Anybody just give up on Spelling?

I, for one, was ever so happy to see my older son not have spelling words in middle school. He did the same things as your son with spelling, I had no idea what grade he would get by Friday. We did have modified lists by 4th grade and he was in the resource room for lang.arts/reading during 5th grade so it wasn’t such an issue, things were made more appropriate for his level.

His dad isn’t much of a speller either, my kids hear dad call out all the time when he is writing something to ask me how to spell words. Like equivalent.
Thank goodness for spell check and other folks’ willingness to proofread. Dad just finished his master’s last spring so the boys don’t think it is a big deal for Mom to proof their work, I do it for everybody. This included my husband’s fellow students.

We made an arrangement with the teacher in 4th grade that she would count only the first 10 words on the list and only count the bonus words if he got them right. It gave him a fighting chance. That way your son could still write all the words if he didn’t want to do it differently than his classmates. Another thing would be to take the test along with his peers (ungraded) and then retake a modified test with just the teacher at a different time.

Best wishes.

Hang in there because by middle school(6th) there are no more spelling tests and you can spell check your typed work. The teachers don’t seem to count spelling except for words specific to a given subject. Poor spelling by itself isn’t an LD, and lots of kids can’t spell very well. He won’t fail 5th grade because of spelling I’m sure he’d have lots of company.

Do you think his spelling list is designed appropriately for his learning needs? We had problems in 4th and 5th grade because everybody else was expected to spell “Massachusetts” and our son couldn’ t even spell “tired”. Typically he’d get 3 out of 20 right. What was the point? The teachers refused to give him an appropriate level of spelling work. I finally threw a fit at an IEP meeting and got him spelling work that was designed to reinforce spelling patterns so he might actually learn something. Other accommodations - no points taken off for spelling; use of AlphaSmart for writing assignments (although we got this due to his writing disabililty, not just spelling)

Know what? He’s in 8th grade now and he can’t spell any better now. I have had private tutors working with him on it for years and it just doesn’t click in. Yes, I gave up. I’m waiting for another big burst of brain development and then we’ll start working on it again (if he’ll cooperate).

The funny thing is that he would be able to spell Massachusetts, and not be able to spell tired. He enjoys working on being able to spell fairly difficult words.

I know that after sixth grade spelling is not a subject, so we only have 2 years to go. I don’t particularly want him to get resource room help for spelling, because it would just add homework, not all of it helpful to his learning style.

I’ve heard that before about poor spelling by itself not being a LD. It seems that good spellers have good visual memory - if I misspell a word I usually catch it because it doesn’t look right to me. I suppose that’s what we should be working on to make an improvement over the long run.

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You need to pick your battles on what is and is not important. Spelling I think is not worth it. There is spell check! Anyhow, as far as accomodations you can have them give him different (more appropriate) words, shorter spelling lists, or not even count it.

My 14 year old can’t spell. I remember he could study and study these accomodated spelling lists and get them all right, and then two weeks later you would ask him and they were all wrong, so why bother.

I have a buddy Jonathan Mooney who wrote a book “Learning Outside the Lines” he is a 4.0 graduate of Brown University in English Literature (spelled right?) and write books and TODAY spells at a 3rd grade level. The truth…so you need to decide if you think this is important. I don’t think so, unfortuantly the narrow minds at many schools focus on it.

Good Luck

Have you ever looked at Seeing Stars by Lindamood Bell? It works on visualizing letters and is tied into a spelling program. It is pretty simple to follow.

Another approach that builds visual memory for letters is AVKO’s Sequential spelling. You need to be able to read on about a 4th grade level to be successful with it. It teaches parts of words and then you put the parts together. I know people it has been successful for when other approaches didn’t work. One woman told me her daughter started developing a visual memory for patterns in words from doing this program.

If your son’s reading level is high enough, I would go for the AVKO program.

Beth

Have you ever looked at Seeing Stars by Lindamood Bell? It works on visualizing letters and is tied into a spelling program. It is pretty simple to follow.

Another approach that builds visual memory for letters is AVKO’s Sequential spelling. You need to be able to read on about a 4th grade level to be successful with it. It teaches parts of words and then you put the parts together. I know people it has been successful for when other approaches didn’t work. One woman told me her daughter started developing a visual memory for patterns in words from doing this program.

If your son’s reading level is high enough, I would go for the AVKO program.

Beth

We have always homeschooled my daughter (17). There have been times when I just gave up on spelling. Like you say….there is no telling how she will spell stuff. but as she gets closer to college, I know this will be important. If this is any comfort…she has improved mightily. The other night her sister and i were playing Scrabble. My ld daughter pointed out that if I used the word sign instead of sing, I would make more points. this was a huge, huge thing. Of course, the next day she was working a math problem and figured there were 365 months in a year instead of 12. So 2 forward and sometimes 3 backward. But she is a joy and teaches me stuff every day. sheila

Just interested - ever thought of using a word processor in lieu of the AlphaSmart. There are auditory spellcheck softwares that can be loaded on it.

I too gave up on spelling with my son. My son didn’t come programmed to spell. And no program that I could find remediated the issue.

He needs to ask others or use Spellcheck to this day and perhaps for the rest of his life. His father is also a weak speller so it seems to run in the family. I would spell and spellcheck all of my son’s written work as teachers expected it to be spelled correctly. Fortunately they were gentle with him on his in class writing and seemed to understand that his problem was real.

Einstein was a poor speller.

Eileen,
My non-LD child is a horrible speller and yet her reading, writing, grammer and overall language arts skills are very high. It used to amaze me that she could understand the construction of a sentence so much better than the construction of words!

I’ve let spelling “slide” with her because she does so well in everything else (her SAT-9 language arts scores were still in the 99%ile). Her math skills aren’t as great so I focus on that with her. I think her problem is mostly disinterest and a tendency to work too quickly.

My husband and my mom are both poor spellers as well.

The way I helped my daughter with spelling is every night we’d go over the words with a dry erase (I’d break them into syllables by putting lines through the syllable breaks), by the end of the week my daughter seemed to get them. We started this in third grade. It was a lot of work, but it did help her prepare for the test and eventually she taught herself to do this and didn’t need to practice nightly. Now she’s in Jr. High, still not a great speller, but it doesn’t seem so important.

I do focus more on spelling with my LD son because he has trouble with reading and I feel that working on spelling will help his visual-motor skills and force him to think more about language and words. We had a modified spelling list for him last year. He couldn’t even read the words on the list let alone spell them!We did Reading Reflex and this helped a lot. I use their suggestions for studying for spelling lists. Every day I have my son practice his spelling list by saying the sound-symbols in each word (breaking down the sounds of the letters) as he writes them. The night before the test I give him a pretest. This seems to help. The daily practice is essential.

I’m a little offended by the narrow mind remark. I am no stranger to spelling difficulties. Not only do I have a daughter with a writing disabilitiy, but I have struggled my entire life with spelling. Being a 4.0 college graduate with multiple degrees, I can assure you that spelling is important. Spell check is nice, but skills are needed to work them. Spell check does not check grammar or usage. When writing a term paper not everyone will have access to a proof reader. I am sure you friend and author has along the way learned many skills that enables him to incorporate his spelling difficulties to achieve his educational goals.

tamatha wrote:
>
> I’m a little offended by the narrow mind remark.

What narrow minded remark?

I can assure you that spelling is
> important.

Spelling is not necessary to be sucessful. With all the technology available today you can achieve sucess without being able to spell. Sure teach it but if someone is unable to (which many are) MOVE ON

Spell check is nice, but skills are needed to work
> them.

What do you mean?

Spell check does not check grammar or usage.

We were not talking about using spell check for grammar or usage we are talking about SPELLING. Also again there IS a lot of technology including spell checks that have grammer built in.

I am sure you friend and author has along the way
> learned many skills that enables him to incorporate his
> spelling difficulties to achieve his educational goals.

Sure but he still spells at a 3rd grade level and he IS a sucessful author. Remember he graduated from Brown University also with a 4.0 in English Lit, and guess what HE CAN’T SPELL.

All I have to say is if this is so important to the parent for there child to achieve realize that is who you are doing this for. I think accepting differing abilities is critical to achieve sucess. It does not mean ignore it but learn to work around it and spelling to me is not something I need to be THE issue.

Leah

Tamatha wrote:

I am sure you friend and

was this a spelling error or just a typo? Oh well, I guess no one is perfect.