special education services and spelling

We do not. There are youngsters who can read and even decode who have spelling difficulties. Spelling is very difficult to remediate effectively.

If we would use just a spelling ‘disability’ to qualify for services, most of the high school students in my school would qualify. Remember, most of these students along with not being taught how to read, haven’t been taught how to spell. You would need phonics for that and we still aren’t teaching phonics; whole language which includes ‘inventive spelling’ still reigns supreme.

Not here in CA, Shay. Hasn’t for some years now, more than 5, less than 10.

Well that is a plus! What program do you use? We on the East coast seem to be always behind CA. When your state was apologizing for making Whole Langage the way to teach reading, VA started it’s first pilot program! Go figure. PA just starting using Reading Recovery for it’s remedial program last year. We know it doesn’t work. Strange how states don’t listen to other states and learn from their mistakes.

There are various things being used out and about. Some are returning to older programs that have worked over the years, like Corrective Reading in our Title 1 reading lab. We had Open Court. We have a new program now. I really don’t buy into “programs.” I believe that if teachers are TAUGHT how to teach reading, the theory behind it, to understand what kinds of things a person must be able to do to read, then they can take a program and tailor it, if that program provides them with good tools for teaching purposes. We cannot put children through cookie cutter programs that progress a lesson or page per day. Some students get it and others will need more time on certain skills and more intensive practice with certain skills.

You ought to see our math program now, if you want to see a disaster in the making! Standards designed to get all children into algebra 1 by 7th grade. Lessons covering so much each day, paced so fast that too many are being left behind, contrary to what Bush wants.

I see that same thing going on here and it frightens me. What happened to Algebra being a high school freshman class?? This is not only a problem with math courses though we are seeing it across the board. People wonder why our kids are stressed just look in todays classrooms. Look at how some books are given grade levels that don’t seem right. People complain todays kids are not as smart as they were in the past but I just don’t see it. My kids are learning things I have never been taught. It makes me worry about the future. YIKES.

Check out Looking Glass Spelling at www.gwhizresources.com. I am the author, so I am biased, but we have been using it at my school in NJ (private school for bright LD & ADHD students K-8), and we’re getting great results, particularly in carryover into writing and improved reading and vocabularly, because it teaches strategies based on decoding techniques using age appropriate vocabulary (grades 4-12). People who have ordered it have re-ordered the next levels, so they seem happy.

For math, we’ve been using Math Steps by Houghton Mifflin. We use the book that is one grade level below where the student tested. I like it a lot, although, I still have to supplement it. It gets into simple algebra early on, but the way it is presented is very good: workbook format, so there is no copying, simple and clear explanations at the beginning of each unit, and built-in periodic review. Also, there are a lot of word problems and problem-solving strategies taught, and the review sections are good. Good luck.

One thing I have learned, is that you need multiple resources to effectively teach to special needs kids.

Yes Shay,

My very creative son can invent spelling with the best of them. I wish they never taught him to invent spelling. He still thinks it is just fine to spell things with the creative side of his brain.

The invented spelling argument drives me nuts.

It compares with learning to talk. Of course you don’t expect a two-year-old to have perfect pronunciation and elaborate grammar; you’re happy that he’s starting to talk. Of course you *do* expect a ten-year-old to speak properly (speech deficits excepted) and you tell him to clean up his act when he uses baby talk. If he does have a hearing or speech deficit, you work with him repeating over and over and over until he gets it right.

Spelling needs to be looked at the same way. A kid in kindergarten or Grade 1 who is just learning the sound-symbol relationship cannot reasonably be expected to know it all overnight, so of course the spelling will be inaccurate. If he represents sounds by reasonable symbols, you are happy. (Or, you can go back to the 1950’s system and not have him write independently at all, only copy and circle for two years or so). But, by the time he has finished Grade 2 in a reasonably good system, he should have learned 90% of the sound-symbol system and several hundred words of reading/writing vocabulary, so by this point he should be spelling common words fairly standardly.

Too much emphasis on exact spelling in the early stages is counterproductive, because it makes you stress the irregularities instead of regularities, and it overloads the student’s memory. Keeping invented spellings as a standard past Grade 2/3 level shows a disrespect for children’s abilities to learn and encourages them to practice mistakes — after a few more years, it’s really hard to unlearn the bad habits.

Victoria, your last paragraph says it all!

I like programs, only if they work. I have posted before the different programs that have worked with my kids in 11th grade English. I don’t use all of the exercises in the programs, this is dependent on the needs of the kids sitting in front of me. The programs that I have used have taken my non-readers, non-writers to being able to read their books, writing research papers and ultimately passing their SOL, Standard of Learning tests so that they can graduate. I look at programs, such as PG, as a list of systematically designed exercises that remediate deficiencies in reading, not just a program. I don’t have time to devise my own programs that work so I have to depend on those that do. I also don’t believe in mixing programs. I use PG for decoding/spelling strategies, Read Naturally for fluency, Step Up to Writing for a writing program, V/V for study skills, etc. Both in my classes and privately, I have taken accommodations away from kids, put them on monitoring and finally exited them from sped. services when they are seniors. One dyslexic student last year was asked to join the creative writing class and has passed all of her SOLs. We are in the process of exiting her from sped services and she is making plans to go to college next year. Another thing that I think you have to have is faith in yourself as a teacher; faith in the student that they ‘can’; and faith in the programs that you use to remediate. Faith may be the most important part of the equation.