IEP, Dyslexia SEN !

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Hi,
since my son began nursery I have been aware of certain difficulties in language and literacy!
Although and early talker, which a large vocabulary, he has always struggled to recognise letters, and match letters with sounds. Since this time I have been asking about the possibility of him having dyslexia (my brother does!) but have been told its too early.
My son now 6 years old, has an IEP but still no one is accessing him for dyslexia or has any intention of doing so.
My son is very far behind his peers. In fact his sister 12 months younger has passed him on key words.
He is aware of it, he tries so hard, and gets very upset when he cant do it..I just dont know how to help him.
The school seem uninterested what can I do at home to help?

Can't offer any help I'm afraid, but I'm watching hoping somebody can.
My dd(6) is in exactly the same position.

I can't believe schools are able to ignore children like this!

Is he in year 1 now?

No she's in yr2. I suspected a problem in reception, but it was glossed over. In yr1 she was given an IEP for concentration issues and she started to fall behind. Now half a term into yr2, she's at least a year behind her peers. Still no action.

I'm so worried about her.
I've a feeling the school think I'm fussing because her older sister (11) is a very high achiever. I know the reception teacher thought I was comparing them.

I think it's not exactly that they're glossing over dyslexia. I think it's more likely that they do assume they do have dyslexia. It's just that there is no special way to teach dyslexic children.

At the moment all professionals seem to agree that the best and only way to teach all children is with synthetic phonics.

So if your school is using synthetic phonics than they probably don't have any other ideas for what to do for your child.

(Well this has been my personal experience with regards to my very badly dyslexic child and 2 schools).

If your child is young and you haven't already done synthetic phonics to death I can recommend dancing bears

Conventional wisdom is that they need to be assessed by an Ed Psych or the SpLD team. And you should be pressurizing school to do this (especially the SpLD team which is free to the school) - but don't hold out much hope of the reports actually being worht the paper they're written on.....

A specialist dyslexia teacher can help. Y2 is a good time to start with specialist tuition. How many past IEP's do you have? Can you prove that she's not making progress under current provision to help push the SENCO into bringing someone in?

I disagree about the reports Indigobell! They can be extremely detailed and helpful-I write some of them!! Admittedly, many teachers need advice on how to implement the strategies, but a good SpLD specialist should be able to do this too.
There are many things that can be done to remediate dyslexia, synthetic phonics is one of them, but not the only thing.You could contact the BDA for advice/help or pressurise the SENCO to do so. Few mainstream teachers have an in depth knowledge of SpLD, but they are very experienced in teaching reading/literacy skills so with the right advice are able to make a difference.

Noche - unfortuantaley that has not been my experience. Glad I can talk on here to someone who knows more.

DDs SpLD report only made one recommendation - to continue with Read, Write, Inc (which she has been on for the last 2 years).

Seeing as this was the LEA SpLD team I was very very disappointed.

What other things besides synthetic phonics do you recommend?

When I rang the BDA I was very disappointed. All they seemed to be trying to do was 'manage my expectations' about what my DD would be able to achieve.

Read, write inc is appropriate for dyslexic learners as it is not just a phonics scheme, but focusses on reading and writing in a structured, multi-sensory, cumulative way. However,if your DD has been following the same intervention for 2 years and made no significant improvement then this is even more proof that there is a significant difficulty and the school is obliged to address this. I will send you a link to the recent Rose report which is about what schools are doing/should be doing which may help your case when you go into talk to someone. In my school I work 1-1 with SpLD students and with individual teachers who require help in adapting their work for those kids (and others). This is not always possible I know but it is not acceptable for the school to do nothing in my view! I will post the link later-it's quite a big document so you will have to trawl through it a bit. Your dd's school should have it too and the SENCO should be aware of its contents too!!!

Here is the link to the Rose review;

www.dcsf.gov.uk/jimroseanddyslexia/

Also worth looking at the IDP (Inclusion development programme) on Dyslexia and SLCN which teachers should have had training on. It is very hard to navigate around though but again the SENCO SHOULD be familiar with it, she says optimistically!

Thank you so much for all your help.

It will be good to arm myself with some relevent info before I meet with the SENCO.
It's sometimes hard to know where to start so all this is really useful.
Thank you so much