Hi all, My 9 year old is super smart but he has really been struggling with spelling (and handwriting, but thats a different story!). We just finished list 5 grade 4 -1 list per week. The first 2 weeks were a complete mess. He missed 24 of 25after studying for a week. Week 3 and 4 were a bit better, b/c I sat with him for hours over the 4 days and studied, studied, studied. He still missed like 18-20 of 25. I noticed he would know the words when we did a "spelling bee" or verbal games, but he could copy them 10 times and still misspell it 10 minutes later on the test. Today, list 5, he said, please please test me out loud. So I did and he got all but 1 right the first time! I didn't change my facial expression or anything that would be a clue for him. Afterwards he was so proud he was like, call Papa and tell him! When I was bragging on him, my son said, its because I have great ears! So, what I am gathering from this is that he's most likely an audio learner. What are your opinions on this situation? Thank you! Erica
My first thought is dysgraphia, though I don't know a whole lot about dysgraphia, maybe google a symptom list and see fi it sounds like your son?
You could take the spelling list, have him study it, and then have him fill in a missing letter or two from each word instead of trying to remember how to spell the entire word. For example leave the vowels out like this : sl__p (sleep) or __eep. As he gets more confident take out more letters until there is only one letter. I have never had ds try to spell anything from scratch without a prompt (letter) to help. Marty
Marty, we did that exact game (a friend recommended it last year b/c it helped her dyslexic son). Also we'd do different colored vowels which was supposed to help. And Spelling City, Hangman, Spelling Bees with my other kids (different level words for each). I was really concerned about him not remembering the spelling after so much repetition, but it seems he remembers it well enough to say it out loud but writing it down is so much harder. Some words are close, but others are not even in the ballpark! I just wondered if anyone had input, like if it sounded like a LD...
Have you tried having him say the letters out loud as he writes it? Maybe hearing himself say the letters will help him remember what he needs to write down.
I'm not sure the struggling with handwriting and not being able to take a spelling test is a separate problem. My son has dysgraphia as someone else mentioned and trust me they are connected. When the brain is fumbling the writing part, all sorts of things come out wrong. Spelling Power really helped my son with spelling......... (We use sandpaper for the "sand option".) Knowing we would "stop" if he missed more then a couple of words and we are only writing out a few words once or twice was a big deal. And writing with a finger in sand or gel or on sandpaper isn't the same as writing with a pencil. We use Pictures in Cursive for handwriting. (1 sentence a day.) That has helped a lot too. He knows to try really hard for 1 sentence and then he is done. More then that is too much for him. We also use Dragon Speech for lessons that need to be wrote out. (Like comprehension questions.) Not having to "write" things out really changed his attitude about school. He is also taking typing with some success. (We stopped over the summer.) I still haven't figured out how to get him to write a paragraph but I'm sure we will figure it out sooner or later.
Maybe also provide letter tiles of some sort (like in All About Spelling) or write letters on index cards and he uses them as he spells out loud? That might help provide the auditory and visual connection as well until his handwriting improves. I use AAS and on days when writing is a bit heavy for my son we use that for spelling to help him. But I agree with looking into dysgraphia too, good luck!!
Apologies for the length but this resonates with me and my youngest dd to a T! First thing to check, is: Does your student know how to spell the word but just misses the word when he writes it down? IOW, is he leaving out letters? Or mixing them up? Ask him to sound out what he has written and see if he can spot the missing sounds in the words and correlate that with the missing letters. If he can't hear some sounds so he isn't able to put it in when he spells, this can be a red flag. Another thing to do is when you ask him to sound out what he has written, if the word he has written is wrong but he sounds it out as the word you have given, another red flag. IOW, if you give him the word "multiple" and he spells mulible, he doesn't hear the subtle t and he can't distinguish the b and the p. These sound the same but they give different information. Picking out what is missing (in the first example) and not hearing what is missing (in the second example). So, this is my dd at 7 and 8 when she was finally dx'd with 2 forms of dyslexia, one of which is phonemic dyslexia. She knew all 70+ phonics groups, the different sounds the groups make (i.e. "ough" makes 4 different sounds and then could tell me a word for each sound) but when she saw a word, all of the letters were just a jumble of letters. She couldn't tell the phonics groups from one another and she couldn't determine the mechanics of dividing the word into syllables, how that impacted how the words sounded, etc. She also has a working memory deficit so she has a hard time memorizing anything. She has to figure it out as she needs it. I.e. she has to determine what 6 x 7 is when she needs it because she can't memorize her multiplication tables. It is the same way with her spelling. She can't memorize the spelling of words but she can figure out how to spell/pronounce words based on the phonics rules. Unfortunately, only 60% of words follow the phonics rules. 80% of dyslexics are dysgraphic but if you can read your child's handwriting, dysgraphia may not be at the heart of this. Dysgraphia can be more about forming the letters proportionally in relation to each other and in relation to the spaces on the line and how long the line is. And it can also impact the child's processing when they are trying to spell correctly, form the letters correctly and in the right order and put the word with the correct spacing on the line (i.e. they don't start the word too far in so they don't have enough room to write the whole word on the line). That is a lot for a dysgraphic to concentrate on. My dd went through LindaMoodBell for her phonemic dyslexia (which helped tremendously) as well as some brain based therapy (Learning Technics is what we used but there are several out there). If you suspect dyslexia/dysgraphia, I would urge you to get some testing done. The dx for my dd had a huge impact on how I approached teaching with her. I'm not saying this is what is happening with your student however I saw this in my dd. After the two therapies (which took almost a year), the difference was amazing. HTH's. Kim
I would suspect that your ds vast improvement doing the spelling test orally indicates he is auditory. My ds is very much auditory and he's going on 13. If an auditory method works for him use it as often as you can. hearing the spelling words and spelling them orally use a different part of the brain then reading and writing. I have found when one part of the brain is growing and learning extremely well the other parts of the brain fall behind. It may mean that writing and drawing are of the "table" until the rest of his brain "catches up". Have him tested foe disgraphia but don't be surprised if it's just not his chosen format of learning. Boys (at least mine was) notoriously slower at reading and writing than girls. Unless it is definitely some learning problem, I think he'll be on par in a couple of years. Marty
Thank you so much Kim. In Prek4 the teacher came to me and said she suspected a LD with my son, now 9. I knew we'd HS so I did not do the recommended testing at that time. I starting schooling at home to better understand what was going on. I suspected Dyslexia but we used different methods I researched and he began to learn his letters and began reading - with a lot of difficulty. Year before last I found an amazing small homeschool "school" for 3 full time days (but we had to move 5 hrs away!). The teacher was a retired dylexia therapist and basically started this school for her child and a few others with varying degrees of dyslexia - but she accepted all students and my family began there. She came to me and said she believed my middle son was dyslexic and possibly dysgraphia, but we didn't test, which she supported, but he did start therapy with her. She gave me a ton of tips and my son just skyrocketed in reading and memorization (she was big into memorizing, diet & supplements, phonetic, movement, ect) . We have not done spelling until recently, and we started b/c I could tell he was struggling. He also is still doing a handwriting program, but man its bad - most of the time I can't read it. I finally did take him to be tested and since he could read so well - several years above the "grade level" they refused to test any futher and said he was fine. Also, this summer during his eye exam it turns out he has a focusing issue where he can't focus on letters during reading - so for awhile I thought, maybe he NEVER had a LD, it was all in the eye muscles. But, now I don't think thats the case. These past few weeks of spelling have really brought back the stress and I just wanted to see if this sounded like a symptom of a LD. Also, we have been slacking on the diet & supplement regimen so I'll be sure to pick that back up.
My son has dysgraphia too. We're taking steps this school year to work with that. It's a handwriting/brain gate issue and could absolutely cause him to misspell his words on a written test. My son does his spelling lists orally also. I do have him practice writing the words too but the actual "Test" I do orally. I had never heard of dysgraphia until a month or so ago. But someone told me I should check out Dianne Craft's website so I did. I read her article Smart Kids who Hate to Write and it was like she had been standing in our house all school year last year and written just about my son. We're doing the writing 8 exercise 4 mornings a week. He's writing a lot better and faster and with fewer complaints and we're only two weeks in. I'm so thankful someone pointed me in that direction because I'm hopeful that catching it now will prevent a lot of frustration later on. Here is her website with all her articles: http://www.diannecraft.org/articles.htm#003
