Joanna Dunton asks if specific specialist intervention should be the first step to support.
What do you want us to do about it? Test him for dyslexia? He reads well. My son was at the start of year 6 and I was shocked at the ‘holiday’ postcard he’d written to his grandparents. I had just met his new class teacher and expressed my concerns. In hindsight, we were lucky, as nearly all the parents I speak to would think that they had won the lottery to get responses like that.
He did read well. As a special education teacher myself, it’s something we worked hard at, and he achieved good enough grades at the end of term, but we always thought he was capable of more, because he was so verbally bright. What I didn’t understand was that he was relying on memory and whole-word reading. Teachers thought he just wasn’t putting enough effort into spelling and written work.
The school completed a dyslexia screener, and this confirmed that further assessment was needed, so off we went for the full diagnostic assessment. I say ‘we’, because it was a shared journey. He became a successful learner who achieved a MEng, and I became a specialist dyslexia teacher, accredited course deliverer and dyslexia adviser. He puts his subsequent achievements down to the targeted intervention that he was able to access during the important GCSE years, with a specialist teacher who understood his needs (these needs included a cup of hot chocolate to help him reset at the end of a busy school day). We both agree that this support was the key to opening the door and I will be eternally grateful that he was fortunate enough to receive this.
Daily conversations take place with parents who are at a loss. They have a strong feeling about the difficulties their child is experiencing, and sometimes the school agrees with them but is unable to offer a solution. While writing this article I stopped to take a call from the mother of an eight year-old who had lost all her hair due to her school experiences and the state of ‘learned helplessness’ that she had developed. Parents often report that their child experiences physical symptoms, such as stomach pains or headaches or gets upset about going to school. As with most parents an assessment was discussed, as this is usually the first thing that a parent will ask about. The need to find an answer to the difficulties can sometimes mean that we overlook what the child needs at this stage of their education, especially during the primary years.
In an ideal world, I believe that parents should not have to fight or pay for answers, and that the full diagnostic assessment should be a starting point providing not just a label, but also working recommendations with an action plan for learning, following up with targeted, specialist, multi-sensory intervention. In Key Stages 1 and 2 schools will probably say they are already teaching in a dyslexia-friendly way and providing as much support as they can. There is also the possibility that the ‘label’ could be seen as a reason why the pupil can’t learn. In Key Stages 3 and 4 it is more likely that the diagnosis will be the starting point and recommendations will be followed, as schools must provide evidence of a normal way of working to support an application for Access Arrangements.
A recent article about inclusive classrooms suggested that 90% of children with dyslexia can be educated in a regular classroom if they are given the right environment and tools. But are most teachers aware of this as they try to educate the next generation, in often difficult circumstances? The BDA states that 80% of young people with dyslexia are not identified in school.
So how do we help the 10% who are not coping in the regular classroom or those who have not yet had a diagnosis? In several of her published research papers, Margaret Snowling has put forward “evidence showing that children with dyslexic difficulties can be helped by specific interventions (which) underlines the need for timely action rather than waiting for diagnosis.” I suggest that we need to put the pupil’s learning first and deliver the correct specific intervention that will start to repair some of the damage and take away the overwhelming stress and anxiety linked to trying to keep up with their peers.
Another call comes in from a concerned grandmother whose grandson is already on his third school—at the age of seven. It seems that his extreme behaviours appear as a reaction to literacy instruction, as he cooperates well in other lessons. Unfortunately, he is unable to access specialist multisensory instruction through the school. Through working with pupils like him I have seen first hand what a difference targeted support can make, not just to literacy scores but also to the young person, their family, and the school. Targeted intervention using multisensory teaching can make learning fun, as a variety of games and ensured success can help the pupil start to believe that they can learn, and to find out how they learn best. I am confident this young man could be encouraged to develop a positive attitude to literacy learning and begin to take steps towards learning to read if he was able to access the correct support. Benefitting not only himself, but also his family and school situation.
During conversations with parents, we do suggest working with the school to see if a full assessment will be helpful to improving the learning provision. However, if this is not possible, we will often suggest that a full assessment might not need to be the first consideration and that targeted, multisensory intervention from a specialist teacher should be set up as soon as possible. Stressed and anxious learners can’t learn, and this is the first hurdle we must help them overcome.
Often, prior to a full assessment, the use of a dyslexia screener, many of which are freely available online these days, can help to provide answers for parents, especially if the adult sits alongside the young person while they are completing it, they may open up about problems you weren’t aware of.
So how can the young person be supported? Wherever possible, a specialist teacher should be found who can provide a series of fun, multisensory lessons. Depending on the young person, this could take just a matter of weeks before a positive mindset takes over. Although many parents prefer in person teaching, due to geography this is not always possible. Since Covid, we have seen a growth in online teaching, and this has also proved to a be successful route to connecting with the learner. With their own specialist tutor to work with, multisensory teaching and games based around the pupil’s interests can still be delivered and I have personally experienced some great results.
Parents are also keen to know what they can do to help at home, so:
- Take the pressure off and don’t make reading or spelling a battle ground. Practising little and often, even just 2 or 3 minutes every day, rather than prolonged activities can make a big difference.
- Words are all around us. Reading doesn’t just have to come from books. Comics, menus, recipes, road signs all give us opportunities to practise.
- Discussing story lines and predicting a story can help to develop comprehension.
- Modelling reading out loud really does help the child to understand inferential comprehension, which can often depend on which word we place the emphasis on.
- Various reading games such as TRUGS, or even Scrabble, with the young person using a dictionary to help, can make learning words fun.
- Reading accuracy can be helped with schemes such as Toe by Toe. Nonsense word reading draws on our phonic knowledge and takes away the opportunity to guess what the word is.
- Audio books, shared reading, even subtitles can link words to pictures.
- Developing a wide vocabulary, with a word of the day or week should become a family game. The word doesn’t have to be written or read but should be used correctly in speech. Movement words can be a source of great fun and can be linked to games of charades, which really does demonstrate understanding of a word.
- Spelling can be practised on a whiteboard. Focus on the part of the word that is unknown, with the young person encouraged to find their own way of learning. This could be using word shape, sounding it out, mnemonics or saying it in a funny way. Writing the word out with eyes shut is a fun activity and helps with memorising.
Full diagnostic assessments do have an important place in helping to gain more understanding about the types of difficulty that an individual is experiencing, about their strengths as well as their weaknesses, and can be the key to accessing the right support so should not be discounted. However, dyslexia can never be cured, and we might just be able to turn a negative learning experience into a positive one given the right type of support, so that the young person is given every opportunity to reach their full potential.