Rubbish SpLD assesment

[IndigoBell]

Received SpLD report today (Specialist Dyslexia intervention Team)

According to school she is making good progress and can read well. According to reading tests SpLD team delivered she can't read at all. (Off the bottom of the scale - really can't read)

Their conlcusion?

Whilst the SAT suggests she is almost at level 2 on the national curriculum, she did not demonstrate this in reading real words, nonsense words, or real passages. Her performance is below level 1, which would be a real concern if accurate.

So the School's SAT tests say she is fine - the tests they administer say she is rubbish. And then they doubt the validity of the tests that they delivered?????

Their recommendations?

Continue with Read, Write, Inc and we will reassess in Dec

She has been on blasted Read, Write, inc for 2 years!!!!!!

And

Have a jolly good rest over the holidays ( ie I'm an anxious parent which is causing her to not be able to read )

FFS!!!! I have spent a year fighting the school to get the blasted assesment and this is what they come up with.

Words can't describe how annoyed I am.

Don't know what to say, sorry

The reading test is much more likely to be accurate than the SATs test. They'll have said 'if' about their test on the basis that some kids get differing scores depending on nervousness etc. But I'd still go with any score other than the SATs one.

Sounds about right. School were saying my daughter was level 3 on Numeracy for SATs. EP assessment put her at 0.1 percentile for Numeracy....

Wasuup - Bloody hell. There really is no end to the lies and incompotance.

What really gets me is that they made absolutely no recommendations at all (besides a jolly good rest).

FFS what is the point of being a specialist dyslexia intervention team if you have no more ideas than the school.

Just as well I have had lots of good ideas from this board - otherwise I'd be well and truly pickled.

Have you got an EP involved?

The SpLD team is part of the EP service. I think if the SpLD team still have no ideas in Dec (and she's still not making any progress) then the EP would be brought in.

You could get a private assessment from the dyslexia institute or similiar.
It is delivered by a educational psychologist.
They use the same recognised standardised tests as local authority ed psychologists
Under the code of practice the school and borough have to consider its findings
However it is expensive

Keep fighting.

Ignore the SAT's; shes almost on level 2, so according to the school shes level 1. So they're trying to make you think she's performing better than she actually is , why would they want to do that?

Shes been assessed by SpLD team as being unable to read then, but they have no advice .

I'd send a letter asking why the test was conducted if they are going to ignore its findings and are instead rely on information which could have been provided by the school without putting the child through another test. I would also query why a test for specific reading skills is overriden by the result from a test (SATS) which are known to be regularly abused by schools to 'prove' that children are succeeding.

Why bother with specialists if they can't provide something different/additional to what hasn't worked for 2 years .

You are being fobbed off

April - I have no faith that a private assesment will give me any other advice. There are a strong bunch of synthetic phonic advocates on the primary education board, and it seems my local EP agrees with them.

Basically there argument is that Dyslexia may or may not exists - but either way the only way to teach kids to read is synthetic phonics. And that Read, Write, Inc is the best synthetic phonics program. So the reason the SpLD team / EP won't give me any advice is because, according to them, school are doing everything they should be - i.e. using Read, Write, Inc.

I'm still working through a list of things that might help her, but the most promising treatments I've found are reatined reflexes and the davies dyslexia method. Now the EP school or private are never going to recommend those because "there is no evidence to prove they work"

So, in summary, there is no way I'm wasting my money on a private dyslexia assesment. They will just recommend synthetic phonics. (Any one here who has had a dyslexia assesment that didn't recommend synthetic phonics - please tell me.)

Minx - Shes been assessed by SpLD team as being unable to read then, but they have no advice

Exactly.

Why bother with specialists if they can't provide something different/additional to what hasn't worked for 2 years

Double exactly.

It appears that by doing a lot of research on the internet, over the last 2 years, I know way more about dyslexia than the professionals themselves.

I will ring the EP who is in charge of the SpLD team and ask him to clarify the report.

But TBH I just think they are rubbish and it's going to have to me that solves her problems. They can't recommend any alternative therapies, but I can do anything I have time and money for.

The only good thing I can see coming from this is that in Dec the school will have to prove that DD has made progress since June.

But them siding with the school against their own tests is unbelievable.

There is a great school for dyslexics in Lichfield if you live anywhere near there
www.iconmethod.com/nias.htm#Icon.

they follow the work of Dr. Neville Brown, who thinks phonics is the wrong approach for dyslexics
www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6002967

and his son explains why a bit more, here
www.birminghampost.net/life-leisure-birmingham-guide/postfeatures/2009/01/21/understanding-dyslexia- 65233-22746472/

I don't know much about dyslexia, but I looked into a bit and also discovered Davis as a result of heated debates on MN with the phonics brigade

Claig - Wow, this stuff is really fascinating - and the first time I've seen it despite extensive research. I'll go and buy his book right now.

Currently at home we are doing easyRead - which seems to be a bit similair to his icon appraoch, in that it uses a picture for each sound and does not in anyway try to teach the letters for the sounds or blending.

I have spoken to the author of EasyRead and he too thinks synthetic phonics is rubbish - but they still try to market their site a bit with the magic words 'synthetic phonics'.

Anyway, like all of these schemes, we have to give it 5-6 months before we can evaluate whether it is working.

yes you are right, the fashion states that it must say 'synthetic phonics' on the tin to meet with the seal of approval. Of course this was not always the case and is quite recent. Fascinating to hear about EasyRead.

I find the whole subject fascinating from a philosophical perspective on how the mind really works. It was during debates on MN about spelling, reading and phonics that I discovered Tony Buzan, Ron Davis and Neville Brown, which fitted in with how I view how spelling is done and how I learnt foreign languages.

Somebody quoted a scentific study (the evidence-based stuff) which they said validated the phonics approach. But if you read the study carefully, it says
"In summary, for dyslexic readers, these brain activation patterns provide evidence of an imperfectly functioning system for segmenting words into their phonologic constituents; accordingly, this disruption is evident when dyslexic readers are asked to respond to increasing demands on phonologic analysis,"

This made me think that the emphasis on phonics may be like trying to fit square pegs in round holes, could there be a better alternate visual memory based method that is more suitable for dyslexics? That's when I did a search and found Neville Brown.

Here is what some reputable people says about Brown's approach

"Dr Lindsay Peer, a lecturer, educational psychologist and former head of education at the British Dyslexia Association, said: ?Maple Hayes is the only school in the country that does it, and it works, especially for children with problems with auditory processing, or poor memories for letters and letter combinations.

?I?ve sent children there who have been regarded as failures, and they?ve come out reading. Neville?s work is remarkable.?

Dyslexia Action say
"Dr Neville Brown?s methodology is clearly effective and Dyslexia Action acknowledges the real value of morphology and indeed we use it within our teaching to give an understanding of the way words work, which does make a difference to our dyslexic learners. However, the majority of dyslexic children learn quite happily with letters and sounds. We know that most dyslexic learners will respond to phonics, if delivered at the right pace with the right amount of repetition, rehearsal and, for example, an understanding of how to use syllable division and suffixing rules.

It is important to stress that while morphology is effective, the use of phonics with dyslexic learners should not be dismissed. In Dyslexia Action?s experience the two should not be mutually exclusive . Both ways of understanding how words work are important for good, confident literacy skills."

It seems they are aware of Brown's work, but it seems to be a well kept secret.

A link to the original thread is here
www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=primary&threadid=897391-Bright-child-getting-bored-at-reception&pagingO ff=1#18313177
and there were also some other interesting but heated threads with the phonics fans.

Claig - absolutely fascinating.

When I was talking to the easyread guy he was saying what you were saying - that the part of our brain that we use to read is the part that has evolved for pattern matching. So when you are in the forest you can work out which kind of a tree you are looking at etc.

This makes more sense to me than the synthetic phonics brigade. All leaves look different, yet we can very quickly say what tree they come from - by using pattern matching. And this does seem the same for learning to read. For instance handwriting / different fonts means that all words do actually look different - but we can still instantly match them - even if they are spelt wrong. In fact we can read even when most words are spelt very badly.

So basically there are huge holes in the synthetic phonics argments.....

But I think what gets me the most is that the evangilists on the main board claim any system that breaks the words down into small parts is a phonics system - when clearly easyRead, phono-graphix, acceleRead and many others are deliberately not trying to teach you phonics. But the SP brigade will still claim them as their own.

Claig - thank you very much. You have given me huge hope. I can now see there is another way to teach DD to read.

I won't bother the EP / SpLD team again. They are just like the teachers on MN who wind me up. Instead I will continue to work out what will help my DD.

So now I have 3 strategies to try:

• Easyread
• Retained Reflexes
• Davies Method

I think they will probably all work, but I will only do them one at a time.

(And the EP had NO new strategies to try.)

yes I think that is a brilliant analogy about the trees in the forest with different leaves and the different handwriting and fonts, they are all patterns and we assign meanings, words, spellings and pronounciation to these patterns. School will do phonics anyway, you may get better results with the other methods. Good luck.

There is UK research evidence that suggests that synthetic phonics makes dyslexic chidren worse readers. Check this: www.york.ac.uk/res/crl/downloads/TheNorthYorksReadingInterventionProjectReport.pdf
Look particularly about what is said on page 7 and the graph on page 8 which shows that 25% of the children in the study got worse when exposed to the synthetic phonics and, when assessed in year 6, were still worse readers than they had been at the start of year 6, and these were the children described as having phonological awareness issues so probably dyslexic.

I'd opt for Davis every time, but I know how it turned my child's life around, in more ways than just reading, witing and organisation. You can get a book and try it for yourself. The book is free if you get it from the library.

So much for previewing message. Dyslexic or what? I meant to say they were worse than they had been at the start of year 1.

I know someone whos dd goes to maple hayes, he made massive progress in a very short time of being there.

I am only glad about one thing that happened at Dd3's old school and that is that they were rubbish at teaching synthetic phonics and half the time the books stayed in the cupboard. Dd3 taught herself to read using whole word recognition.

I hope you can find someway to help your Dd indigo.