Anyone with experience with dyslexia care to cast their eye over my current situation?

[LargeLatte]

I usually post here about ds 2, but ds1 (7y) has his fair share of problems too.

He has fallen very far behind with maths and so I have been working with the school to get to the bottom of the problem.

Last night we were doing a basic worksheet with just lists of addition and subtraction questions. I thought he would freak at the sight of it, but we had LEGO bricks and Numicon out on the table to help and he was confident at doing the maths work with those props.

But here is where I learnt something and would really appreciate other people's opinions because I don't know what to make of it.

1. He repeatedly got the + and - signs muddled up.

2. Once he had worked out an answer and said it out loud plenty of times he would then forget what he had said before he could write it down and needed to ask me what answer he had said.

3. When he needed to write the answer down in the box next to the question he sometimes struggled to locate the question on the page to fill in the answer.

I mentioned this to the teacher who is helping us (not his CT) and he mentioned dyslexia.

The poor lad - if he struggled this much at home, in complete silence sat at the table with me next to him for support, no wonder he doesn't do any of the maths work in school with 27 other noisy children around him and no help.

I work as a T.A. supporting children with difficulties in maths.

problem 1 - mixing up the plus and minus signs - is quite common at this age. I'd guess that of the kids I work with, about half do this to some extent and some do it a lot. I have kids in Y6 that still do this. Heck, I've been known to do it myself if not really looking.

In my experience this does improve with practice - so for example write out a sheet of mixed plus and minus sums and warn your child to "watch out for the bear traps", get him to take it slowly. Make the sums VERY easy so that she/he is mindful of which calculation to do rather than how to do it iyswim. I do this every two/three weeks with my groups.

Problem 2 there may be a couple of things behind this. Firstly he may lose his place on the page. Secondly he may 'lose' the answer while looking for where to write it.

If the sums are difficult for him you could be overloading him; he needs to read the sum, use the props, go back to the page, write the answer. So if all this is too hard you need to reduce the complexity of it until he can do what you are asking him to, and then up the complexity slowly.

So try first asking him one simple sum that you think he can do, written down on a piece of paper. If he can do that, graduate to two, maybe mixed plus and minus. If you are upping the difficulty with the maths (bigger numbers, whatever), don't ask him to write it down at first, you do it for him. Equally, if you are working on writing answers down in the right place, make the maths bit easy.

Simply oral maths is also a good route to go down - you do not NEED to write stuff down. Depending on his level, sum swamp, loose change, junior monopoly etc are good games for helping with maths skills that do not need writing (obvs he needs to write eventually, but you might want to pick your battles...)

Can you google Dyscaculia - its is linked to Dyslexia and may help. www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/about-dyslexia/schools-colleges-and-universities/dyscalculia.html

not sure if that's worked!!

Roley, thanks for such a detailed reply. That makes a lot of sense. The sums were very basic, like 3+1 etc - nothing that added up to more than 10. He didn't get stressed out because if he forgot the answer I just told him what he had said, I didn't expect him to work it out again, and I pointed to where it needed to be written if he was stuck on that too.

Its reassuring to know it could just be that he needs more practice. He quite enjoys maths at home with me - its just at school that it has been causing him problems.

nev- I will check that link now.

DS (11) is dyslexic and dyscalculic and has low working memory and he has had and still has problems with mathematical symbols and retaining information in much the way you describe. How is he with times tables? How about literacy? I've had years of 'all children do this'. Try going to one of the maths website like 'ixl' which will have maths problems on all the curriculum areas for his current year or the stage at which he is working then you will have a more 'objective' measure of any problems. You could always get a private EP assessment - we had to after 2 LEA EPs had failed to diagnose/carried out different assessments by which time DS was starting Yr 6.

Thanks KeepOn - we are already on the ixl programme, and although ds1 is near the end of Year 2 at school, when I started with the ixl programme a few weeks ago I had to begin with the Reception stage work.

He knows only his 2 times table.

He can read fluently, and can communicate by writing - it might not be spellt correctly but we can understand what he is writing about.

Confused as to why the teacher would mention dyslexia if his reading/writing is OK - but having said that DS was Level 2a and 2b in writing and reading at the end of year 2.

tbh I wish we had not waited for the school/LEA ed psych and got a private assessment earlier. LEA ed psych said we would not get any more support even if DS did have a dx but this has not proved to be true. Would also have helped with self-esteem to have had an earlier dx.

Sorry to jump in. My dd (11) has been diagnosed with dyslexia.

What help and support does your child get keepon ?

littlelegs DS is entitled to Wave 3 interventions - like Accelerwrite/read, uses a voice recorder to organise thoughts without writing and is learning to touch type, use of spidergrams etc with TA support etc. Seems to have been a vast incrase in 1:1. All in the last term post diagnosis. Is also supposed to be entitled to visiting specialist SPLd teacher but not materialised as yet.

Wow. That's a decent amount of help. I really hope something, even small materialises for dd. she could do so much better and get better levels if she had support. She has the ability but this is holding her back.

Hi Keepon - the teacher helping us is actually the KS leader as CT off sick for foreseeable future, so he is not totally up on ds's strengths and problems. It was just a casual chat, and he wasn't ringing any alarm bells, just mentioned it because ds1 actually seemed comfortable with the numbers, addition and subtraction, but it was the process of the task he found difficult.

What Roley said made a lot of sense though - maybe he is so taxed by completing the question his brain is too frazzled for remembering the answer or identifying where to write it down.

If temp CT is helpful it might be possible to draw up an IEP for him with SMART targets so that it is clear what difficulties he has and how these are going to be met. Might be an idea to do this before he goes into class 3. We found that the academic years pass very quickly - the first term is always about 'settling in' each year. You don't want progress to be 'subjective' but objective and measurable. Keep it objective rather than a debate where valid concerns can be dismissed - of course all kids make the same mistakes sometimes but you need to find out if it is 'sometimes' or 'frequently' and you will only get this by collecting evidence over a period of time. Analysis of the evidence will tell you what, if anything, to do next. Periods of watching and waiting should always be used to collect information.

DS was seen in a vision training clinic when he was 7 - they don't diagnose SpLD but many of the differences/deficits are found in DS with SpLDs. They provided exercises to help with short-term memory or auditory processing difficulties. Sometimes DS compensate visually - one test was to follow clapping (or metronome) with eyes open and then do the same thing with eyes closed.

The interventions that roley speaks of are in school for children identified as having difficulties with maths. By all means help him at home but this should be as well as rather than instead of support at school. Assuming the worse the school needs to have a written record of progress and interventions to escalate support if necessary.

littlelegs part of LEA policy of rarely issuing statements is an expectation that schools provide a lot within their own SEN budget - which of course they don't. It does mean that the LEA has a much less close relationship with schools - parents are applying for statements and going to tribunal because the schools are failing to provide what the LEA expects them to.

How do you know the LEA policy on statements? I've recently been trying to look and can't find the information anywhere.

I believe there is more than Language difficulties and dyslexia in my dd.

littlelegs get hold of your LEA SEN policy - good old Google should do it - if can't find Parents in Partnership will usually email a copy. Policies will state the criteria for assessment and expectations of schools in terms of pre-statement provisions. Needs to be your local LEA as slightly different.

Thanks keepon I'll google now!