Sorry this is so long.
My son is in year one and confidently reads at least a year above his age but seems to have no phonic ability at all. He guesses words from context, recognises whole words or guesses from the first letter, but can't decode. His spelling is really bad unless he learns the word and then he will still write the word as an anagram or rough approximation. He regularly reverses letters (b/d j/t).
His handwriting is also really bad, which didn't worry me too much because of his age, until I realised he had problems with his phonics.
He has had glue ear in the past and still suffers mildly. Has he missed out on developing awareness of sounds? He hit his speech milestones and his vocabulary has always been very very good for his age, but he used to miss out consonants and some people found him difficult to understand at 4/5. He still mispronounces some words or uses the wrong word.
I have started to wonder if he has dyslexia, partly because of the reversal of letters etc. Am I completely off track and he has just somehow "not got" the whole phonics thing?
How could I help him?
He is very resourceful in compensating for his glue ear, and I wondered if the same might be happening with his reading (i.e. finding his own way to do it because he doesn't understand the way it is taught).
His cousin has processing problems (dyspraxia) and dysgraphia.
School feel that there is a problem with his handwriting and that he shouldn't still be reversing letters, but have told me not to worry about dyslexia (because of his reading I think).
Any suggestions gratefully received.