Fischer Family Trust KS1 Wave 3

[PROBSNAIVE]

Hi All my youngest child aged 7, was recently assessed by a specialist to improve her reading and writing. She did a number of assessments and found a number of areas to work on. She suggested using the FFT wave 3 programme. She gave a detailed report of her assessments. Does anyone have any experience of this? Does it have a good success rate? Most of the activities are to do at school. Can anyone suggest anything I can do at home? Many thanks

[Guest55]

http://www.leics.gov.uk/wave_3_interven ... oklet_.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Gives some details about several intervention programmes. Most of the ones I've come across want parents involved and will tell you how to support her. Ask the school how you can help.

[PROBSNAIVE]

Thanks Guest55 . I have just had the initial meeting. Maybe I need to meet with our SenCo separately again. The only thing she mentioned today was to read as much as possible.

[yoyo123]

Definitely talk to Senco, but if you need any more help, just ask. In a parallel universe, I work as an intervention teacher for KS1 & 2

[PROBSNAIVE]

Thanks so much Yoyo for your offer, I was a bit overwhelmed today. Probably didn't ask the right questions. Seems quite a long daunting journey with hopefully a positive outcome.

[mystery]

Thanks Guest55 . I have just had the initial meeting. Maybe I need to meet with our SenCo separately again. The only thing she mentioned today was to read as much as possible.

Hope you get some better information than that. Sorry, but it made me nearly spit my tea out that after the time, expense and fuss of some kind of specialist assessment that all you, an intelligent and interested parent, could be advised to do at home was "read more".

What is the reading issue? Is it decoding the words or understanding the words?

[PROBSNAIVE]

Hi Mystery, the report had a lot of detailed information but the action plan focussed on activities for school. I'm assuming once they start the program at school I will be asked to do follow up activities at home. I will check with the Senco. The main issues were decoding, mixing up p,d,b and her spelling accuracy was very low. Her reading has improved this year but still struggles with instantly recognising hfw. She also has a tendency to guess a word even though she can read it when prompted. I have found some things on the Internet to try but I don't want to confuse her with what she is learning at school. Another thing to discuss with SenCo.

I realised that I had posted about my daughter's difficulty with reading and writing some time ago but didn't respond to subsequent posts! One of your questions at the time Mystery was to ask if she passed the phonics test, she didn't. She also had difficulty with working out similar non-words this time, guessing a potential real word instead. Her reading is assessed at 1b and writing 1c

[mystery]

Ok, if she did not pass the phonics test at end of year 1 they should have been doing some work with her this year 2, intervention, whatever you like to call it to be sure she passes it this year. I would have expected them to already have included you on this particularly as you are clearly an interested and literate parent yourself!

Are they expecting her to pass this year? Phonics is certainly not rocket science and it is baffling that you are finding whatever they are saying overwhelming - sorry I mean by that that it should be straightforward and if it is not it suggests they are not explaining clearly for some reason or don't understand it that well themselves perhaps.

You could do worse than try the mr Thorne does phonics website with her at home ( not the apps). Work your way through the phases on there with her. You could also try a book called toe by toe but something like apples and pears might be better - it all depends on her current phonics knowledge. None of these things should conflict with school unless they are doing something weird.

Have they set out clearly what she does / does not know of the alphabetic code? What are the tests they have run?



If they explain the principles of phonics to you and the pronunciation and various spellings of the English phonemes and how to sound out and blend it should not be at all hard for you to help her progress at home.

What is the school's main phonics scheme? What reading scheme has been sent home this year? How has she been taught to tackle unfamiliar words?

Time to find out more I think and cut through the haze. They have had nearly three school years now to teach her to read and it sounds like your dd is baffled by whatever they have done and guessing when she does not need to.

There are many extremely good synthetic phonics schemes and associated reading books around these days. If school isn't using them enough, well enough or for enough length of time with your dd you are going to need to make up for it at home. You can make huge strides between now and the start of year 3 with the right "intervention" but with a poor, boring or half hearted approach the whole thing can drag on unnecessarily long.

[mystery]

Ok, I looked up Fischer family trust wave 3. It appears to be based in some way on reading recovery which personally I would not touch with a barge pole at this stage for your daughter if it is whole word rather than synthetic phonics based. It is also described as an early year 1 intervention.

DIY, DIY, DIY unless you get some better answers from school or fft wave 3 is not as dire as it sounds.

[Guest55]

The phonics test is widely criticised - I'm aware of KS1 level 3 readers/writers who have not passed.

http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.co.uk/ ... ening.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You can find old phoics papers on the web to use with her - for example -

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... -materials" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;