What-dyslexia-tests-are-available-and-which-is-best?

There are various red flags that can point towards dyslexia or dyslexic tendencies. Take a look at our recent blog for more information: What is dyslexia.

Which tests are available?

There are 3 options in order to get more clarity if you think your child has dyslexia:

  • Dyslexia Screening
  • Dyslexia Assessment with a Patoss approved specialist
  • Full educational assessment with an Educational Pschologist

A dyslexia screening is a quick, inexpensive way to assess if your child is showing the signs of dyslexia. The results are worded as low ‘risk of’ dyslexia or high ‘risk of’ dyslexia. The reason that these dyslexia screening tests are worded this way is oddly not testing dependent, but dependent on the person doing the test. Only an Educational Psychologist or a Patoss approved specialist is allowed to say definitively that an individual definitely has dyslexia or not. It is, however, fair to take it that if your screening test shows a high risk of dyslexia, then your child is dyslexic. It gives information as to the areas that your child finds difficult which enables you to share this information with teachers and other professionals to get additional help for your child.

A Patoss (Member of the professional association of teachers of students with specific learning difficulties) assessor can formally diagnose dyslexia. These tests are a little more involved than a dyslexia screening and can be a good next step if you want to have your child’s dyslexia formally diagnosed. If you think your child may have a number of issues, such as ADHD, ASD and OCD, as well as possible dyslexia, an Educational Psychologist may be more appropriate.

An educational psychologist is able to conduct tests to assess across a fuller range of issues, such as delayed development, OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder, ADD (attention deficit disorder), ASD (autistic spectrum disorder – Asperger type traits). So this is a good option to review your child in the whole.

Which is best for my child?

This depends entirely on the needs of your child.

A dyslexia screening is perfect if you think that dyslexia is the only issue for your child and you want a quick and economical test to quickly count it in or out.

A Patoss test is more appropriate if you want to have dyslexia formally diagnosed and more specialist testing conducted and are not concerned that there are other issues affecting your child’s learning.

If you think a more wide-ranging screening is needed for your child to include a wider range of possible issues with learning, then an assessment by an educational psychologist can be a good choice.

Tutor My Kids offer dyslexia screenings. For more information, take a look at our Dyslexia page.

How-Dyscalculia-Screening-helped-a-parent

How dyslexia screening enabled a parent to make plans to support her daughter.

What is dyscalculia?

Dyscalculia is having specific difficulties with maths around size of numbers (being able to know if a number is greater than another number), being able to estimate how many counters there are in a group (subitising) and in recognising patterns (really important for learning number bonds and times tables). So, why can dyscalculia screening be useful?

In the same way that testing for dyslexia can be useful – see 4 reasons to arrange an dyslexia screening, it can give useful information to give to school so they can focus their efforts in the classroom or through their interventions for your child. It can also help you to support your child at home yourself or with a private tutor.

Recently, we had a parent approach us who was concerned that her daughter might be dyscalculic because she had always had difficulties in maths. Dyscalculia is quite rare; it’s estimated that between 3-6% of the UK population may suffer, so we discussed whether it might be dyscalculia or historical maths gaps that might be causing her current difficulties. Take a look at Does my child have dyscalculia for more information on this.

How the screening works

Mum felt that arranged a screening would allow her to know if there was an underlining issue or simply maths gaps. The screening was carried out in the comfort of her home, where her daughter was most secure by Tutor My Kids and took about an hour. The screening came back as negative, which was a huge relief to mum. But, there was still the issue to deal with of why her daughter behind.

How the screening helped this parent

Having ruled out dyscalculia, We very much thought that it was maths gaps. that were causing the issues and needed to be sorted.

Maths is a hugely sequential subject and rather like building a wall, it’s important that the foundations are secure before adding further layers.  And filling in those layers (think underpinning a subsiding house!) when they’re missing. Most children have gaps in their maths knowledge. If they’re in the very early years, this can have quite an impact on maths learning and attainment. At Tutor My Kids, we think that it’s really important to get the right tutor and this is especially true with maths tuition.

With this parent is was really important to get a primary school teacher, who had taught early years, to tutor, so the very early gaps could be filled and this girl could get her maths learning back on track.

For more information on dyscalculia screening, click the link, email Rachel or call Rachel Law on 01223 858421 for advice.

 

 

 

 

 

Does-my-child-have-Dyscalculia?

Tutor My Kids Tutor working with child

Some children have difficulty in understanding maths because of gaps in their understanding; others because they have specific difficulties in grasping number concepts.

Gaps in learning can occur for all sorts of reasons – illness, lack of attention one day etc, which make it difficult for knowledge to be added to it, due to the sequential nature of maths. For example, if you know your number bonds to 10 (which combinations of 2 numbers make 10) it’s really easy to then link this to 20 (19 +1, 3 +17) and 100 (30+70). If the number bonds are missing, it’s incredibly hard to pick up the more advanced learning.
 

However, some children have specific difficulties in learning maths. There is a cluster of issues that can point to dyscalculia – a specific difficulty in learning maths:

These include difficulties in recognising patterns in maths (e.g. the end 5 and 0 digits in the 5 times table), how big a number is (e.g. £20 can be seen as smaller than £15.72 because it has fewer digits), telling the time, ability to estimate logically (can show as ‘wild’ estimates that vary hugely),strategies to solve problems that are immature (e.g. older primary children sharing using pictures or cubes when written methods would be more usual).
One key indicator can be how instantly children can say how many objects there are. (This is age dependent, but most year 5 or 6 children would be able to look at 5 counters and say that there are 5 without counting. This is called subitising.) If a child (or adult) cannot do instantly without counting them, it can be part of the cluster of behaviours that points to dyscalculia.
 
Helping children overcome missing gaps and/or dyscalculia needs specific teaching to help them link maths ideas to their written form; it is hugely helped by 1 to 1 tutoring by a maths tutor, maths teacher or school intervention.

If you would like to discuss any of these issues, please contact Rachel Law on 01223 858421 or by email hello@tutormykids.co.uk

For more information on Dyscalculia screening, click the link.