dyslexic traits-help

[moss]

both my 9 and 14 have dyslexic trait s school informs me. my 14 year old is very bright but i have noriced despite been predicted high grades in test s he scores very low. he seem to struggle to express what he wants to say on paper . this will have big implications as he approach s GCSE S . is this common ? it appears like he simply can nt be bothered to put any effort in when doing written work and i am unsure if this is part of the trait or perhaps an age thing. oddly he is very good at math s , reading and spelling.

[Hidden]

You should ask the secondary school for an assessment by their specialist teacher to see if your 14 year old has learning difficulties and qualifies for exam arrangements; in particular it sounds like writing and processing speed need to be examined; but single word reading also tends to identify those students who can gain meaning of a passage by 'reading around' it but have difficulties encoding single words. Regarding his motivation when writing he may have been struggling for some time now and tends now to 'give up' I recommend teaching touch typing as using a laptop to write in exams can also be a concession. All of this is to just create a 'level playing field' and give your son the chance he deserves.

[moss]

thankyou. out of interest i did tell him to do one piece of his homework on the laptop. it did cut down the amount of frustration and time re-writting the work.

[moss]

sorry i meant to also say his speed at typing is far greater than that of writing

[Hidden]

When assessing for exam arrangements a comparison should be made between handwriting and word processing speed. I think it is worth learning touch typing rather than just using a few fingers as this speeds things up even more and makes it fluent. Your 9 year old could also learn.