How did you determine if your child was a natural speller?

[rowan25]

This seems to make a difference as to which programs will work for your child, so how did you know?

[mchel210]

My dd8 can spell anything I give her. It doesnt matter how hard...she gets it correct the first time. I have no idea how she does it. My son (and I) cant spell anything! We are not natural spellers. I guess that is how I know she is?

[rowan25]

LOL!!! I was afraid of that! :lol: Then I guess she's falling somewhere in the middle. She can spell some of what I give her, but not everything. :D

[razorbackmama]

I was gonna say...you just know LOL. I very much am a natural speller. I'm able to look at a word and just know if it it "looks right." My 2nd son leans that way - he really doesn't struggle at all with spelling. He spells the occasional word wrong, but for the most part, he's quite good at spelling. My oldest son is pretty average, and my oldest daughter is very much NOT a natural speller LOL.

 

Honestly though, natural speller-ness has not really affected which program I chose at all.

[Homeschooling6]

IMHO there are two kinds of a Natural Speller. One as mentioned my mchel210.

 

second is more like my dd. She looks at her spelling list and that's all she needs to spell the words correctly.

 

My ds is not a natural speller. He has to study hard and still misses the word, so around here I refer to my dd as a natural speller because she looks at it and can spell it. (Although technically she probably isn't)

[Tree House Academy]

A child that can natually spell a word without really having to study at all. For instance, if you (as an adult) are given the word "conscience"...are you going to try and spell it "conchence?" No...because you know that letters just don't go together that way. It doesn't look right. A kid that is a natural speller (I always was) just inherently "gets it."

 

A child who can study a list and regurgitate needs to be able to then use the words a week or a month later and STILL be spelling them right. If they aren't, like my ds, then they fall more in the poor speller category. My ds can LEARN and regurgitate anything...just don't ask him to spell it later!

[rowan25]

A child that can natually spell a word without really having to study at all. For instance, if you (as an adult) are given the word "conscience"...are you going to try and spell it "conchence?" No...because you know that letters just don't go together that way. It doesn't look right. A kid that is a natural speller (I always was) just inherently "gets it."

 

A child who can study a list and regurgitate needs to be able to then use the words a week or a month later and STILL be spelling them right. If they aren't, like my ds, then they fall more in the poor speller category. My ds can LEARN and regurgitate anything...just don't ask him to spell it later!

 

Thank you! And thank goodness for spell check!! :D I think she may tend to be a natural, yet unsure, speller. Thanks, everyone, for helping me clear that up in my mind.

[abbeyej]

As others have said, you generally "just know". But that said, my son was not an excellent speller for the first, hm, roughly two years after he learned to read. He spelled in a wild, semi-phonetic fashion. And then that changed. And he could spell nearly anything. It was pretty clear that *anything* we did with regard to spelling for him was just busy work. He does occasionally misspell a word, but it's rare. And if he's corrected once, it would be extremely unusual for him to misspell that word again a second time. He went to the district spelling bee this year and did extremely well -- without ever studying at all. (I'd actually like to encourage him to do the spelling lists this year, 'cause I think getting a trip to DC with all of the other spelling bee kids would be a fantastic opportunity!)

 

My daughter is only now approaching the two year mark from when *she* began to read fluently. I have thought that she was a simply awful speller (because ds read younger than she did, and was a strong speller looong before this age) -- but in the last few months I've seen radical improvement. It may be that she too will find spelling fairly intuitive, and she just needed a little more time.

 

With a child to whom spelling comes easily, but not entirely intuitively, I'd keep her doing a spelling program, but feel free to allow her to skip any parts that are simply busy work. Don't feel constrained by grade levels on spelling books. Don't feel that she has to do every exercise, every form of review laid out in a book or workbook. If writing the word out twice correctly is all she needs to get it right for the rest of her life, there's no reason for her to trace it in the air in front of her and close her eyes and stand on her head or whatever! ;)

[rowan25]

 

With a child to whom spelling comes easily, but not entirely intuitively, I'd keep her doing a spelling program, but feel free to allow her to skip any parts that are simply busy work. Don't feel constrained by grade levels on spelling books. Don't feel that she has to do every exercise, every form of review laid out in a book or workbook. If writing the word out twice correctly is all she needs to get it right for the rest of her life, there's no reason for her to trace it in the air in front of her and close her eyes and stand on her head or whatever! ;)

:lol: Good point!

[Starr]

This gave me a little laugh, sorry. You know when your younger child is telling the older one how to spell a word! :D

[westcoastmom]

I am a natural spelling and words either look right or they don't.

 

My oldest is definitely not a natural speller, and being a perfectionist she has never liked to write.

[iwka]

I am a natural speller in my native language. I just look at the word, and I have a "feeling" :o about it in my guts. Or in my mind. Somewhere there... I don't remember that I misspelled a word since I was reading (at the age of four). I never remembered any spelling rules, they were just considered as too much information for my mind to store and not needed. But we did not have tests about the rules of spelling, but dictation exercises would always reveal if a kid knew his spelling or not. So...I went through it all without the rules, just relaying on this "knowing". It's hard for me to teach my kids, who are not natural spellers, spelling in English. For me it seems like it is too complicated to remember it all.

 

With foreign languages I am not that good, but I definitely have the red light blinking if it does not look right.

 

So I would say, it's an "inner knowing".

[Peela]

I tend to say my kids are natural spellers but it may not be altogether true- we have done Spelling Power for a while, but what I think really has worked is copywork and dictation. Some kids pick up spelling easily through this. Or maybe they just develop a good visual memory.

I could call myself an natural speller too- I spell well (at least I can spell better than i can type :)) but I was brought up on dictation and spelling tests at school, and I read a lot, so I dont know how "natural" it is.

With my kids, I give them the Spelling Power placement test every year or two when I panic and think they should be doing a spelling program. But when I did it recently, both kids tested well above their age level again, so I figure we can cruise with spelling.

[Mommy22alyns]

I'm a natural speller because I know by how a word looks if it's spelled correctly or not. I honestly don't know spelling rules but I'm an excellent speller!

 

So when Becca started exhibiting some of the same signs, I figured she was a natural speller too. She can spell some words right without having been taught, she knows how other words are spelled by seeing them once somewhere else (a sign, a package, etc), and she reviews her spelling by writing the words down, not by spelling out loud.