If you have the funds, want fast results, AND can find an SRS trained tutor within travelling distance then I'd say go for it. Contact [email protected] to find your nearest tutor. I tutor in Exeter, Devon.

HTH

thanks spillage and maverick - 'know you enemy' is spot on. if I can get a reasonably price Butterfly Book I'll give that a go (Toe by Toe was £25 !)

The Butterfly Book is £6-18 from Amazon:

www.amazon.co.uk/Butterfly-Book-Reading-Writing-Course/dp/1903386616?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190732135& sr=1-1

It's the book used by the charity Real Action in their Saturday schools
www.mfce.org/id23.html

Thanks M (just looked at my spelling in my last post, shocking!) but I had just had a glass of wine ...

Interesting site I stumbled upon at dystalk.com that provides a good video intro to dyslexia and other learning difficulties. Looks like there's a talk coming up on assessments as well by Veronica Bidwell who I know has an excellent reputation.

www.dystalk.com

dyslexia action are good. Most dyslexic chn come on very quickly when they work with a specialist dyslexia teacher. You may find he needs the support right through to his GCSE's. My ds has been having lessons for over a year (via school)and although he's made progress he needs the support to continue. The experience with your school sounds very familiar to me. My ds's school have consistently refused to recognise that he had SpLD, even though an LEA ed psych assessed him as such. The SENCO said that the ed psych 'wasn't able to diagnose dyslexia as it was a medical condition and it had to be diagnosed by a medical doctor.'