Strange spelling

[Storygirl]

DS11 has never had much trouble with spelling. He's not a big reader, but he has always like to make little books for himself, and in his writing for fun and for school, he doesn't make many spelling mistakes.

 

But...he took the spelling section of the Stanford 10 this morning, and he really did poorly. I peeked at his answers when he was done. Each spelling problem is a sentence with three words underlined. He had to pick which one was the misspelled word or choose "no mistakes." He got so many wrong. I'm not sure he got more than 50-60% correct. I have a hard time understanding how he can spell things correctly when he is writing them, but he cannot pick a misspelled word out of a sentence.

 

He does have a disability in visual perception. Could that be the cause?

 

He was less than thrilled about taking this test, so I suppose he could have marked answers without really trying. But he looked like he was working hard.

 

My oldest was the opposite at that age (which is the last time she took a standardized test). She is a poor speller when writing, but she scored in the 99th percentile on that portion of the Stanford.

 

I find it odd.

[PeterPan]

One time I had someone administer a test to my dd with someone chopping down a tree and grinding the stump the whole time.  Maybe there was something like that?  The weather was nice.  Maybe he had chocolate cake on his mind?  

[OneStepAtATime]

If he is picking it out of a choice of three and he has vision problems, he may have difficulty distinguishing between them.  I have vision problems.  When words are right next to each other and the spelling is close, I cannot always pick the right one.  I don't know that this was the issue, I just thought I would mention that it is for me.  Typing a word without having to select from three is much easier for me.  Same with writing.  I already know what word I am going to write/type and it comes out.  Selecting means I have to look at the options and see what may LOOK right but my vision is mucked up enough that I can't always tell.  Not sure this makes sense.  Sorry.

[Storygirl]

Hmm. He had his vision tested by a COVD last year, but eyes can change quickly. That's a good thought. I should have all the kids' vision tested.

 

And he might have been distracted. Not by noise, but by his own anxiety. He really did not want to do this part of the test this morning and was working himself up beforehand. I've been having him take the test one section at a time, but this morning I had him do two (they were shorter), and he was resistant to that. I knew he wasn't in the best frame of mind, but I didn't want him to think that he could decide whether he would do the test or not. So I helped him calm down, and then we did it. In hindsight, maybe we should have postponed it.

 

He has some testing anxiety, but he has been completing the sections of the test in less than the estimated time, so I have been pleased (until today). I'm a little worried that he will find it harder going next year when he is in a classroom situation. I'm considering this year kind of a trial run.

[OneStepAtATime]

Good luck!  I know that is stressful for both of you.   :grouphug:

[geodob]

I strongly suspect that if he was given the same sentence, but without any words underlined.

Where instead he was asked to underline any misspellings, or tick no errors?

Then he would have done it correctly.

 

I would really question the idea of underlining words, and asking if each is spelled correctly?

Particularly in a Test situation.

This relates to something that I have noticed occasionally, over many years.

Where after typing a random word that I know well, for some reason I question whether I spelled it correctly?

While I will be fairly certain. Once this 'doubt' has been raised, I can only resolve it by reaching for my dictionary.

 

As an example of this?

After I typed the word: occasionally ?

I wondered whether it had two S's, and maybe one L ?

 

I wonder how certain you would be, if you did a test where occasionally was underlined in a sentence, and you were asked if it was spelled correctly?

As part of a test, which will effect your total score?

 

So that I bring into question the whole premise of this test?

Where a more effective approach, would involve underlining any misspelled words.

 

[Storygirl]

That makes sense. I think if he had a sentence with one misspelled word that he had to mark himself he might do better.

 

I think it's good for him (and all of my kids) to get a lot of practice with standardized testing before they hit the SATs, because it doesn't come easy for them. I myself was quite good at testing, but all four of them seem to struggle with it (different reasons for each of them).

 

 

[kbutton]

I'm with geodob. I am a natural speller, and nothing has messed up my spelling more than to see lists of commonly misspelled words. Totally screwed a lot of those words up for me, and I was spelling most of the just fine before being issued the silly list.

[kbutton]

I should clarify that the list was giving right and wrong spellings next to each other. I think if the list was just correct spellings, I would have been on the look out, but I wouldn't have been so destabilized. It was in an editing class, so that had something to do with the presentation.