Dear all,
I have always enjoyed your collective wisdoms, and I am writing to learn a bit more about spelling problems. I have a 6 and a 3 month old daughter who is very weak in her spelling. She is in the second grade (in a British school system which starts school at 5). She reads extremely well and tested at school at 5 and 9 months with the ability of a 7 and 11 month. But she is having a lot of troubles with her spelling and writing. As told by her teacher, she has problems even identifying vowel sounds, that means she cannot even spell the simplist words. Then, she just can’t seem to be able to remember words even though she has a very good memory for ten million other things. We had her tested for learning disability about a month ago. The result is that she is not classified as learning disabled (though the test done is at a government clinic with a test designed for local Hong Kong children whose language is Chinese while my daughter is bi-lingual with a slant in English.) Actually, she has been pulled out of class to work on her spellings with a special ed teacher, first once a week, and now on a daily basis, who thinks her problem is auditory. By the way, Zoe, my d,d is tested as suffering from a mild hearing loss last year, though she seems to be doing great with languages — she is fluent in three tongues. She used to have very strong emotional problems about her writing and spelling — she would refuse to go to school when it is a ‘writing’ day or that sort of thing. Then, she gets extremely upset when she keeps on missing certain words. Luckily, she gets a very supportive class teacher this year and after many positive reinforcements at school and home, she is more willing to accept her ‘weakness’ and is more willing to work on her spelling.
I suppose my question is: what causes spelling problems? (I am also a weak speller.) How come someone like Zoe simply does not have any recall of words that she sees despite she reads so well? Seems her reading is largely by sight words as her phonetic awareness is very weak — but she reads very fast, like an andult, having no need to decode, but just gets the meaning of the texts. What are the methods to teach spelling to someone who is weak in this area? (At school, Zoe merely comes home with a list of frequently used words, about 8 per week, for her to work on.) But the problem I am having is even though we spend hours with her working on those words, she forgets them either before the test or after, which makes us wonder what is the point.
Many thanks for your help
Helan
Hong Kong
Hi Helan,
We lived in Hong Kong for 7 years and, in fact, that is where my son was first evaluated. He was in a British curriculum school there as well (Kellett). The school was wonderful, but, in terms of services, there just wasn’t enough expertise on the island. Very few OT’s to service an ever increasing number of needy children, Speech and Language Pathologists who didn’t even know as much as I did about programs, etc. There is one vision therapist that we used—but I can tell you more about our experience with her privately if you are interested. There are some English speaking Ed Psychologists connected to the English School Foundation in Kowloon who can at least administer the WISC, etc. But, I am not so sure they interpret the scores very well. All we got from the ed psych was “he’ll compensate”–I didn’t even know what that meant!!!
It has been 3 years since we left and services may have improved. Also, I know alot more now than I did then … so I might not have been asking the right questions.
What test did they administer? What does the report say. Just saying she’s not LD really doesn’t help. I think you need to find out where the problem is and go from there. We spend the summers in the USA, where my son had comprehensive assessments and interpretation of the scores from HK, and we have really pinpointed his problem areas—this really helped me to determine which therapies could potentially benefit him and in what order to do them. I think there are places in HK to find out the information you need, and many things you can do at home to help…but, first I think you need to know if it is a visual problem, an auditory problem, a motor problem or a combination.
It sounds as though she is a very bright little girl-3 languages. The special ed teacher thinks her problem is auditory? You mentioned that she has a mild hearing loss. So I guess that would be a good place to start. Has she been tested for CAPD? I am not sure about the complexities of this and mild hearing issues..but do think it is an avenue that schould be explored. If you can find someone, I would get her tested. The Listening Program/Ease and other similar programs are very easy to administer at home. Fast Forward may also be another possibility for helping with CAPD. But I am unsure if that is available in HK. Some schools in HK have a reading recovery program they call Fast Forward, but it is not the one to which I am referring. I think there were some intellectual property issues (of course!!) w/respect to getting these programs into Asia…so I am not sure if this has been sorted out yet. The US manufacturers do not want their products in Asia due to piracy problems (I tried so hard to get IM in Singapore–where piracy is not an issue, but they just wouldn’t go for it).
My son too reads very well, spelling wasn’t a problem—typical for his particular profile. He actually has an incredible auditory memory. His problems are all spatial. But, he scored amazingly high on the rather antiquated vision assessment the HK OT administered…so there is a lot of sorting and finding out what each test really measures. I have come to learn, at least for us, that visual perceptual ability and spatial perceptual ability are very different skills. Many of the programs target the former–where he is off the charts—It is amazing how some children can find some things so hard, but be incredible at others (Ahhh—so that’s what he meant by ‘he’ll compensate’ ;).
We haven’t tried LMB programs (I do think we might at some point), but I have read positive things about it on this board and have seen my friend’s daughter’s spelling go from horrible to very good after an intensive summer at a LMB Clinic.
If you, like so many of us expats, spend your summer in the US, there are many LMB Clinics. Also, LMB has opened a clinic in London—
By the way, 6 years and 3 months is still very young and since you have identified a weakness now, you have every reason to be positive about the future. Early intervention is key.
I hope I haven’t rambled on too much…but it was interesting to read that you are in Hong Kong—wonder if we have any mutual friends—we lived on the south side of the island.
Good Luck.
Margo
Re: Hong Kong
Margo Could you explain the differance between visual perceptual ability and spatial perceptual ability.I have add that was tested and they said high auditory processing 7th grade but kindergarden speed She is in 2nd grade Almost at grade level in reading . Samething last year but over the summer her reading level dropped by half . The school says she sees fine but I see her skipping very short words or reading as instead of is or having trouble breaking down large words.One time she skipped the word “a” and I asked her how she could not know that word and she said she didnt see it.Do you have any advise on this?
Thanks
dj
Linda W reported on the reading board that at a lecture she went to she learned that writing problems are usually visual. I will say that writing and spelling are my son’s two biggest problems and I am quite sure it is visual. He also reads very well after phonographix.
He is in vision therapy now. It is too soon to tell if it will cure his spelling issues and improve his writing. He already had some major writing gains from occupational therapy and interactive metronome.
You may want to check into somethink the lindamood bell people call symbol imagery. www.lindamoodbell.com
Seeing stars might help if this seems like the problem.
My son can remember everything too except spelling and times tables. He remembers concepts and vocabulary words really well. He is a big picture kid. He misses all the details.