i posted on the ta tes site and dancinqueen kindly replied I need info on toe by toe.my grandaughter is a yr3 she has had IEPs since rec but when she went on to juniour school they said she had dyslexia. At the moment she is struggling the school seems to think that we are not trying she needs to do reading an an hours work each night on spelling. she is very much behind. she has difficulty with maths as well as reading and writing though her hanwriting and rec of letters is good some of her understanding is not brill she has trouble relating to group work though not out of the classroom. she also has an underlying hearing problem. I think we do not do the programme properly it is all home based . her book is marked eg 2 correct or a line through saying all wrong, i work with sen as a Ta in infants and find this method of marking sole destroying. my grandaughter has tantrums as soon as work at home is mentioned . We need help to understand dyslexia and the dreaded toe by toe. She does not have lots of classic symptoms she wasnt slow at learning as a baby she does however have trouble with left and right and cant do up laces which were questions which the teacher asked. She has 45mins extra help a week as she has not got a full statement with the TA who does her toe by toe programme. What sort of progress should she be making? I do not like the way the school handle this at all the parent partnership is dire. as far as we know she has not had a formal assesment for dyslexia only from her teacher who is an expert in the field. we have had a horrible year getting her to school we never had a problem before sorry if I have rambled but everything is so complicated any advice would be really welcome

From what you are saying I would say that the way your grandduaghter is being treated is likely to hinder rather than help her progress! If her teacher is an expert in dyslexia she needs retraining! I have just spent 2 days discussing dyslexia and the latest thinking on 'literacy difficulties' (there is now thinking that dyslexia does not exist as a seperate condition). We were advised to move away from emphasis on reading and writing tasks, to set work that allowed the child to achieve (eg, shorter worksheets with glossaries), to seriously reconsider the need for homework ( the average child with dyslexia has to work 10 times harder to get through the school day so homework comes at a time when they are exhausted), give each child a list of the 100 most common words for reference (apparently if you can read that you can read 50% of text!), use tick sheets filled in by staff to record oral knowledge instead of setting writing tasks. The 'Somerset' experimet split children with literacy difficulties into 4 groups, one group had no intervention, one had self esteem building work, one had self esteem and reading help, one had reading help. The group with self esteem ONLY showed the best improvement in reading ability.

We use toe by toe at school and it certainly isn't contencious, the children love it - I wonder what is happening at your grand daughter's school?

thank you jaydee67your reply is so encouraging. she also has to do the set homework the rest of the class does as well. How does toe by toe work? our understanding is she has set spellings from a book they seem to be repeated I take it that repatition is good . so if she spells it incorectly she repeats it in the next set? I know she has to follow the set weeks work because when we have done the wrong one it has been crossed out and we have been told to do the correct one. Our work sheets are in booklet form with rather a lot of work not sure if it is for the full year. Is it supposed to be done all at home with no meetings or discussions with parents only at parents evenings . we dont do IEP meetings any more as only children that are statemented need them we have to see them at parents eve or like the other day when they rang to say she had just had an assesment and it was obvious we where not triyng at home. I have begun to hate the response of this school. i would like to ask how your school sets out the ways /criterea that a child has dyslexia? this school screens all new intake they have quite a lot of children with dyslexia is this good practice ? as you can see we are really at odds we want the best for her and we know the school is trying but the way they do it makes the entire family think we are failing. we are going to get in touch with our local parents in partnership group to see if they can help with school .

Toe by toe is for reading not spelling. I have found the website for you to let you see for yourself.

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. I work in a school with only 25 pupils, 6 of whom use toe by toe to help their reading. Our school also has a policy of making appointments for parents to discuss their children with theor teacher whenever the parents have any concerns, we don't wait for paretns evenings - this includes all pupils, not just those with IEPs.

I've replied to you on the TES forum, but reading your post here makes me so sad for your grand daughter. It sounds as if the teacher, far from being an 'expert', doesn't have much of a clue! And how outrageous, blaming 'home' for the child's difficulty in progressing!

Every child with reading and spelling problems should be getting systematic, explicit synthetic phonics teaching. If there are auditory problems too then the child should be getting input from an expert in auditory problems. It may be appropriate for the child to be exploring things like the correct mouth 'shape' for each phoneme (sound), by the 'feel' of it, looking in a mirror to see what it 'looks' like etc. If the child can't discriminate sounds properly then learning to read & spell will be more difficult.

I don't suppose she could change schools? Find a private reading tutor?

Have a look at this website:

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thank you all very much for your kind comments and also your constructive ones. My daughter and i will study the information and decide what our next step will be .
will keep you informed
sue

Good luck suewhit - let us know how you get on - she deserves better than she is getting at the moment

My son is dyslexic and now 15....at primary school he was only assessed in year 5 and even then I was told that he would probably not be accepted as dyslexic as so few children are....they put him through the assessment so that they would recieve some further ideas for helping him. Once he got to secondary school, they taught him as if he were dyslexic, which was better, he has had extra spelling help through out school- but has attained a spelling age of 10 so has been discharged from the extra help!!! Now as he is about to go into year 11, he has been offered mentor learning....his mentor has been fantastic....Sam learns in 3d...which means that the way he learns is very rare but he does learn from imagery...she has spoken to all of his teachers and has requested an appointment with us so that we can all help him to learn and revise for his GCSE's....this alone will bring his results for the lessons he finds most difficult to comprehend up to at least a C, that combined with his predicted A* for his hands on lessons like ICT and Technology will make the world of difference to his college applications......I guess my advice would be to push for the dyslexic assessment at first....you could than take it from there.....and....don't give up the fight!!

In our school I would assess individual parts of childrens work. A miscue for the reading, followed by child specific targets, a writing analysis on a piece of independent work, to look at handwriting and spelling, again child specific targets. If we thought the need was there a full Dyslexia screening test, which would help us to find ideas to help that particular child. Toe by toe is something that we would do with a child in school, not make the parents responsibility. Everything is done to praise and encourage the child and reassure them that they are achieving even if in a different way to their peers. I am so sorry that your grandaughter is suffering like this, thank goodness that her family care so much about her.

We screen any child we feel may havedyslexic tendancies in school which provides us with enough of any assessment to recommend to the parents that they pay for a full screening, this assessment will travel with your child all through there school life and allow them the extra help and time in exams that they are entitled to.

An hours extra spelling homework a night would be pure torture to a dyslexic child, as they have to work so hard all day at school.

Toe by Toe is a reading programme an a very good one it builds on phonics knowledge over time and only takes a few minutes each day depending on the child. It should not be met with reluctance by yuor grandchild it makes me wonder how it is being administered it's supposed to be positive.

The Helen Arkell centre for dyslexia would be an excellant form of advice for you and your family, they have their own website.

I wish you every sucess. (don't wait for a meeting insist upon one)

Hi all
I have been downloading lots of information about dyslexia and discussing it with my daughter. We got some from the toe by toe programme too. We were under the impression it was a spelling programme from the info in her book, she does the look at and read the words from the column/columns that she has this week then we cover and she writes them. we send her excersise book in on a certain day the TA marks it and writes if she has done her spellings right or wrong, she doesnt say if she has read them only that she has faired abismally when she has tested her. In the info we gathered it says that there should only be ticks no crosses as this can lower the childs self esteem she gets crosses and very few well done you have got them right. for a school with her class teacher an expert I think it is poor It has taken a layman a few hours on the internet to see how badly she is being handled even with the "right" framework. She has buddy reading from a girl in her class who has good skills.
next week at the school I work at they are having an expert in for the teachers staff meeting and I have asked to go to find out stratergies we can do at home . it may even aid my bad spelling.
tonight I read with her she has made a little progress since sept when she went into yr 3 she was learning rec words she has gone up a scale over the year , she has been learning rec words forever having said that her 6 yr old brother can read better than her and he is lower scale in his year brill at maths though.This is extremley hard she has really made very poor overall progress this goes for her maths too What do we say if we go in for a meeting as this seems to be not working , what would be the alternative ? her self esteem is really low at 8 she is old enough to know she is behind and sometimes she gets teased we are determined to get help for her .
will keep you posted sue

toe by toe is NOT a spelling scheme sue and to use it as such is for what it was designed. It is supposed to help build phonics for reading. No wonder your grand daughter is demoralised!

re ticks and crosses - I worked with a teacher last year who only gave ticks, incorrect answers just had a dot by the side of them, he explained to me that this dot could then easily be turned into a tick once a correction was made, seemed such a simple but brilliant idea to help self-esteem

yeah we have a marking code that is used throughout the school by both teachers and TA's...no crosses on that...just ticks or other abrieviations, like a circle for missed puntuation, underlined for a spelling mistake.

My toe by Toe kids are allowed to chose a sticker from my box to put on the cover of their t by t books if they have worked to their best. this works well and I chose stickers that are topical, some of the kids books you can hardly see the book for the stickers but the kids love it and no one notices that they are doing phonics!!


It is worrying to note that your school are using it for spellings as half the words are "made up" anyway to teach decoding skills.

Direct Instructional Reading is a good way of teaching high frequency words and might help your grand daughter. Each word is written on a card and shown and read with the child up to 3 times a day. They very quickly learn these words and you move on to the next 3 or 4.

Best of luck