9 yr old with trouble in spelling

you might try having him visualize the word as a whole-‘snap a picture with your eyes’-this was very effective for my son who is very visual. I use flash cards and if he forgets I flash him-again, just a second.

Making him write them, while it made me feel I was accomplishing something, never helped one bit. I swear part of his brain writes the spelling word and the other part is off fighting dragons. Worthless-and ironicly, most teachers “solution”

This year he has to write each in a sentence for homework-this seems to help him but more so in overall language skills-I am amazed at how many simple words he doesnt understand-but attaching meaning to the word helps him remember it.

Some kids do well bouncing a ball while they spell-some like to make the words out of clay-

mine likes the use of color-if the words all have ‘ai’ for example have him write the ‘ai’ in a different color(once or twice each maybe? not 10)

find little words in the bigger word-hospital has “pit” -see if he can find them on his own

teach him to say the word the way it is spelled no matter how ridiculous(k-new, for example)

Does he have a IEP? If so, he can be allowed to only work on part of the list. Maybe even your teacher will agree. 10 instead of 20-hopefully “knew” and not “categorical” :)

Teresa,
Not sure if this will help or not. It’s something I remember learning about in my Special Ed. class for teaching dyslexics. Try having him write the words REALLY big in shaving cream. Something about the big, whole arm movements is supposed to help them remember. We started this last week with Kyle, not sure how well it worked, but he thought it was great fun and there were no fights over practicing his spelling.

Last week I sprayed some shaving cream onto one of my old cookie sheets, tonight we are using the bathtub wall instead. I figure if I can get him practicing without fights, I’m already better off than I was last year. Good luck!

My son’s sped teacher takes the word and puts them on flash cards leaving some letters out.

Example:
t_op_c_l for the word “tropical”

My son says it doesn’t help but he does get better spelling grades when they do this.

My son is dyslexic and can know the words for the test but a day later cannot spell them for “dink.”

So are the methods they use really teaching him anything other than how to spell for the test grade? Probably not. But depending on your son’s disability, it might work for him. We’ll try anything new just in case that’s the magic key that works.

Try to make spelling words a game. If your child likes word searches, make a word seach using his spelling words. Make a letter box (or use scrabble letters) and have him find the letters of each word, then make a word scramble with the letters. ( I made the vowels a different color than the consenants for some contrast.)

Have him stand up and clap while spelling the word out loud. Or spell the word out loud to him in syllables (sorry, can’t spell myself today!!) and have him clap in rhythm.

Depending on how your kid learns, different techniques will work differently. My son is a horrible speller, and I’ve had to accept that. I make up flashcards of his spelling words, and try to practice them everyday. He learns much better if he hears the words, so I ask him to spell them out loud. He retains this much better than if he just endlessly writes the words.

About the flash cards, we found it best to break down the list, only 2 or 3 words on Mon. night, add 2or 3 the next night and so on. Both my son and my husband are terrible spellers so this is what my husband had suggested instead of all 10 words every night. We modified my son’s spelling list even before he had an iep. In his middle school he hasn’t had spelling tests which is great. I don’t think most of the spelling lists ever carried over anyway into reg. classwork. Unfortunately he is one of those folks that can’t spell to save his life, thank goodness for spell check and proofreading mom.

Does he know what all the letters sound like? It kind of depends on how he learned to read as there are slight variations on how some view the sounds.

My son did phonographix so he knows all the phonemes. If I say spell “girl” he would say the sounds and not the letters. G-IR-L. If it is a word he needs to practice I might leave out a sound and ask him to figure out what is missing.
G_ _ L. If he writes er instead of ir I would ask him if it looks right. A child that sees GERL should say there is something not right about it. Then I would ask that he try another phoneme for the “er” sound. He might try GURL, again something is not right. When he writes GIRL, he should have that familiarity bell go off and say that is the one. This helped my son to look at the words and not just spell them with any sound that fits. When you think about it, it really is something we all do. You are trying to write the word baptism and you write batisim but it just doesn’t look right so you try baptisum, nope not it, then finally baptism.

Reading is mostly auditory but spelling has a bit of a visual component. The word has to sound right and look right based on the visual memory of seeing the word before. I think spelling is sometimes a factor of not knowing the sounds but sometimes it is just a case of not looking at the word. My son has visual processing weakness and great phonemic awareness so I could really see the problem as a visual one for him.

I got this from a read america (phonographix) news letter. I don’t have any original ideas when it comes to teaching, it always comes from somewhere else.

Well, Kyle brought home his spelling test yesterday… 100!!! Of course it was a fairly easy list this week, the hardest words were quilt, picnic and been(this one was tricky because most of the words were short i words.) His school does spelling sort of differently. He brings home a list of 15 words on Monday, these words will be on the test. Then there will be another 10 words that have the same “rule” or sound. We have no idea what those words will be, so I usually try and come up with atleast 20 more words we practice. This week was “short i” and blends (dr, spl, pr, br etc) I came up with 3 words for each blend sound. Sometimes I get lucky and the words we use are on the test, sometimes not.

While my DH was telling Kyle how proud he was of him for making 100, Kyle responded happily “It was easy because of all the practicing I did this week”. I never thought I’d hear him HAPPY about working on spelling! I guess the shaving cream helped a little.

BTW, I’m a horrible speller also!

My son also did great on spelling tests last year after doing PG.

We would also just write the words and underline each sound separately like it says to do in reading reflex.

It is so nice to hear that your son has found success.

Your information re: spelling is very interesting to me. Once again, we have entered another school year and the poor spelling and handwriting that my ADD child exhibits are starting to stand out. I never thought about just having her look at her words to see if they looked right…….I just always go for getting the letters written correctly. You’ve given me a few ideas about how to help h study for her tests!

I think alot of kids have similar symptoms when it comes to spelling, but they have different issues that are causing the problems. I’m thinking my dd’s spelling issues are because she can’t image letters and that she ‘sees’ words as pictures vs. individual letters. (She is a high visual-spatial kid). If this is like your child, here’s a couple things we have done.

We have to input multiple ways. She has to write them and when she writes them, we cover up the one(s) on top so that she is having to remember vs. copying from the first ones she wrote(this was sort of an ‘ah-ha’ moment when I discovered why writing multiple times was not effective with her!). She has to spell them verbally - both forward and backward. She has to try to ‘see’ the letters in her head. (I just discovered recently that she was now ‘seeing’ cartoons in her head that have the words hanging off them? She used to say she never ‘saw’ anything, so I guess that is progress, but I really don’t want her seeing ‘pictures’ - I want just the individual letters). Spelling words verbally is much harder for her than writing the words, because she wants to do everything phonetically.

On words that she has a hard time with, we do rainbow colors - I usually do the different patterns in different colors vs. each letter. I have also started using those bath paints and we do the spelling test in the bathtub with the colored paints. Back tracing also helps alot of kids. Plants the image in their head.

Acing the weekly spelling test is now a piece of cake. Retaining the spelling and transferring to writing is totally a different subject! But the visualizing exercises are really helping - she now sometimes will catch herself - she automatically thinks she doesn’t know how to spell it - and then realizes that she does remember.

Dea,

Have you ever looked at Lindamood’s Seeing Stars book? You are doing a lot of the things it talks about but you might find more ideas in it for teaching your daughter to “see” letters. We started it about a year and a half ago but realized then that my son did not have sound symobl relationship down cold. Haven’t formally got back to it but use some of the techniques. It is easy to understand and follow and I think some of the MTC/PACE stuff draws from it. Still, it might be helpful to have the source.

Seeing Stars was developed because some segment of kids who went through LIPS still didn’t become automatic.

Beth

Is there a specific book that I should look for that has a program that explains teaching visualizing and verbalizing? Where did you find it?

I looked under seeing stars on amazon and only found the books about stars in the sky.

Thanks, I think this would be a good one for my son to help improve his spelling when he writes.

Linda,

Visualizing and verbalizing and Seeing STars are two separate programs of Lindamood Bell. Visualizing and Verbalizing deals with seeing pictures in your head—it is a comprehension program as I understand it. We haven’t done it but it is on my “list”. Seeing Stars teaches kids to see letters in their head—symbol imagery. It is easy to understand and follow and can be used to supplement PG or any other phonic based program. The Lindamood folks argue that these are two separate skills and that some kids can without training do one but not the other. They both are clearly visual skill though.

Both can be found only through Lindamood Bell. Look for their website. I have information at home as well but you should be able to order it either through the web or get a phone number and then call them. I think I called.

I have Seeing STars and it is a great read. It explains how they came to develop the program–out of kids not becoming automatic.

Beth

Thanks for reminding me of Seeing Stars. I have actually been debating on getting the manual for V/V and hadn’t even really thought about Seeing Stars.

Do you know when you might look at Seeing Stars vs. V/V? I’ve never really been clear on the difference between two?

I do think this could be helpful for us?

Didn’t read you post above. Thanks this is helpful - Seeing Stars may be a good fit for us. I would have splurged for the whole V/V potentially.

I was reading your posts on another board asking about symbol imagery. That really is Seeing Stars. Seeing Stars is more related to decoding rapidly and automatically and V & V to comprehending what you read.

Beth

One thing that always amazed me, is that my daughter after completing the teacher assigned task to help with learning her spelling words still could not READ the words. So we developed our own learning system that works pretty well. On Mon. nights we write the words on flash card, and flash them until she can READ each one - this is the ONLY time she writes the words. Tue. night again we read each card, and we READ the spelling, and use the word in a sentence - at this point the goal is for her to SLOW DOWN and SEE each individual letter - a very difficult thing for her to do but this has improved both her reading and spelling dramatically. Wen. I actually start quizzing her on the words, if she spells it correctly, she earns the flash card, if not I show the card, she reads the word, READS the spelling, and the card goes back in the stack - study time is over when she has all the card 5 minutes or 5 hours it doesn’t matter. Thur. we will practice test or repeat Wen. program. Except for Monday night all this can be done at anytime, study time is not restricted to sitting together at the table - in the car on the way to/from soccer practice, while cooking dinner together, while she plays in the tub, it doesn’t matter since her mind is always on a dozen things anyway its only important that you distract one part of her mind with learning - that’s how she will be testing anyway. GOOD LUCK

I have my son type the words on the computer. This forces him to think about each letter and seems to help a lot.

Beth

Beth,

What a great idea! I’ll have to try that with Kyle. Last week was the first week we didn’t do the writing them in shaving cream and he got a 76 on his test. Of course he got all the words right when we quized him before school!