Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What signs did the child tested at first grade show? Thanks

His teacher in K flagged that he wasn't matching sounds to letters, and aside from a few sight words couldn't read at all. In 1st he continued to have trouble sounding out words, i.e. Decoding. The real flags were his distress. He also had trouble recognizing numbers and so couldn't find his place in the math book, for instance. That was humiliating. And he would leap ahead in a math concept, but not have the ability to use actual number symbols. In other words, his learning in reading was way, way behind where his effort and intelligence indicated he should be, and he was angry, ashamed, and confused. His teacher was wonderful and pulled together a meeting with the reading specialist, learning specialist, counselor, and head of school and we talked it through and we agreed to test him privately. It is a private school. Good luck, OP! When in doubt, test.

I am also dyslexic, but didn't realize till my kid was diagnosed. I wish I had the early intervention my kid has gotten - my school life, and probably my career choices, would have been different.

This is very positive to hear the teacher flagged it. In MCPS none of ours did - DS didn't have the classic signs and was very able at hidden his issues, that and MCPS doesn't worry about kids if they are proficient but not meeting their potential. As you can tell I'm more than annoyed that it took until 5 grade for them to come around to this and now we are playing catch up with a tutor in hopes he can enter 6th grade not so far behind and lacking self esteem.

Anonymous wrote:What signs did the child tested at first grade show? Thanks

His teacher in K flagged that he wasn't matching sounds to letters, and aside from a few sight words couldn't read at all. In 1st he continued to have trouble sounding out words, i.e. Decoding. The real flags were his distress. He also had trouble recognizing numbers and so couldn't find his place in the math book, for instance. That was humiliating. And he would leap ahead in a math concept, but not have the ability to use actual number symbols. In other words, his learning in reading was way, way behind where his effort and intelligence indicated he should be, and he was angry, ashamed, and confused. His teacher was wonderful and pulled together a meeting with the reading specialist, learning specialist, counselor, and head of school and we talked it through and we agreed to test him privately. It is a private school. Good luck, OP! When in doubt, test.

I am also dyslexic, but didn't realize till my kid was diagnosed. I wish I had the early intervention my kid has gotten - my school life, and probably my career choices, would have been different.

FCPS is working hard to identify these kids right away. The K-2 teachers are all being trained in explicit phonics instruction and there are tests the kids get early on to see if they are making adequate progress. Signs would be: child can't learn letters, can't match sounds to letters, can't put two sounds together to make a new sound ("T" plus "R" makes "TR" -they can't get that). Also, these kids can't rhyme, can't hear differences in words, like if you say fat, fan and fat, they might think they were all the same. They can't pick out that one ended with a different sound. They mix up words, like saying "basghetti" way past other kids their age. They only say parts of multisyllablic words because they can't hear all of it and remember it. So they say, "Are we 'posed to have snack now?" because they don't know it is "SUP-posed." They can't manipulate sounds. If you say C A T really slowly, and then ask them to take the first sound off and just say the last two, they can't respond "AT."

Push for early testing and don't back down. You can have private testing at GMU at a sliding scale.

Play word games with your kid and practice rhyming and isolating sounds. Use shaving cream or other textures to practice writing letters. Check with the Parent Resource Center for FCPS for other strategies. Get a private tutor who specializes in dyslexia. There is not going to be enough school time for the kind of remediation this needs - every kid with dyslexia that I have ever had only made progress when there was a tutor, also.

Our DS slipped thru until 5th grade. We had suspicions in 2nd but they (MCPS) kept saying "he's a boy everything is fine." We asked to have him tested but because he was "proficient" they didn't. We moved him to a private school and low and behold the reading specialist pinpointed it- we are more than frustrated it went so long not treated and while I guess we should have done something outside of school we kept being told it was ok and of course we wanted to believe that as well. Thankfully he is now a year into tutoring Wilson and OG and we are seeing such great improvements its wonderful. The neurophych told us they should have been able to pinpoint the issue in 2nd grade - although he didn't follow in along with many of the early indicators for dyslexia. If you suspect something stand firm and have the testing done (work hard to get the school to do it but if they won't try the neuropysch testing - worse case scenario they don't find a problem, but if they do you have caught it early enough.

Will fcps do a battery of testing?

Anonymous wrote:Our evaluator told us that they should have received 2 years of high quality phonics instruction before being diagnosed. I don't know how accurate that is.

+1 usually in second grade, followed by OG instruction.

Anonymous wrote:What signs did the child tested at first grade show? Thanks

Not PP, but our kid had difficulty connecting letter sounds to letters. Not recognizing the letters, but connecting the sounds.

The dyslexia diagnosis came a part of full neuropsych evaluation. If you suspect dyslexia, you can do the testing privately or ask the public school to do the testing. It will be a battery of tests, not just testing for dyslexia.

Anonymous wrote:Our evaluator told us that they should have received 2 years of high quality phonics instruction before being diagnosed. I don't know how accurate that is.

I would not call what my MCPS K and 1st grader was taught "two years of high quality phonics instruction."! It wasn't phonics at all, let alone "high quality".

What signs did the child tested at first grade show? Thanks

I have also read the two years of reading instruction guideline. We tested my dyslexic kid in the middle of first grade. By that time he had been in an academic setting since pre k. He was clearly very smart, struggling, and very ashamed and frustrated. You can test in K if the signs are there.

Testing is usually reliable at age 6 and older.

Our evaluator told us that they should have received 2 years of high quality phonics instruction before being diagnosed. I don't know how accurate that is.

Just wondering if they had to be at a certain level
in academics or developmental age.

As early as possible- hopefully 5 or 6 so that intervention can happen as soon as possible.

Why do you ask?

Is there an ideal age or time?