Parents Eve - Livid at School - Son's Literacy Well Below Average

stressedoutmum

I've never really looked at dyslexia for him. There is so much wonderful information in here that I'm going to try them and see which ones he gets on best with. There have been lots of times that I wasn't sure if he didn't want to do his writing or couldn't do. Someone asked earlier if I never noticed his grades before. I have noticed his grades all throughout the years and they are always average and above average apart from the handwriting which has always says not much written and need to work harder on it. I always questioned the school as I wouldn't have assessed him as above average in literacy. His elder brother done very well at school so when the school said he's fine, just a bit lazy with his writing, I thought perhaps I was being too hard on him or comparing him to his brother so I trusted their decision. It wasn't until last night that his teacher told me she didnt think that the assessment figures she had for him were correct and asked another teacher to help re-assess him and she told me that she is concerned about him and he is well below average - which is what we have been saying for 2 years. I can't understand why a newly qualified teacher (this is her first teaching post) can notice this yet school didn't. The Head said she doesn't know why I was told he was above average and she can't even try to defend what his last teacher assessed him at (he's left the school now). Poor little soul is still upset and worried. As he loves cars I've told him to think of himself as his fastest and favourite car and that he has got 3 alloy wheels (reading, spelling and oral work) and his 4th just needs a bit of extra polish and looking after to make him the coolest car there is. The school only gives 121 for 10 weeks and only once per year.

bestpud

dizziblonde wrote: »

I've had private assessments passed through to me from parents with kids who weren't going to be severe enough concern to be able to get access to ed-psychs through the school system (it's wrong, it's horrid but it's like mission impossible to get a kid seen by an ed psych through our school referral system sometimes). Often these were done by specialist dyslexia organizations, and, while I've no issues with the content of the report - they did tend to stick their own commercial products on at the end of them.

If parents had gone privately to get some form of diagnosis (and I can't blame them, I'm not trying to suggest you should have to - I think it's flipping shocking how hard it can be to get a child seen by an ed psych) - then of course I'd act on what was found in the report and support it within school as much as possible.

It's not so much a refusal to act generally - it's a "we've got 5 hours of ed psych time available to us this year - and it's going to be little Johnny who's tried to stab three classmates with a pencil, little Tommy who's currently barricaded himself into the library etc etc..." and the quiet little plodder sat in year 4/5 doesn't get a look in (which makes me flipping angry).

I've also known at least one LEA ed psych who shrugs his shoulders and refuses to give a diagnosis with a label to any child... course, a diagnosis means that mechanisms of support have to be put in place... and that costs the LEA money... cynical? moi?

This reflects what I've been told.

Basically they help those who are way behind and make provision for those way ahead but tend to leave all the others in between.

I can see how this happens but I can also understand how a parent wants their child assessed and helped before they slip too far.

Not easy for anyone involved, I guess.

bestpud

stressedoutmum wrote: »

I've never really looked at dyslexia for him. There is so much wonderful information in here that I'm going to try them and see which ones he gets on best with. There have been lots of times that I wasn't sure if he didn't want to do his writing or couldn't do. Someone asked earlier if I never noticed his grades before. I have noticed his grades all throughout the years and they are always average and above average apart from the handwriting which has always says not much written and need to work harder on it. I always questioned the school as I wouldn't have assessed him as above average in literacy. His elder brother done very well at school so when the school said he's fine, just a bit lazy with his writing, I thought perhaps I was being too hard on him or comparing him to his brother so I trusted their decision. It wasn't until last night that his teacher told me she didnt think that the assessment figures she had for him were correct and asked another teacher to help re-assess him and she told me that she is concerned about him and he is well below average - which is what we have been saying for 2 years. I can't understand why a newly qualified teacher (this is her first teaching post) can notice this yet school didn't. The Head said she doesn't know why I was told he was above average and she can't even try to defend what his last teacher assessed him at (he's left the school now). Poor little soul is still upset and worried. As he loves cars I've told him to think of himself as his fastest and favourite car and that he has got 3 alloy wheels (reading, spelling and oral work) and his 4th just needs a bit of extra polish and looking after to make him the coolest car there is. The school only gives 121 for 10 weeks and only once per year.

Sometimes fresh eyes spot things easier and I'd say that's what has happened here.

That's a great way of explaining it to him!

dizziblonde

They can only give one-to-one for 10 weeks as that's all it's funded for from Govt. It's good they're prepared to do it again for him in year 6 though - looking at it cynically, it means they believe he's got the potential to improve (and improve their league table figures) as they'd possibly be a lot more reluctant to target support and resources at a kid who had no chance (sounds horrible but I have known schools that take this atttitude, and sadly they're riding high in the league tables).

Find something he likes to write about, and really push to get solid sentences into him first; then work on stretching the sentences out a bit - so The man ran becomes The bald, hairy man ran.... then The bald, hairy man who had just left the shop ran quickly away from the angry crocodile... that type of idea (make them as ridiculous and as over the top as you can - I've had classes howling with laughter at some of the ones we've come up with). Get full stops, capital letters and exclamation marks secure first - then start to get him to add in other things... for speech I always go back to speech bubbles and identifying the actual words spoken by a person first, then get them to highlight the actual spoken words in a text, surround them with speech marks and then get onto the fiddly bits of where you put the comma and the "said" bit after that.

Another thought is that he might be reluctant to write for fear of making a mistake - if that's the case then something like writing on a whiteboard first sometimes works to try things out, or a rough jotter that he can make things as scrappy as he likes in (I've sometimes shown kids just how bad my rough working is to try to get across that idea that things don't have to be perfect and right first time).

Apologies for my appalling grammar in typing the above - trying to eat me tea while I type one handedly!

stressedoutmum

I've just been reading up on something called dysgraphia and whilst he doesn't have all the signs of this there are a few alarm bells ringing. He often makes spelling mistakes but when I ask him to spell the word its fine yet he's written the wrong spelling although I still know what the word is. He can't right neatly without lines. Everytime he starts a new sentence he always starts further into the page so by the time he gets to his 6th line say he is almost half way across the paper and doesn't seem to realise this until I point it out to him His writing is either really squashed together with no spaces or too spaced out and something about telling the time on a normal clock. We really struggled to get him to tell the correct time using a clock as opposed to a digital clock. How would I go about getting him tested for anything like this?

Spendless

stressdoutmum- Have you realised that there's only 10 weeks of this academic year left? If your son's 121 is starting straight away then he'll fit the 10 lessons in for yr 5 and then ask when they'd start in yr 6? If they start back up Autumn term he'd be going thru 20 weeks of 121 with the hols in the middle.

ciderwithrosie_2

Hopefully just a little ray of hope for the future... My oldest son is left handed (as I am) but he always held the pen/pencil really awkwardly, making a curved over fist, he always wrote the bare minimum because it was tortuous; what he did write was tiny, badly formed, cramped and smudged (where his hand had followed over what he'd just written). His punctuation was awful as well. He was very bright in class, always reading and I read to them most nights, but I despaired he would fail all his exams because the examiner wouldn't be able to read what he'd written. Nothing we did seemed to make any difference.

Fast forward a few years - at secondary school he excelled at athletics, competing for county, was shortlisted for head boy, got 11 GCSE's, did A levels in History, Biology & Sport and is now at University aiming to be a teacher himself.

regards CWR

[Deleted User]

I would strongly suggest that your son needs to be assessed. I have a son with dyspraxia and aspergers and a stepson who almost certainly has dyslexia (he is 10 with literacy of 1a).

Now, quite a lot of what u describe is what i see with my son. He writes illegibly (even now he's 14), forgets punctuation because he's trying to hard to form the letters he hasn't got the mental space left to remember punctuation. And yet he had a reading age so high they couldn't assess it at the end of his first year at senior school (they stopped at 19.5 years! At 14 he is presently reading and understanding Dante!

But his hand writing and fine motor control continue to be problematic. Working on a pc helps, but he needs someone sitting there to remind him to punctuate (sentences start with capital letter, and end in full stops, or look again and see if u can find out what u've missed) cause altho typing on a keyboard is lots easier, its still fine motor control which is what a lot of kids with dyspraxia have problems with. My son always had a very high vocabulary.., but is now the star pupil in his senior school and will probably do his english exams a year early (he gets one to one help now). It was never a problem with his vocabulary or how he thought exactly.., more a fine motor control problem i.e. kindof miswiring in his brain.

Does your son seem clumsy somehow.., this can be one of the things u see in children with dyspraxia. I know with my son, I used to say if there is anything to fall over , slip on, or kick or drop, he'll find it lol. Eating a meal was a very messy affair and still is now, he always was kindof excitable, and didn't socialise well, tried to but he'd sort of shout at his peers and not even see them backing off cause he was too excited/loud. He just didn't get what was going wrong, no matter how u explained it. (I have to ask this, altho I know in your earlier posts u say he is very sociable).

Here are some sites

http://www.growingkids.co.uk/ClumsyChildrenDyspraxia.html

http://www.dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/services/gu_symptoms.php

http://members.fortunecity.com/sian2/dyspraxia.index.html

I hope these help.

stressedoutmum

He's not clumsy in the least and is fine with his eating, table manners and using the knife and fork etc. His reading is above average but not way above average. Where would I start to get him assessed - the school have never suggested it. I had a look at this list on internet and he has about 7 of the subjects here but I don't know if that means anything

Written text very poor considering language development.
* Poor motor control.
* Writing that is almost impossible to read.
* Mixture of printing and cursive writing on the same line.
* Writes in all directions, i.e. right slant then left slant.
* Big and small spaces between words.
* Different sized letters on the same line.
* Mixes up capital letters and lower case letters on the same line.
* Abnormal and irregular formation of letters.
* Very slow writing.
* Very slow copying from board.
* Does not follow margins.
* Grips the pen too tight and with a ‘fist grip’.
* Holds pen very low down so fingers almost touches the paper.
* Watches hand intently whilst actually writing.
* Poor spelling.
* Bizarre spelling.
* Problems with spelling wrong words i.e., ‘brot’ for brought and ‘stayshun’ for station.
* Problems with spelling words such as i.e. drink as ‘brink’.

DVardysShadow

floss2 wrote: »

Why not take him to Staples or Rymans and buy him a nice Parker or Papermate pen, to use when he does writing at home. Tell him he has to do a page of pencil, then a page of pen - buy an A5 lined notebook that he chooses to do his writing in. Make it a special thing and a treat to have the pen, not the chore it seems to have become at school.

When his writing improves, buy a bigger book with bigger pages

NO!!! This is effectively saying 'The floggings will continue until morale improves'

No boy who is the least bit selfconscious about his hand writing not being good will be the least bit impressed with a 'nice pen'. Probably he is already all too aware of the shortcomings of his hand writing and will be even more put off by a 'nice pen' - these are adult values to which he probably does not subscribe. And as for small pages, if his writing is a bit on the large side, don't exacerbate the effect with small pages - there is no way that it can appear anything but childish and it doubles the problems of deciding whether a word should go on the end of this line or onto the next.