Do you have a kid who is unable to "unscramble" words?

[ereks mom]

I know that the 6th grader I am teaching has some learning issues, mainly reading difficulties. I discovered by accident that she is practically incapable of unscrambling words. We were playing word games the other day with the Bananagram tiles, and one of the activities was this one:

 

1) Form the following word with letter tiles: L I N E

2) Replace one of the tiles with this one: O

3) Rearrange the 4 letters to form the name of an animal. (Physically manipulating the tiles is permissible.)

 

She could not decide which letter to replace with O. After a few minutes, I told her to replace the E with the O. She had the tiles arranged like this: L I N O, but even after several minutes of moving the letters all around, she could NOT figure out that the word was L I O N. I was a bit taken aback, because all it required was switching places with the O and the N. And she's not a little kid/non-reader; she's 12 and has pretty good phonics skills.

 

I am wondering what I can do to help her with this. Could this be a visualization problem? If we play this game fairly often, do you think she will get better at it, or is it just going to frustrate her?

[TexasRachel]

You know, I have a fairly high linguistic intelligence (scored a 35 on one of my verbal portions of the act) and I hate things like this. I hate scrabble because I cannot come up with words that are more than four letters. I can do logic puzzles and crosswords, but some linguistic puzzles kill me. I don't know why. So what I'm trying to say is that if you can get her to read well and other language problems are taken care of then I wouldn't worry about this one thing.

[ereks mom]

You know, I have a fairly high linguistic intelligence (scored a 35 on one of my verbal portions of the act) and I hate things like this. I hate scrabble because I cannot come up with words that are more than four letters. I can do logic puzzles and crosswords, but some linguistic puzzles kill me. I don't know why. So what I'm trying to say is that if you can get her to read well and other language problems are taken care of then I wouldn't worry about this one thing.

 

Thanks for your insights. I already know that she has learning difficulties, and I was just wondering if this was a symptom of those issues. Also, I hate to see her lose every time we all play a word game. :( If there's something I can do to help her, I'm willing to try.

[SunD]

Maybe just practicing could help a little, without the pressure of trying to do it during a game?

 

Say, every day you give her three letter tiles and let her physically manipulate them until she can make a word. It doesn't matter how long it takes. Don't time her or watch her. Just have her announce the word when she's figured it out. Then you could move up to four-letter words, etc. She might have to get used to physically manipulating them in order to picture it in her head.

 

If she's a very concrete thinker it might help to show her how to rearrange them. If your tiles are D-G-O, how many possibilities are there? Go in alphabetical order, with D first. G is next, then O. So is it D-G-O? Nope, that's not a word. We tried G in the second spot, so next we'll try O. That leaves G for last. D-O-G? Yes, that's a word! If it hadn't been, we would have moved on to G in the first spot, etc, trying G-D-O, G-O-D (hey, another word!), O-D-G, and O-G-D.

[Farrar]

I'm not sure if this is a skill that is totally necessary in life? I can do it with 3 and 4 letter words usually, but overall, I'm terrible at it. Dh, on the other hand, can do it in an instant. But then again, dh can't do visual puzzles or play games like Tetris and I love those. So... I don't know. I can see that it might be tied to a learning disability or that doing it might stimulate some understanding of spelling and words, but is it really an important thing to do? If anyone has some unexpected insight about why this is an important step for some sort of higher thinking or understanding then I'd be curious to hear it, actually.

[historymatters]

I have always been an excellent reader and I HATE unscrambling words; always have hated it. The word on the page is the word I see-period. I do wonderfully in wordfinds and scrabble and fair at crosswords. My son is the same way as is my mom. I see words in my head, so it's a lost cause if the word is scrambled.

 

I wouldn't worry about it. It's a good idea to work on the skill without the pressure of a game, if you deem it necessary; but I look at it like this:

 

there's so much I want them to learn that is valuable long-term, so I don't see the worth in pursuing some things when it doesn't effect their intelligence and industry regarding their future, IMO.

 

Just my thoughts,

Rachel

[mcconnellboys]

I am pretty good with words and reading; and have a pretty large vocabulary, but I've never been very good with unscrambling letters, filling in the blank letters, playing Scrabble type games, etc.

[ereks mom]

...not good at word games. This is sad to me, because the rest of us love word games, and we excel at them, while she always loses. But at least I know that a person can be bad at word games and still live a perfectly normal life. :)

[mcconnellboys]

I'm good at those vocab games like the rice bowl game. Maybe you should try her on a different sort of word game....

 

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