Son's spelling problems

12yo is not too late.

The first thing I would suggest is that you go to http://www.mcgrawhill.ca/school/schoolGraphics/resource8.pdf and print out the placement test for “Spelling Through Morphographs”. If your son does not score well enough for this program, then I would start him in Sequential Spelling (http://www.avko.org ).

Sequential Spelling is an excellent program for dyslexics. Feel free to call or email the author with any questions about where to start with your son.

For most 12yo’s, I would start in book 1 of the 7 book Sequential Spelling series, but do quite a few lessons in a row until I reached a lesson that started to be a little challenging. At that point I would switch to two lessons per day. They can be done one right after the other if you work out of different sections of the book, as the patterns are addressed in two-week increments. So, for example, you could do lesson #31 immediately followed by lesson #61, the next day do #32 and #62, etc. There are 180 lessons per book, and this approach speeds up the process considerably. Carryover into writing seems to be automatic. Most people start seeing this after about 60 lessons. (If you notice your son mindlessly copying patterns from the word above in his lesson, have him cover up his previous words to force him to use short-term memory for the pattern. A key indicator of this is the child making the same mistakes in the same spots day after day.) Most SS lessons in book #1 can be done in under 10 minutes each. Each SS book has 180 lessons.

Once your son can pass the placement test for “Spelling Through Morphographs”, I would switch him over to that program because it proceeds much faster. STM is completely scripted and very easy to teach. Most lessons take less than 20 minutes. There are about 130 lessons total, so it can easily be done in one school year. (This program is available through http://www.sra4kids.com . Click on the site map, then look under Direct Instruction to find STM. The program is pricey, about $200, but worth it.)

After STM, the “adults only” version of Sequential Spelling would be a great follow-up. This program consists of 2 books of 180 lessons each, but each lesson is about double the length of the 7-book series and the patterns are presented much faster.

These are the two fastest and most effective programs I have found for good readers/poor spellers. Even so, expect it to take about three years to reach grade level. Spelling is much slower to remediate than reading.

Nancy

It’s never too late. It would be interesting to know the types of spelling errrors your son is making. Can he spell simple short vowel words correctly? If this is still a problem, you may have to look at some basic phonemic awareness training and help him learn basic sound/symbol relationships.

If he has mastered short vowel words, how is he handling long vowels and diphthongs? Does he know the legal letter strings that represent vowel sounds? Is he working his way from left to right through words or is he trying to remember words he’s seen but getting all the letters out of order?

Is he able to orally break words into syllables? This is an important step in spelling longer words.

I’ll be at the Illinois Dyslexia Conference for the next couple of days but will check back later to see if I can be of more help.

Grace

The Spel-Lang Tree
http://www.spellangtree.org

Take a look at my spelling book, Looking Glass Spelling. You can see a sample of a chapter at www.gwhizresources.com. that is the lowest level (reading/spelling levels of 2nd grade or lower). There are 2 other books for higher reading levels (3rd-4th grade and 5th-6th grade, respectively), but it is designed for older kids. I use it with my 7th and 8th graders, and we use it in my school for grades 5-8. I’ve even used it with high schoolers. It’s very easy to use for parents or teachers, even in a mainstream classroom.

Email me directly, if you want for further information. I’ll also be speaking at the NYC International Dyslexia Association conference in March, the Association for Learning Consultants in New Jersey in Dec., and CEC in New Orleans in April.

Fern

Gail, My dd is a good reader, poor speller but not dyslexic—just a whole language victim. She was never directly taught sound symbol relationships. I tried a tutor but she couldn’t abide her and refused to have me teach her. I had her do a computer program instead, which seems to have helped a lot with her spelling (she’s still far from perfect but much, much better). The CD Rom is from Sound Reading Solutions (you can find them through Google) and guides kids through sequential exercises for phoenemic awareness and the sound-symbol relationship. It costs somewhere around $50 and would take a month or so to do at 15 to 20 minutes a day. There is another popular CD for phoenemic awareness “Earobics” that we tried, but it is very slow and very boring—I felt sorry for dd when I was making her do it. SRS comes in different versions for age groups—we did the Teen and Adult one. Dd did it reasonably willingly. You could try the full SRS program, which is like Reading Reflex but very scripted. That would give an even stronger foundation in phoenemic awareness and the sound symbol relationship—but you’d have to make sure you could do this with your son. It costs somewhere around $100 and takes somewhere from a month to six weeks to complete, assuming you’re working at 45 minutes a day.

Somehow my above comment did not move the message up in the forum. I’m trying again.