My son is 13, gifted, has an exceptional command of language, but he can’t spell! He works very hard, but repetition doesn’t help. He can know the words before a spelling test, then forget during the test. He typically misses 30-50% of the words on spelling tests. This affects his grades in all classes because most teachers count off for spelling, even in Math! Does anyone have suggestions on how to help him learn to spell? He spell phonetically, and gets vowels mixed up. Does anyone know if the inability to spell has been identified as a learning disability? I suspect that it is like dyslexia and ADHD, but has not been discovered to be LD yet. Any help would be appreciated.
My son can't spell
Kay,
Thank you so much for your response. It has gotten me started on finding some help for my son. I have posted on the teacher’s portion of this BB, and am searching through that site to find other spelling related topics. I have found some very good information so far.
Thank you again.
Re: My son can't spell
Hi, Lindy,
Sounds like my son!
By all means, request the school eval him for LD. Also consider getting private testing. Although it is true, as posted in the teacher forum, that schools usually do poorly in remediating dysgraphia, my son could not get though the school day without the accomidations and modifications that classifying him allowed.
Barb
spelling
My experience would lead me to say that a gifted 13 year old who struggles to spell likely has an underlying LD. Who told you otherwise? I’d have him tested. While spelling issues can be caused by many things, they sometimes use the word dysorthographia.
I encourage my own dysorthographic son and my students to use Spellcheck. If they see the word spelled correctly, they can gradually imprint it on their brains. I find memorizing the spelling of words to be fairly ineffective as there are so many words in the English language and the brain just can’t memorize them all.
As early as middle school, my son became his own best advocate and helped his teachers to see that something was up with his spelling. Most of his teachers took off very gently for his spelling mistakes and some would not take off for it at all as they realized my son had a learning difference when it came to spelling. Without that accomodation, he’d have never made it to college where he primarily takes engineering courses where spelling just doesn’t matter so much.
Good luck to you and your son.
Re: My son can't spell
It may not be a spelling dysability (not saying it is not— could be too), but the way your kid learned to read. Learning via whole language (not really learning phonetic rules) can be devasting to spelling. My sister learned to read via whole words where they learn the general shape of words etc. She is a terrible speller and only got a little better since she can use spell check.
Some kids would benefit (whether truly having a spelling disability or not) from learning spelling rules via a Orton Gillingham based program sort of sped up. There is also a program AVCO spelling, I think. Not sure how this would be as this is for older kids.
This would not involve memorizing lists.
Another idea is to use the spelling study outlined in Seeing Stars, a Lindamood Bell program. He wouldn’t need the whole book but the book outlines a way to teach spelling words. It involves writing in the air which some kids might dislike. Anyway the steps are basically you write the word, then you have the kid study it to look for things like “does any part of the word not play fair” (this only works if he is spelling phonetically), how many syllables, etc. Then they write the word in the air while looking at it and then they cover up the word and write it. I think this will only work if he is not misspelling every other word. If that’s the case you might look for something a bit more comprehensive with spelling.
EPS has a list of OG based programs and some are very low cost and require no training. They also have some comprehensive spelling programs.
—des
Hi Lindy,
First, I’d suggest posting this on the parenting or teaching boards, as you’ll likely get more responses.
Spelling (or problems with it) can be an indication of a learning disability in written expression and/or visual processing. It might be classified as dysgraphia. However, in my son’s case, the experts called it a specific LD in written expression. My son works hard on spelling, but it’s come down to a dependence on assistive technology. He’s in high school now, and doing fine, but he does need to use an electronic dictionary when he’s doing written work at school. He uses a word processor whenever possible (that was written into his middle school IEP). We edit everything for spelling. He keeps a journal of words he encounters when reading that he knows will be hard to spell. He knows it is a problem, and works hard to compensate. There may be a component of dyslexia involved too, but he’s better at compensating for that.
If it’s a real issue, get him tested and see if you can get him on an IEP. In my son’s case, the IEP stated that misspelling couldn’t be held against him in anything but a specific spelling test.
If you want to learn a bit more, here’s a web page I found:
http://www.msu.edu/course/cep/886/Writing/page1.htm
Good Luck,
Kay