Advice needed - grandson struggling to read at end Year 1

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.)

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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

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

Old not only

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

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

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.

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.