Options for people who can't spell

[Terabith]

Okay.  We've worked and worked and worked on remediation, but tonight I had to fix the spelling of "girl" and "which" in Catherine's book report.  She's almost 12.  Honestly, we can keep working, but I don't really think she's ever going to be able to spell basic sight words.  So what are our options?

 

She reads well above grade level.  She has a phenomenal vocabulary.  But there really hasn't been any improvement despite years and years of Wilson tutoring in terms of spelling.  She usually chooses a spelling that makes sense, but for so many sounds there are multiple options and she just can't remember which one is correct.  Nor can she really identify the correct spelling from a list of options. 

 

So...assuming we're not going to get a massive burst of spelling improvement, what are our options?

[OneStepAtATime]

Train her to use a spell checker. In Barton that system teaches a student how to effectively use a spell checker. DD really resisted at first but now that she is very comfortable with how to use it she pulls it out whenever she has a word where the spelling is not immediately clear.

 

I can't link tonight but I will try to remember later to link the brand Barton recommends.

 

FWIW, my dad was terrible at spelling. He still wrote a manual for the Air Force and was great at his job. Spelling or lack there of is not the end of the world. I feel that reading is a much more important skill.

 

Does your daughter type?

Edited March 23, 2017 by OneStepAtATime

[Terabith]

She doesn't really type well. This summer I'm going to try paying her to improve.

[Terabith]

She has a spell checker. Franklin. But it's so hard for her, because it's not checking one word in a paragraph. It's more than 80% of the words. It makes writing just too tedious.

[OneStepAtATime]

You might look at Touch Type Read and Spell. Homeschool Buyer's Co-op usually has it on sale. Lessons are short. Find a way to get her to do them every weekday. Just one lesson a day, especially if she is hard to convince, regardless of how short the lesson.

 

Make certain the keyboard is at a good height to prevent strain and make certain her fingers are properly placed every.single.time. until muscle and procedural memory take over. It will help tremendously with getting her typing accurately. If she already has some bad typing habits try to push for proper technique with whatever positive reinforcements might work. Praise for effort. Typing can take lot of time to master. I'm talking years for some. Still, if you make those lessons part of the daily routine then eventually typing will be much easier.

[Heathermomster]

DS types and uses the spell checker.  He has seen steady improvement with spelling over the years.  While studying spelling as a subject, we used a ton of kinesthetic methods, chunking, and visualizing of words.  With DD, we mark misspelled words with diacritic marks and fall back on the methods used with DS.

 

The OSHA website has instructions for setting up a typing workstation.  

[Kanin]

At our school we use Read & Write Gold. It's about $150 for an annual subscription... so, bummer, you have to subscribe each year. There's a free add-on for Chrome if you want to use Google Docs for writing, but I don't know how many of the features are included in the free version.

 

My favorite part of the full-on program is a word predictor box, so as a kid is typing the box displays a list of possible words they can choose from. They hover over the words with their mouse and the computer reads the words aloud. This is REALLY helpful for kids who can't tell when words are misspelled. 

 

In my experience, Read & Write is very kid-friendly - I'd say it's totally worth the money, especially if your daughter is going to use it for high school, college, and in her professional life. There's a free trial if you want to try it!

[marbel]

My son (freshman at community college) has never been able to spell.  We struggled mightily over the years.  He sounds a lot like your daughter, in terms of vocabulary and reading ability. Spelling just never came to him.  He has had 2 NP evaluations for LDs (I assume based on your sig that you have gone through similar).  He has several issues beyond spelling. 

 

He learned to type and use a spellchecker around middle school age.  That helped a lot though it was a struggle; took a lot of perseverance on both our parts. :-)   But also, time and practice seem to have helped too.  He is now finally getting a little better; I think it's because he is writing more and the spelling is finally catching on.  Maybe some of it is muscle memory?  If I look over his shoulder when he is typing, I see much less red underlining now than I did years ago.  

 

We obtained the 2nd eval at age 17 expressly for the purpose of college accommodations. It showed various disorders which allowed him accommodations for (among other things) in-class writing in school.  He is allowed a dictionary or spell-checker, or the teacher can choose not to consider spelling when grading.  Since a dictionary is useless for that purpose, and spellcheckers on are phones which are never allowed during tests, his instructors have always ignored his spelling mistakes.  (He also can have time-and-a-half since he is slow when handwriting.)   That has taken a lot of pressure off him and he is doing well.

 

 

[Minerva]

I second the advice of using Touch Type Read and Spell. It has been a phenomenal program for my dd. She will never be a great speller, but at least now she can spell words close enough that her spell check can figure out what she is trying to write  :lol: .  

 

 

[Terabith]

Yeah, it's the in class writing that worries me the most. There's ways we can get around it for essays: speech to text, word prediction software. But that doesn't work for in class writing. Her fifth grade teacher has no problem reading her work because it's totally phonetic, but I wonder about high school and college. And how do you overlook spelling and avoid judgments when words like girl are spelled incorrectly?

[OneStepAtATime]

Yeah, it's the in class writing that worries me the most. There's ways we can get around it for essays: speech to text, word prediction software. But that doesn't work for in class writing. Her fifth grade teacher has no problem reading her work because it's totally phonetic, but I wonder about high school and college. And how do you overlook spelling and avoid judgments when words like girl are spelled incorrectly?

FWIW, "girl" isn't necessarily an easy word to spell.  There are a lot of different "er" spellings in English.  Can she spell words like cat?  CVC words?  If she is struggling with CVC words, I think that would be a bigger concern.

 

Are you asking how a parent avoids judgement or strangers that read her writing?  If you are worried about work in a classroom setting does she have an IEP?  If so, they should be more understanding and accommodating.  Perhaps they will let her use tech in the classroom?  For example, my nephew has profound dysgraphia.  His writing is utterly illegible.  Even if he could spell no one could read what he wrote.  The high school and college allowed him to type.  He did not have an official diagnosis through the school system but they allowed the accommodation anyway.  He is making a 4.0 in college.  He just has to type everything.  Colleges are frequently a lot more accommodating for using tech anyway, even if there is no diagnosis/IEP.

 

Will some people judge a person negatively because they can't spell well?  Yes.  But most people are pretty understanding of spelling issues.  Heck, the younger generation has all kinds of creative spelling for text/tweet/email communication.  If she learns to type and works at it steadily, and learns how to use tech to help out she should be fine.

 

If you are more concerned with your own reaction then I want to point out that there are a ton of successful people in the world that are not great at spelling.  In today's day and age, with all the technology available honestly spelling just isn't as critical a skill as it might have been.  As mentioned up thread, my dad was terrible at spelling.  He was also incredibly smart and capable.  People recognized his abilities and ignored the spelling issues.  DH is also terrible at spelling (dysgraphic and dyslexic).  He still has a very successful career, including having to write out extensive reports to his boss.  He types everything.  

[Heathermomster]

Yeah, it's the in class writing that worries me the most. There's ways we can get around it for essays: speech to text, word prediction software. But that doesn't work for in class writing. Her fifth grade teacher has no problem reading her work because it's totally phonetic, but I wonder about high school and college. And how do you overlook spelling and avoid judgments when words like girl are spelled incorrectly?

Well, she should be accommodated with a 504 and possible IEP. Edited March 23, 2017 by Heathermomster

[Terabith]

She's good with CVC words. It's primarily words where there are optional ways to spell. Chinese the other day was "Chinees." The other issue is for some reason the ow sound is often spelled aw. However, so many of the "sight words," are spelled irregularly. Only in the last year has she started spelling of correctly. It used to be uv. From is still "frum."

 

She is in a private school, so IEP isn't a factor. It's been fine so far, though next year is middle school and I wonder if the teachers will be so accommodating. My bigger worry is college or in a job situation with on the fly writing and how it will be judged. I'm not worried about MY judgment but about the fact that the world judges based on appearances, including spelling and punctuation (which is also somewhat lacking).

[OneStepAtATime]

Even in a private school you could write up your own sort of IEP/504 kind of thing and update each year to show what you are doing at home. Keep a record so if she does need more accommodations later on, you can show a history. I think HSLDA or THSC has an online form you can use.

 

Get her learning to use a spell checker. It takes some finesse. Barton recommends the Franklin brand. I can't link right now. Sorry.

 

Get Touch Type Read Spell to improve her typing (which may also improve her spelling since it is OG based).

 

Look at something like Fix It grammar for at home study of punctuation etc. Lessons are very short so it wouldn't take up much time and they are only scheduled 4 days a week so you could even do two lessons on the weekend and only two during the week.

 

How often is she getting Wilson tutoring and what does the tutor say?

[hepatica]

My DD 13 is exactly like this. Tons of spelling programs over the years, nothing stuck. Franklin type spell checker would be useless. She misspells every other word, at a minimum. She absolutely hated TTRS. She has a very jagged testing profile. Very superior in some areas and super low processing speed. 

 

We have decided that there are bigger fish to fry. She is an excellent writer. I mean really excellent. But, her first drafts are a sea of microsoft red, and often she will have no punctuation at all. I have decided to focus on teaching her to edit her own work. She runs the spell check, and then I sit with her and model going line by line adding punctuation and picking up all those words the spell check misses. 

 

I do worry a bit about how this is going to work in school. She will probably be going to high school in a year, so we have to figure this out too! I think there are good technological (voice to text etc) aids for work at home, but in class writing is going to be a challenge. So, I don't know what to do either, but I just wanted to lend some support. 

[Kanin]

I'm taking a course on assistive technology for my special ed master's program, and we just learned about something called Co:Writer. It sounds similar to Read & Write, but possibly easier to use! It looks really awesome. You can watch a short video about it here:

 

 

 

It's $5/month for a student/parent subscription. You can use it for anything - Word, Docs, filling in online forms, etc. You could even scan in worksheets and fill those out!

 

 

[Daria]

She has a spell checker. Franklin. But it's so hard for her, because it's not checking one word in a paragraph. It's more than 80% of the words. It makes writing just too tedious.

 

I'd look at something like Co:Writer that has enhanced word prediction built in, so she can check as she goes, rather than one word at a time when she's editing.

[Terabith]

Actually, no.  I didn't teach her to use the dictionary because frankly, she can't spell well enough to do so.  She also sucks at alphabetical order.  Really, really sucks at it.  She has memory issues.   Looking anything up in the dictionary is a painful process that takes at least 20 minutes per word and usually doesn't work.  And there's screaming.  Crying.  Gnashing of teeth.  Things thrown.  It isn't pretty. 

[Terabith]

Oh, we definitely have more going on than just not being able to spell.  She has severe anxiety.  And it's an open question whether or not there is autism.  The reason she's in school is because of the crying/ screaming/ throwing things.  It's not common now, although back when we were homeschooling, it wasn't UNcommon.  When we were homeschooling, I got anxious about her failure to progress and so I would push her too hard.  She doesn't handle pushing or pressure of any sort, even at school, but at school that attention is divided among a lot more kids and the teacher isn't as personally invested in one individual child's progress.  She gets frustrated at school and occasionally yells, but the teachers don't push once she exhibits signs of frustration, because they know it's pointless.   On the one hand, because I was so invested, she learned to read and to read well, and I think on balance it was probably worth it, but it took a lot out of her, me, and our relationship.  I still don't think that would have happened had her early years been spent in school.  But spelling is orders of magnitude more difficult, and as she's gotten older, I've gotten better at being able to predict what is something she CAN get with some work and what is kinda pointless to push on, and frankly there's nothing that's as worth the pushing as being able to read was.  Trust me.  Dictionary use is so far beyond what's she's capable of, it would be cruel and pointless to even work on.  To use a dictionary, you have to be able to get somewhere near the correct spelling. 

 

The Co: Writer sounds pretty damned awesome, though. 

[Kanin]

I just used Co:Writer to write an email in Gmail. It was awesome! After I typed a punctuation mark, it automatically read the sentence aloud. When I hovered over a word in the little box, it read that aloud to me, too, and if I clicked on it, it inserted it into my sentence. I LOVE IT! Super easy, too! It loaded in about two seconds, and it's just this simple, unobtrusive box with like 5 word choices. LOVE!

[8Arrows4theLord]

Would you have time after school to work through just the spelling part of the Barton books? The spelling rules have helped not only my kids but myself as well! I made a booklet with all the rules in it, so they can look back at them if they get stuck.

[ElizabethB]

Here is the alphabet converted to numbers, watch my phonics lesson 30 if you are unsure how to use it. I have found it helpful for my struggling students.

http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/Resources/AlphabetFiles.pdf

 

She can use it every time she looks up a word in a dictionary.  She may eventually wean herself off of it or may need it forever.  

Edited March 25, 2017 by ElizabethB

[ElizabethB]

of = f as v, schwa, same reason as s as z in words like gas.  

 

Here are percentages for spelling, converts spelling to math, again, helpful for my struggling students.

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/Resources/sound%20letter%20spell1.pdf

 

I would work on the most common 100 words, 3 per day/week until mastered, then cycle back any that she starts having problems with, using Laurie's overteaching method.  Try coding with sound number, for example f as v has a 2, you can make your own from my chart or use Webster's system or WRTR system.  Try a bunch of different things to see if any help and concentrate on the most common 100 then 200 words.

 

You might try the method in that spelling program people have had success with here, can't think of the name right now.

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/23896-overteaching-spelling-method/

[ElizabethB]

I would also make her an alphabetized list of the most frequent 300 words that she misspells, for example, leave out all the CVC words and any others she can spell, let her use it as reference when she writes, using my alphabet to numbers strip to help with looking them up.

 

My sight words by sound document is a quick way to figure out which are regular, take any of the rest she can't spell and alphabetize them.

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/Resources/Sight%20Words%20by%20Sound1.pdf

 

 

 

 

[Terabith]

My issue with spelling rules is that while they tend to do a good job of explaining why words are spelled as they are, they don't do as good a job of telling you how to get to that spelling.

 

I love the idea of over teaching, but I don't know how to do that in practice. Five years ago, I made a list of 300 most commonly spelled but irregular words. I started with ten. We spelled them orally, wrote them in salt, on the white board, while jumping, rainbow writing, with glitter glue and sand, painted them, etc. We researched etymology and history of how pronunciations have changed over time. We have worked on those ten words daily (sometimes breaking down into sets of two or three) for over FIVE YEARS. Know how many she had mastered? Two! Two words in five years. I was a reading specialist before I had kids. I'm trained in OG. I taught kids who had a harder time learning to read, but I never taught a kid who had a worse memory for spelling. Her Wilson teacher says she's pretty quick with rules and reading but isn't sure she's capable of learning to spell. And frankly, it's been five years. I'm bored to death and so is she.

[hepatica]

I have to agree with Terabith here. At a certain point more, better, different methods of teaching spelling just become beside the point. After all these years I don't believe that there is some magic method out there that we haven't tried that is going to do the trick. And, even if there is, we are not going to spend any more time on spelling. I'm in complete agreement on that one.

 

My DD knows the rules. She is a mediocre speller when quizzed on individual words. But, she cannot write and spell at the same time. It almost seems like she is using the same neural circuit for both tasks, so she can't do them both at the same time. It's like a traffic jam. I know this may be an inaccurate analogy, but seriously, the same is true for writing. She cannot even correctly copy quotations for essays without misspelling. Using a dictionary would mean that she would spend the entire day on one subject. That seems silly. And, I can't imagine doing separate dictionary lessons with a 13 year old. These sorts of dyslexic/dysgraphic kids are often very, very intelligent. My DD doesn't have the anxiety issues, but there is no way she is going to tolerate dictionary lessons. She was bored to tears with TTRS for the very same reason. She needs to be intellectually engaged.

 

Forget remediation, these kids need accommodation. She is always going to need an editor. I know that, she knows that. Their brains are organized differently. They can do lots of things others cannot. They can't spell. Who cares. Time to move on. 

[MerryAtHope]

I think 11 going on 12 is still pretty young to give up on spelling. I don't think it needs to take over your day by any means, but my kids both made tons of progress in those middle school and high school years, just working on spelling 15-20 minutes a day. It's not much daily time considering how often this skill is used. Does she keep a personal dictionary? Have her keep a list of 20-30 really common words that she tends to misspell, and have her scan her paper before giving it to you, looking for those words. When she starts to master some, let those drop off the list and add in some more. (Honestly, mine didn't even START editing papers for spelling until junior high though--there were just too many mistakes and too much need to work on the skills separately. I just didn't worry about mistakes in outside writing, worksheets, subjects etc... If it absolutely had to be edited, I had my kids try to underline every word they thought needed to be fixed in a separate editing time. I praised for any mistakes they found, and any they could fix, and I did the final mop-up after they did that, and we moved on.). Especially if your daughter was a later reader--visual memory isn't all of spelling, but it is a strong component, and I think later readers need a LOT more time to build up a visual sense of "what's right," and will have more confusion over what is or isn't right.

 

On those visual patterns like the sounds of /er/, work on just one for a good long while. Make lists of ir words that she can read and highlight the ir, and associate the ir words together. Sometimes we went over and over and over one tricky pattern like this, just a few minutes each day. Sometimes I got creative. I remember my daughter had the hardest time with oat and float. (She remembered one and not the other...I forget which one now). So we took the lid to a quaker oatmeal box and floated it in a sink of water--oats float. I don't know how many times I said oats float! She eventually mastered it though. I liked AAS because the cards let me customize the review and spend as much time as we needed on tricky patterns. We could just camp out for awhile, and then I could keep bringing it back for occasional review to see if it was still mastered. 

 

Anyway, I know remediation can be exhausting! Just wanted to say that for us, it was worth it to keep going. My son in college often has essay tests that have to be handwritten, and he's glad we continued working to get those skills as solid as possible. 

[geodob]

Terabith, from what you've written. It seems that she has virtually no visual word recall.

But with reading, she can use the visual word, for auditory word recall.

 

So rather than not being able to spell basic sight words?
While she can recognise them when she sees them, she can't recall what they look like?

 

What would be more helpful, is to get a clearer understanding of her ability to use Visual Recall?

Which starts by looking at it more broadly, and her ability to visual recall and describe things that she knows?

As well as her ability to visualise numbers, when doing mental math?

 

Also her ability to capture a visual image?  Where she looks at something and then closes her eyes, and tries to retain an image of it and describe it?

This would provide a broader idea of her ability to use visual recall.

Which could then be looked at in terms of her visual recall of words?

 

[Kanin]

Geodob reminds me of my time at Lindamood-Bell doing Seeing Stars. A big part of each session was air-writing. You hold up a card, kid looks for a few seconds (1 sec per letter), then you put the card down. Kid writes word in air, saying each letter out loud, then reads the word aloud (as if reading on invisible chalkboard). If there's a mistake, you can say, "What letter do you see second?" (or wherever the mistake was made). Kid will say what she thinks she saw, then you hold up the card. "Oh, it was supposed to be a "T"! kid will say. Hold up the card, and repeat until correct. 

 

The visualizing, writing, and correcting is supposed to build visualization skills, especially for sight words.

 

It would be interesting to see if your daughter could do that with a short word she frequently messes up, like "girl."

 

 

[ElizabethB]

What about making a visual picture of words for the high frequency ones she can't spell?  For example, for girl, a picture of a girl with special glasses or glowing red eyes and the idea "The girl can see into the IR range."  Another example: for the word separate where the middle a is unclear because of schwa, you could make the word bridged by a large A, remembering the phrase/idea "the A bridges the separation." (The word "separation" is an example from the book "Ready, Set, Remember," a good book for pictoral memorization ideas.)

 

Here is a document I made that she can use as a reference.  You can easily make a similar one with the actual words she needs to be able to look up quickly or I can fix it for you, it didn't take that long to make in Excel.  I took the words from the 220 Dolch words and 100 Fry Instant words that might be a problem for her and added my alphabet number scale, my struggling students have found it very helpful to be able to convert letters to numbers and search them that way, watch my full phonics lesson 30 to see how it works.

 

This should make it a lot easier to look up words in the dictionary and have available words she needs to write.  The first 300 words are so repeated that it should help to have a one page document to access, cutting down a lot of the look up work.  

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading//Resources/SightWordsAlphabetSpell.pdf

 

Having the alphabet scale there will also make it easier to look up other words in the dictionary once she learns how it works.  You could buy a set of letter tabs and add the numbers to them and put them on the dictionary that she finds it easiest to use.

 

The book "Ready, set, remember" if you are interested and that technique works:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Set-Remember-Jerry-Lucas/dp/0914850318/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1490736829&sr=8-1&keywords=ready+set+remember

 

It looks like the also have a spelling specific one:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Set-Remember-How-Spell/dp/0914850687/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1490736829&sr=8-3&keywords=ready+set+remember

Edited March 28, 2017 by ElizabethB

[ElizabethB]

A picture for from: A picture of the world (round like an o is round), "Come, where are you from?"  (That gets come in there too.  Or another phrase to add in some, "some of us are from different countries." or "some of us are from here and there."  You could make the word with the O a globe, or just the phrase with a globe picture.

 

If that helps, start a thread and we'll think of word pictures for you--I would put it on the general board so there will be more people to help.

[ElizabethB]

 The other issue is for some reason the ow sound is often spelled aw. 

 

I can't think of a word like that, do you have an example?

[Terabith]

What I mean is, she spells the ow sound as aw.  For example, she often spells "down" as "dawn."  Or "cloud" as "clawd." 

[geodob]

Terabith, it might be helpful to put spelling aside, and look at this in terms of her ability to use 'visual recall', and to 'visualise'?

 

Could you draw something, if you can't visually recall what it looks like?

[PeterPan]

If you want to check her visual memory, a developmental optometrist should be able to do that for you, no problem, as part of a full eval. If you haven't done a dev vision eval, it owuld be interesting to check. As geodob says, something will probably turn up.

 

She has had an OT eval? And they looked at retained reflexes? This person we're using now says primitive then vestibular, then vision reflexes. So what a pain in the butt to have a cascade resulting in vision problems and realize you have to go that far back. It's interesting.

 

 

What I mean is, she spells the ow sound as aw.  For example, she often spells "down" as "dawn."  Or "cloud" as "clawd." 

 

Those errors don't make sense. The phonograms are stored incorrectly in her brain. Are you sure she's hearing them correctly? If she's hearing the sounds correctly (because those are radically different phonograms, not same sound with different spelling, ie. a more typical error), then you could go back to visual memory and what she has stored in her brain. 

 

Back to reflexes. If she has underlying reflex issues, it could explain the behavior dysregulation *and* the vision. 

 

And yes to using visualization. Ironically, some kids with dev vision issues have their visualization glitched until VT. So she could be bent to VS approaches like visualization but not yet be able to harness them. It would be logical to assume visualization would work well for her, given her profile. So when it's not working, you go back to why and assume dev. vision problems.

[PeterPan]

Terabith, it might be helpful to put spelling aside, and look at this in terms of her ability to use 'visual recall', and to 'visualise'?

 

Could you draw something, if you can't visually recall what it looks like?

 

Bingo. When we had my dd checked by the dev. optom at 11, she had the visual memory of a 2 yo. Kinda explained why spelling wouldn't stick.

[Terabith]

She's had OT evals, although not one for a few years, but they didn't look at retained reflexes.  It's really tough to get into a GOOD pediatric OT here.  The waiting lists are so long they aren't putting people on them.  She has had a developmental vision exam, and she definitely has vision issues.  We spent a year doing therapy, driving two hours each way, and at the end of the year had made ZERO progress and she had developed full on, diagnosable PTSD from it.  It was beyond awful.  And when the optometrist said she'd made NO progress and I said, "Look, with the PTSD she's developed, if we're getting no results from all this effort and driving, we're going to have to quit," he told me that guaranteed she was going to wind up a juvenile delinquent.  I think she needs vision therapy, but I don't see any way to make it happen, especially now that she's in school.  I'd have to go back and look again, but on the WISC she had at seven, her block design had a subscore of something like 18.  Visual stuff SHOULD be a strength, I think.  Memory in general is a real issue.  Her narrative memory is literally above the 99.9th percentile.  Neuropsych said he'd never have anyone test as high as she did for memory of contextual stories.  But for isolated fragments, that drops to 1st and 2nd percentile, whether digits or pictures or names.  So she can tell you entire books almost word per word (with great comprehension, not just recall), but ask her what her birthday is?  Not gonna happen. 

 

The ow/ aw errors don't make any sense.  They absolutely are just flat stored wrong in her brain.  I realized they were stored wrong in her brain back when she was six or seven, but literally thousands of reinforcements of the correct phonogram have been completely ineffectual. 

 

Would be really interesting to have a check on reflexes, though.  I just have no idea how to do that. 

[MerryAtHope]

The ow/ aw errors don't make any sense.  They absolutely are just flat stored wrong in her brain.  I realized they were stored wrong in her brain back when she was six or seven, but literally thousands of reinforcements of the correct phonogram have been completely ineffectual. 

 

My son had these stored wrong too. We solved it by coming up with a mini story--and with her strengths for narrative, maybe that's something that would work for her too? We’d pull down the AW and say “awwww….too bad….†He came up with something bad that happened to the AW tile — it got stepped on or something, for pretend. Then we practiced daily until it was solidified. Every time we pulled down the tile or reviewed the flashcard, we both said “awwww….†very sadly.

 

Then we linked the AU to the AW. That came easy, after the AW story was cemented in his brain. 

 

Then when that was mastered, we worked on the OU phonogram. Thee story involved some violence--there was a fight, and the sounds went like this: “OWW!!!  OH!!!  OOOOO! uh.†The last sound (/uh/) was the sound of getting hit in the gut. I don’t know if this will translate well in writing. :) He had fun acting that out though!

 

For tricky phonograms, do whatever it takes. Be theatrical. Make up a funny story involving the phonogram. Let the child improve upon it and make it her own. If you have any younger children who need to learn them, get her involved in helping to make up a story to explain it to her younger sibling.

[ElizabethB]

I had a student who took about 1,000 repetitions to get ou/ow.  I had been working on my vowel chart, and made it red specifically for him, red blood ou ouch.  You could add a red ou/ow to her one page sheet, here is my vowel chart on one page, I have a larger several page version of it for younger children but this one is a nice handy size for remedial students.  I worked on it in color first, then in color without key, then in black and white, then back to color if forgotten, cycling through until he knew them.  (My apraxia student.)

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/Resources/OnePageVowelChart.pdf

[PeterPan]

Just making a few leaps here. Does she do well with things that are stored auditorally? So if you *spelled* the phonograms aloud and said the sounds, would it store?

 

http://www.pyramidofpotential.com/primitive-reflexes/ This place sells a dvd for testing your most common primitive reflexes. Or you can take the list from the dvd and head to youtube. Personally, I suggest just assuming every single one is unintegrated and doing the exercises for all of them. Like maybe pick 3, do them for 30-45 days, then do the other 3.

[Terabith]

No, just because it's auditory doesn't mean it will store. Her memory for non contextual stuff is no better with auditory than visual. Put in context and she is golden.

 

Will see what we can do with the reflexes. We just were so burned doing the vision therapy stuff, and she is so anxious about anything like that.

[Minerva]

She's had OT evals, although not one for a few years, but they didn't look at retained reflexes.  It's really tough to get into a GOOD pediatric OT here.  The waiting lists are so long they aren't putting people on them.  She has had a developmental vision exam, and she definitely has vision issues.  We spent a year doing therapy, driving two hours each way, and at the end of the year had made ZERO progress and she had developed full on, diagnosable PTSD from it.  It was beyond awful.  And when the optometrist said she'd made NO progress and I said, "Look, with the PTSD she's developed, if we're getting no results from all this effort and driving, we're going to have to quit," he told me that guaranteed she was going to wind up a juvenile delinquent.  I think she needs vision therapy, but I don't see any way to make it happen, especially now that she's in school.  I'd have to go back and look again, but on the WISC she had at seven, her block design had a subscore of something like 18.  Visual stuff SHOULD be a strength, I think.  Memory in general is a real issue.  Her narrative memory is literally above the 99.9th percentile.  Neuropsych said he'd never have anyone test as high as she did for memory of contextual stories.  But for isolated fragments, that drops to 1st and 2nd percentile, whether digits or pictures or names.  So she can tell you entire books almost word per word (with great comprehension, not just recall), but ask her what her birthday is?  Not gonna happen.

 

The ow/ aw errors don't make any sense.  They absolutely are just flat stored wrong in her brain.  I realized they were stored wrong in her brain back when she was six or seven, but literally thousands of reinforcements of the correct phonogram have been completely ineffectual. 

 

Would be really interesting to have a check on reflexes, though.  I just have no idea how to do that. 

 

Terabith, you just described my eleven year old daughter. I mean, freakishly, to a T. 

 

:grouphug:

[lewelma]

Terabith, I've had two poor spellers.  My older boy had auditory processing issues and spoke with a speech impediment.  He learned to read on his own at a young age, and because of his poor speech, he mapped the wrong letters to the sounds when he learned to read (so fot for vat).  It was nothing short of a disaster.  But we got a strong phonics program (SWR) and in 3 years he was able to turn it around and become an average speller by the age of 9.  I considered this nothing short of a miracle. 

 

As bad as that was, my younger is way way worse, and we have a dysgraphia diagnosis for him that will allow technology for all exams here.  We had tried every. single. program. out there - like ten of them.  His phonics was fine, his knowledge of the rules was fine, but like your child, my younger boy just simply could not remember when to use which representation of the sound.  It did not matter how much we drilled words.  We tried oral, written, just memory, phonic based, you name it we did it --- every. single. day.  I was religious about instruction because as I child, I could not spell, so I swore that my children would not be the same.  But this boy was (is) and nothing I did could fix it.  And like your dd, my ds can't look up all his misspelled words, it would take him an eternity. And he couldn't type with any speed because he had to sound out every. single. word.  And then he would lose his train of thought.  It was(is) so frustrating!  In the end I decided the problem was not with phonics or rules (so spelling programs would not help him), rather the problem was with a lack of automation.  He just needed to know from heart how to spell the words he wanted to spell.  

 

Like MerryAtHope, I thought that 11 was too young to give up on spelling, and switch to speech-to-text only.  I had many conversations with this lovely group of ladies, and they helped me to understand what I could and could not expect from my not-so-little-any-more boy.  And believe it or not, we came upon a plan. A plan that is actually working.  Every day for 40 minutes I do typing dictation with my son. He needed to do spelling in context.  He needed to have lots and lots of repetition.  He needed to learn to type, so he needed to make spelling automated.  We started with Cat in the Hat at age 11, and I dictated it to him over and over for at least 6 months.  Once he learned 90% of the words, we moved up to Frog and Toad.  Once he knew 90% of the words, we moved up to the next harder book.  40 minutes a day, every day, on typing.  This is not SWB dictation where part of the goal is to hold ideas in your head, this was spelling dictation where I fix word for word his spelling.  Yes, it is horrifically boring for me.  Yes, every day I put my big girl panties on and grab some tea and some chocolate and do the job.  Luckily, DS loves it because he types his favorite books.  He is currently typing Dealing with Dragons, and we are about read to move up a book.  He is now 13 and 1/2 and we have been doing this for close to 2 years.  I think it is worth it.  His confidence has improved, his typing has increased, his spelling is now about at the age of a 9 year old.  And we are making slow but steady progress.  In hind sight, I am glad I did not give up when he was 11 because I know now like I did not know then that he will be able to type, and not rely on speech to text.  At 11 I was not sure he could ever get his automation to the point where he would be able to type faster than 5 words a minute, which is where we started.  Not because of lack of touch typing skills, but because of the spelling problem.  People often say, well just use a spell check, but they have no idea that without automation at some level of spelling, that typing is just way too slow.  The spelling dictation has massively helped the automation like no spelling program ever could.  Yes, he still misspells words like friend or teeth, but slow and steady wins the race.  And we are winning the race. I expect we will do spelling dictation for the next 5 years and move into nonfiction works in later high school.  Is it worth this kind of time investment?  Well, for my ds the answer is yes.  For others perhaps not.  I just wanted to let you know that your dd is not alone and that with work there might be a possible solution if that is how you choose to spend your time.

 

Ruth in NZ

[Terabith]

This is sounds really good.  Not sure I can pull it off since we aren't homeschooling, but it's worth a shot.