advice on phonics/ literacy & communications difficulties

[negligentmummy]

Hi. DD1 has verbal dyspraxia. Her pre-school is starting to teach phonics to her in January and I'm a bit worried about mixing her up with the sounds and images we have for the nuffield dyspraxia programme.

School have offered to do literacy in a different way (unspecified) if i have any concerns and it can all be put in her IEP.

Anyone got any experience/ advice?

Thanks

How old is your dd? Is she ready to start learning to read? Because from a quick squint at the Nuffield materials, it looks to me as though she's getting a very useful pre-literacy grounding already, probably better than the jolly phonics (or whatever) used by her pre-school.

By rights the senco should be liasing direct with the salt to draw up an appropriate IEP, and then ask you to rubberstamp it. Could you show the senco this www.ndp3.org/index.html and ask the SLT to contact her?

thanks for your response. DD is 4 next month and isn't reading at all. she is able to regonise her own letter (M) and her sister's (s) but that is about it.

As she is non verbal it is very hard to know what she knows and is interested in or otherwise.

She can recognise most numbers most of the time (1-10).

I have tried to encourage her to draw her letter too but her penmanship is very immature- she can do straight lines, and dots and round and round and round (not a circle). I try to encourage her to write in the steam on the shower door etc.

Her statement has only just been finalised and I am told that the SALT will take about 1/2 a term to get provision arranged for DD, so I was wondering in the mean time what to do about phonics. I am more concerned about addressing verbal communication than literacy first but you hear about reading helping brain synapses etc so don't want to do her any disservice.

I'm not certain, but round here I don't think they learn to read until year 1, with some phonics work in Reception. In Nursery they just do listening to sounds in their environment type stuff and just recognising their own name.

I haven't any concerns about ds however, so I don't really care when he learns to read. He has the interest and skills to find it very easy, so of course if your dd is going to struggle you'll want to give her some advanced practice and keep on top of it, but I was just very surprised at your expectations. When they say they are teaching phonics, do they actually mean reading, or do they just mean the listening type of exercises that my ds is doing?

am not sure- they mentioned it in passing when introducing me to her 1:1 and I just worried that it might confuse her with the nuffield stuff.

the first letter they are doing is the S which is a snake, so the same. But i worry that further down the road they might start to be very different.

(also is currently in quite competitive school- she's moving to another primary school next september with speech unit).

maria- link helpful- talks about phonics. will call foundation in jan and they might be able to give me a steer.

hmm i have ds age 5.5 currently y1 in speech unit

We did ms and they did phonics as one shoe fits all and they did try signing the letters and kept on about ds feeling them .

he learnt zilch not helped as his lsa did not know the alphabet

One term o n in speech unit and ds is now reading they use cued articulation and signing and clicker 5.Ds is learning whole words as is pretty obvious that he cant sound out or blend words as only has noun , m and B sound

Clicker 5 is very good, will allow the child to work at their pace but be involved in class work.
DS2 is in yr 3 & uses it every day, it speaks the letter or word to the user too.

'not helped as his lsa did not know the alphabet'

ROFL That made me spit my tea over my keyboard! I do hope he has a different LSA now. God knows I whinge but ds is SO lucky in many respects..........

lol i did mean in sign language but hey she had 20 signs when he started .Ds had over 200 spot the problem .Lsa with no experiance of a dc with Gdd or a severe speech problem ditto the teacher

Ds is now in a fantastic speech unit and i can not praise the unit enough .They even backing my request that ds repeats a year so instead of being year1 this will be his reception year .He is coming on so well there

infact ds annual review the forms have changed and the teachers have to fill out how they want things and how should be worded and teacher went through each bit and fantastic totally got ds .

Mind teh Lea officer there was good to she suggested a couple of ideas and made ds poor attention another heading for 2 and 3 instead of lumping it in with everything and then told the teacher and the head that they should apply for addtional funding as was obvious to her ds needs are way beyond just speech i was This is herts to

loved your post round the.. ! I know we had the same issues with the signing abilties of the TA they wanted to use with DS... We have had big battles over statement wording, ans have now got that he needs support from someone who is fluent enough to translate and develop his sign language, (starts school in Sept, we will see.....

I am interested how they will teach literacy to ds, so all your comments are interesting. Can someone tell me more about what clicker is?

Sign and say school should get support from a specialist teacher in S&l problems but don't hold your hopes up ds one had transfered from another section and yes let's give a inexoerianced specialist teacher a dc that is at the extreme end

depending in banding ds/school are entitled to certain amount of visits a year make sure they frontload them

oh and apparetley the school was well trained they had 3 hrs of makaton and would send his lsa on a course after Xmas(beginners) so WTF ds was meant to do then .

It was just in general ds got so left out with the Welles can't force the other dc to sign but no you could encourage them.I spent the first half term in the classrooom and it was heartbreaking second I turned my back signing stopped etc.

that's useful info, thanks so much, yeah we have had the b^^cks about we are fluent, you must trust us, we are the professionals etc etc, from the school with the unit that we hoped he would go to, (coupled with we won't learn the signs he uses, won't check for differences between signalong that Ed use and SSE that ds uses, and won't seek to expnad his vocab), he'll go to that school over my dead body!!!!!

Found a local ms that were really positive, "oh we would need to train a TA, so they were ahead of him, well really we will train two incase one was off, and we whould train dinner staff too, and others he will come into contact with," could have hugged them. They already have two deaf (implanted) TAs and run a signing group as an activity for the kids. (will be angling for one of those TAs for ds).

We had discussions about what level of signing qualification was needed, the LA do signalong, but that is more single words... even tho there is lots of vocab overlap, but I will be making sure that they are ahead of him, (cue scary mummy!)

The local speech and lang units wouldn't take him because of his LD. and the local SN school which has good rep re ASD is so 'PECS rules, signing does not work for ASD kids' that he would not fit there...

So glad your ds has found a school that suits him.

hmm ds had Gdd and pd and he is in speech unit.Yes he is bit of a first for them but since speech was his primary need .Speech unit it was agreed.helped by ican report backing it to .

yes same here the sn school here has very good rep but for dc with asd and despite all his problems ds loves to communicate .

Can i ask what sse is ?Ds unit uses paget gormon as is a full langugae but he also uses some makton which was what i had taught him but he was running into problems as no signs for little words .But he also picked up some Bsl .

No one knows if ds is going to devlope speech but were giving it our best shot .Think in future he is likely to use mix of signing and ACC

I am hoping that ds will be in MS to start with, and then maybe MS with unit for Juniors, he is such a mixed bag that I don't think anyone really knows what to expect, also I think the learning dis dx was skewed by the lack of lang.... but we will see.

SSE (sign supported english), proper correct BSL signs but english word order and grammar, so we can speak at the same time as signing to him, altho he doesn't have concepts of grammar,word order, so doesn't matter to him if person signs BSL.... . He is making 3, or more, sign sentences, at just 4, so am hopeful of development of lnaguage, altho has only added one spoken word that has stuck in last 2 yrs...

Sign

sounds like our dc are very similar.I do think ds lack of language and school/nursery inablity to teach a dc with severe language problems made his Ld seem far worse .No one knows what to expect of ds or how much help he will need.

Pretty much a given he will need language unit continue into juniors though by then we might have idea howmuch addtional above his languge help he will need

its not going to be a short term fix and sadly his unit in now only takes to year 2.But if La agree to him repeating a year means he does get longer there.

And yes ds
Have you talked to ican at all ?.There Ep carried out some testing non verbal thatshowed with signing being used that ds cognitavie devlopment was infact not that far behind

and yes when his s*L gace her report for the statement review she said using the preschool cleft she was infact unable to score dc at all on expressive verbal language as he has no understandable spoken language at all. .Which given that ds is now 5.5 rough to hear.But then did go on to say that ds is a communicator and will use everything he can to communicate

Thanks, I did contact them for a bit of advice, (when appalling school did ask, "will his signing have delayed his speech?" ARGGGGHHHHHH!!! .

No, his speech stopped and regressed, we are doing what the SLT recommended, (and she is thrilled about how he is doing) and we are all still tslking to him at the same time as signing!!!! (You can see I am still a tad cross with them...

Did consider going for an assessment, money is a bit of an issue, tho, also thought I would give them a chance in MS esp as we hav 6 months now to prepare the sechool, with support from his prtage teacher, who is so good I could kiss her!

Hope you get the additional year! What did yhe Ican assessment involve for your ds?

for us the ican involved 2 days at their meath school.Ds was seen and tested by Ep , s@l therapist , specialist teacher and Ot .Who carried out loads of tests and observations which showed that Ds Gdd was not as severe as had been thought.

When lea did it they did standard test .Ican carried out non verbal testing and also testing using signed support which showed he was way above what he other so called proffesionals saw

They also gave a very long list of reccomendations what ds needed and it basically spelt out speech unit.Sadly it confirmed that his language problems were very severe but did point out that they wer ehis main issues and affected his learning.

Lea did not argue with the report and lifted every reccomendation into the statement weven the patchy nhs salt was impressed with it and said would never had time to carry out that indepth

oh should add it is no accident that ds is now in a speech unit ran by a former ican teacher(left becuase of hubbys job move dthem away )

bump - all very interesting but small child thinks i am a climbing frame

Opps sorry we did hijack your post

My dc are on the do not make a mess warning as gave loads of people coming round tomorrow which of course they are ignorning

sorry from me too..

gosh- not at all, all very interesting.

DD1 starting in speech unit in September- am very optimistic about it...

Looked at Ican but so expensive and we haven't actually been that badly treated by NHs or LEA, we have the place we want at the school we want next year even though not closest appropriate etc so not sure we can justify the ££. Struggle to pay private therapists in holidays etc when between NHS blocks... ho hum

Can you tell me a bit more about clicker 5- never even heard of that!!

Current school totally out of depth with speech probs, but so enthusiastic and supportive. Had whole class signing santa got stuck up the chimney for the nativity play and organises "silent" games for 5- 10 mins each day so that DD1 can play on the exact same level as everyone else... she's so happy there that I'm almost reluctant to move her- but think that 4x speech therapy a week at new school must outweigh the niceness of the other...

megligent
yes ds school wasout of depth and have to say having speech therpaist in the class every day has been fantastic for ds and course the teacher and the lsa are very highly trained working with dc with speech problems

in his unit he is in their full time no mixing with the other children in ms side of the school.But he needs it like that.Theres 8 in the unit atm maxium is 10 and there reception ,y1,y2 .

www.cricksoft.com/uk/products/tools/clicker/home.aspx

explains way better than i can ds uses at school and am looking at getting for at home

make that i just brought it was looking over and thought £79 for that and the paint was worth the gamble know he love sit at school

Will report back once have got it and up and running reading it seems to be a lot involved ds struggles to hold a pen so witing is hard as well and he is learning to read using mix of signs and symols and flashcards which he when asked to point to the qword that peopel say he can or he points and signs the word