Advice needed - grandson struggling to read at end Year 1

Lindylou Dyslexia is an umbrella term for a whole series of problems that mean a child has difficulty reading. The fact that your grandson's problems are not the same as someone else with dyslelxia does not mean that he is not dyslexic, but that, if he has dyslexia, it has a different cause.

A good friend had two children with dyslexia. The eldest child was seen by the local educational psychologist who could find no problems because he only tested for dyslexia caused by having problems with uncoding text. The report sent to the school and parents suggested the problem was caused because he was not very bright, which flew in the face of all the evidence of his attainments in other fields.

He was seen by a private psychologist, who discovered he had a memory problem. material was not readily transferred from his short term to long term memory. Unfortunately he started school when the main technique used for teaching reading was Look & Say, totally unsuited to his problem. He had specialist coaching and has done very well.

Contact the British Dyslexia Association www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/ . They have a helpline and there is someone to talk to. You grandson, may not have dyslexia, but they can still give help and advice and give you details of education psychologists who could assess your grandchild's problems.

Dyslexia can take various forms, so if the child hasn't been seen by an expert on dyslexia that would be the first step to take.

Slow readers do usually catch up, but right now it sounds to me as if the boy is understandably fed up with all the fuss that is being made. Fuss from his point of view.

Could you persuade his parents and teachers just to forget about reading until after Christmas and give the poor kid a breather?

The world won't end because he is unable to read for another couple of months.

Give him a stack of Mickey Mouse comics instead of books for a while.

I don’t understand your post elaine
the thread was started in 2014 when the child was 6 It is not 2020 he will now be 12 and in a High school so hopefully the problem has long been sorted out

2014 was 6 years ago. Is he now 12 as you say he is 6 so he would have been a baby in 2014?

Old not only

This is a very only thread fuchsiarose the child in question will be in High School by now

Read to him as much as you can, using finger or indicator of where you are on the page. My girl never read to me, even when I went into parents reading to their kids hour. Age 6 she suddenly could read, I only found out when the teacher told me. I think kids overthink the reaction to their attempts to read. Keep reading to him

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As J52 says, with a problem like your grandson's, it's always best to have a full hearing test . Sometimes it's the low sounds which aren't being heard, often due to catarrhal blockage etc. If a child has a slight hearing loss he gets bored, doesn't listen, loses interest.
Otherwise excellent advice on here, plus encourage him to love books by taking him to the library to choose books for adults to read to him.Later - paired reading (as I've written about before.)

Thanks for all your responses today. It's nice to know we are not alone. I will keep everyone informed how we get on over the next months.

J52 you mentioned hearing. He has always had very astute hearing from being a baby he would react to noises we barely heard. I have wondered if that is part of the problem, that the noise level in a busy classroom could be very distracting to him and it is good that he now gets some time in a quiet room. The teaching assistant is taking him away with another child for 15 mins twice a day for literacy and they are getting a bit competitive with each other which is brilliant.

My son now 41, couldn't read until he was nearly 10 - although never diagnosed I think he is dyslexic. He now has a masters and a super job, and is very well thought of both by his work associates and managers.

I think the trick is to keep faith with them - it was obvious to me that he was very able. He was a quiet and very well behaved child but unfortunately written off by the educationalists, and was extremely unhappy at school. I gave him a lot of input which clearly paid off. He thrived once he arrived at University, blossoming to a level of happiness I hadn't seen in years, apart from when he was at home.

I always told my students ( seconday ) that the only adults who have to read aloud are Vicars and Teachers! Once we got that out of the way we made great progress!

Older children should be assessed for the comprehension of text, not by their ability to read aloud. X

My perfectly capable DGS failed that silly phonics test at the end of Year 1. I observed that, because he still confused R and W in speech, he was also confusing them in reading and writing. My son, who has taken him in hand now notices that he is reading words rather than depending on phonics to interpret them and is shooting up the reading scheme in Y2. Phonics may be useful for a majority of children, but alternative methods should also be considered.

I have been following this thread with great interest. My two DGD's were both very capable readers before they started school. They are 6 and 8 and are both excellent readers who devour anything they can get their hands on. DGS started school in September and shows no interest in reading whatsoever. Last week he brought a book home from school called "FEET" I'm not sure if anyone is familiar with it? My first thought was how stupid is this book! It shows a picture of a child in a pair of Wellies with the caption underneath "feet" obviously on looking at the picture my DGS said "Wellies" I said try again and he said "boots" . When I took him into school the next morning I asked if I could have a word about the book my DGS had brought home. I explained to the TA that the book was very misleading and that the word FEET should surely have been represented by a picture of bare feet not Wellies Her response was "no problem" I asked what she meant and again she said "no problem" No problem what????? "No problem" for telling me" she said. I despair if this is the level of communication of a TA supposed to be teaching young children.

Stop using 'learning difficulty' everyone it's a teaching difficulty. Having a child who had difficulty with both reading and numbers the hardest part was getting the confidence up to try it had been so battered by people telling her she had a 'learning difficulty'. As a parent you have to push and push the teachers to make sure the child has the help they need to LEARN their preferred way.
Sorry for the rant but some children need to learn in a different way than others. I could only learn whole words and at ten could still not read at all well. Mostly due to the anxiety I had been taught to feel every time I had to stand up in class and read aloud or with the teacher. That anxiety continued even into adulthood. I helped in a junior school and although I could help others learn to read could not read aloud to them.
Once I was helped to understand the anxiety I was freed from that burden and went on to get a degree and a Masters.

Having taught Dyslexic children for many years I am not going to give any educational advice, as the school do seem to be on top of the situation.. I am sorry for the experiences that you are going through, but please stay positive.

I would say, have you had his hearing thoroughly tested. Poor hearing in children can lead to all sorts of problems, as communication is key at this age.

Also, try to be relaxed and build up his confidence in other ways such as playing games etc.

i wish you well.x

Dyslexia is a compendium word that covers all the problems people can have encoding and decoding text. It can take many forms so because a child does not have the same problems as a dyslexic parent doesn't mean that the problem is not dyslexia.

A friend was told her children were not dyslexia by a LA educational psychologist because they had no problem identifying individual letters and short words. Seen by a specialist in dyslexia the children were diagnosed with short term memory problems. The children had problems transferring of information from short to long term memory. They could do simple sums, but when they had to read a problem they had forgotten the start the problem by the time they finished reading the paragraph setting out the whole mathematical problem.

They both had specialist training and tuition at a dyslexia centre and, in their 30s now both have successful careers and one went to university.

So do not exclude dyslexia. Find a local expert or contact The Dyslexia Association www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/ for help and information.

lyndylou I am sure taking away the fear of failing to read might be a very good idea. I hope he stays positive.

It's all sounding very positive, I'm so pleased. Keep us posted

Many thanks for all your helpful comments, I would have responded before but I have been away. As it happens, quite a lot has happened over the last week. My DD and I have been in talks with his new Year 2 teacher and the SENCO at last and we now have a much clearer picture. We have been assured that, despite the wording of the report, DGS is not thought to have overall development issues but that he is generally behind in all his learning activities. He is not alone in his class, so 5 children have been allocated a Teaching assistant with lots of one to one work. The strategy has been to take him back to Foundation level work and concentrate on the basics of phonetics.

We have been advised to concentrate on reading to him and not to push him to read for a while, and that is what we have been doing along with single letter flash cards and simple maths games and activities on the computer. I feel we have gone back in time, however I do think it is the best thing for him at the moment. He is much more positive at the moment, has more of a buzz about him when he comes out of school and tells us much more about what he has been doing at school. I said that I was trying to arrange a check for scotopic sensitivity during the half term break and the SENCO said they were also purchasing a whole new kit with coloured filters to see if they help the SEN children.

I know many children are reading by the end of Year 1 but I do think the push to get them through the phonetics test is counter productive for the slower ones. However I am much happier knowing that he has a plan for the way forward and clear goals so we can check his progress in a couple of months. Thanks again to everyone who responded.

Whilst I agree that 6 is not very old many children are reading by the end of year one. If everything else about your DGS is within the expected stage of development then I would suggest he may well have a specific learning difficulty. If he does not find phonics his 'natural' reading skill then go for 'look and say' games to see if that helps, particularly to build up his confidence as well as skills. I would just read lots of lovely picture book stories/ non-fiction to him, full of rhymes and repeated phrases so he can join in and follow with his finger as you read. Above all he needs to want to do it and enjoy it. Lots of fun reading games/activities/books on line too!

The school cannot have involved an outside professional to asses your DGS without parental permission. I am not defending the lateness of the report but suspect the service has been severely cut as Local Authorities are wound down.

One last point ,begin with words he knows so he succeeds straight away .
He's lost his confidence and grand parents are just the people to put that right. One very famous man didn't even speak until he was seven. The b/ d
muddle .The b has a stick for a body and then a big fat bum which always comes at the back!

It's popped up now so you may get a repeat .Sorry!

I wrote one but it seems to have got lost

1) Michelangelo was a mirror writer. It sometimes helps to put a faint X on the left at the beginning of a line so that is where to begin writing..
2) there is nothing wrong with telling a child that 'at' says at . Then take a piece of paper ,fold the length the width of a letter write at all the way down the page not on the fold like this.
at
at
at
at
Then put b,c,f,h ,m in front in a different colour if you find that useful
Then with the fold covering those first letters write p,r,s,t,v read the first list
list with him blending b- at ,c- at and so on . Fold and do the second list.
Read it with him or just to him so he hears b-at ,c-at ,and so on ,say it with him and then offer a chocolate button when he can say them ,with or without blending. Being successful is very important .People remember when they are successful. Use little words and if the school uses qu, ch,sh ,th wh use those asif they are one letter so chat ,that,can join in ,but not what because that says whot! You can build paper- fold lists with these words ,in ,on,un ,and ,
etc. then perhaps words ending in ' ite' for bite kite .white ,mite,quite ,rite
Same with ate ,bate date fate etc. use,fuse,muse,ruse . In fact mix saying a whole word and adding letters to it.? The object is to widen the words he knows quickly. Make it so he hears you do it ,he does it with you as many times as he needs it, then alone .Use lots of praise! Very important.
3) my father had a method that made my grand daughter shriek with laughter and teach him how to read . He was awful at reading so with a well known story like The Three Bears he would read it to her and say the porridge was too sweets,too sour and just like concrete so she had to put him right over and over again because his memory was terrible too. He did that with any story she knew particular phrases .Run,run as fast as you can you can't catch me ,l'm the gingerbread man ,that became a gingerbread biscuit of courses. The local library often have the old favourites.
4) a packet of gold stars is less fattening.
5) if he knows some rhymes ,polite or not ,write them down and make some mistakes! Children insist on the correct words . Have fun! A mistake isn't the end of the world and do it for say 10 minutes only and stop when he's succeeded . End on a high note so he'll look forward to it not dread it.