Would you expect a newly 9yo rising 4th grader to spell "interrupting" correctly?

[forty-two]

Spelling is a very hard thing for my 9yo, but I thought we were slowly making some progress.  Then today, in her own writing, she wrote "inrteuering" for "interrupting" (which looks even worse typed than it did in print :eek:).  All I could see was how she still can't break words into syllables and still can't hear/order sounds all that well, and is still weak on multi-letter phonograms - feels like the progress I thought we made was imaginary :(.  (Although she actually writes on her own frequently now, so there's that, and that's not nothing.)

 

But honestly, that word is a lot longer and more complicated than anything she's learnt explicitly, and it's nothing she's tried to write before - so I was wondering if some of my freaking out is premature - that being able to spell a biggish word she's never spelt before on the first go is the *end* goal of spelling instruction, not something to hit early on.  And also, would even a "typical" rising 4th grader be expected to spell that right? - that dd9 may have her troubles, but maybe that word is complicated for anyone her age to get right in their writing? 

 

And also, again ;), is it expecting too much out of a struggling speller to *ever* expect them to spell a word right without having practiced it before? 

 

(ETA: I'm a natural speller, and dd9 is my oldest - this struggling spelling thing is new to me, and while I'm learning how to work on it, I don't know how to calibrate my expectations.)

[MerryAtHope]

Not necessarily, especially if she hasn't practiced much with words that long and since it was in her own writing (something she likely didn't edit, and she was likely focusing on getting her thoughts out rather than spelling.)

 

I wouldn't correct it, but I would watch for these things in spelling and make sure the approach you are using is covering them:

 

1-how to hear the sounds in a word. Putting sounds in the wrong order and leaving sounds out are signs of struggles in this area, and can also be indicative of relying on visual strategies--effective spellers tend to use 4 main strategies, so they have more tools at their disposal for remembering longer words. (And interrupting actually uses all 4 strategies.)

 

2-covers phonograms

 

3-covers syllable rules

 

4-covers morphological strategies

 

5-works on building working memory through dictation or other means--the ability to hold all of the concepts in mind needed for spelling a longer word while still retaining the thoughts one wants to express doesn't necessarily come naturally. Many children need to work up to being able to do that. 

 

If you have a struggling speller, I wouldn't measure her progress by a word like this that she hasn't practiced and for which she probably hasn't learned all of the needed skills yet. It's a "leap," and she's working to get there incrementally. Give her time to grow and learn.

 

As for whether she'll ever be able to spell words without practicing them first--that's really going to depend on the word and how accurately she can analyze it. If she knew that "rupt" was a Latin root, knew the rules for adding prefixes (so she gets the two r's--one for the prefix, one for the root), correctly hears the sounds in words, and had the working memory to keep the information she knows about phonograms and writing sounds in order, I think she could spell this word from such a knowledge base even if she hadn't practiced it first. On the other hand, if it was a word like mayonnaise, I think it would take some practice regardless of what you know, for the vast majority of people!  The same goes for homophones (whether vs. weather--I've seen kids spell it wheather so many times!)

 

A good, solid base of skills will go a long way towards helping a student become an effective speller, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect that a student might not have to at least see a word and analyze it before knowing how to spell it in many cases--perhaps with natural spellers notwithstanding!

[regentrude]

I would expect a 9 y/o to misspell it by missing the double r, but I would expect something that is phonetically correct.

[MomatHWTK]

Not my 9 y.o., but we are working on it.  :)

[Arcadia]

DS9 would miss the double r in that word. DS10 is my natural speller.

 

Can she break a long word into syllables correctly or almost correctly?

 

I would say spelling a new word correctly at first try is an end goal. DS9 can get a new word wrong two to three times before it sinks in.

[Farrar]

What Regentrude said - doubling the r rules are really hard and I still miss them occasionally myself. But unless the student was a struggling speller I wouldn't expect it to be as off as the way she spelled it.

 

On the other hand, some of it is student personality. Some kids, when they know for sure they're going to misspell a word, seem to write something crazier than normal, so there's that.

[forty-two]

She can't break a long word into syllables on her own (but if I break it down for her, she can spell each syllable phonetically), and on her own she spells visually rather than phonetically - I don't know how much is that she *can't* hear/order sounds in words at all, versus that it's hard for her and so she doesn't try unless I walk her through it.  Her mistakes tend to make no sense phonetically, but they make sense *visually* - she gets the first and last letters right, plus the word looks the right "shape", and often she has all the right letters, but in the wrong order.  She generally she knows which words she guessed on versus thought she knew (and she pretty much gets all the ones she guessed at wrong, and mostly gets all the ones she thought she knew right), and when she re-reads she can tell which words are wrong.  My guess is that her visual memory on those is good enough to tell if what she wrote matches the word, but it's too hazy on the details to be able to produce it herself (and she can't or doesn't use her phonics knowledge to supplement her visual memory without my prompting).

 

I taught her straight phonics, and the auditory, step-by-step-ness of it all was the opposite of how she tries to learn (visually and big-picture-focused).  She would have been the poster child for whole language - she naturally and automatically used context clues and grammar clues and picture clues to read - that was natural to her in a way that phonics was *not*.  Now she *can* use phonics to attack an unfamiliar word, but if it's one not in her spoken vocabulary, she generally doesn't get the syllable breaks or the accent right.  Absolutely loves to read, though.

[Farrar]

Also, I wouldn't freak out. I mean, keep working on spelling, but that's not so far behind.

[forty-two]

On the other hand, some of it is student personality. Some kids, when they know for sure they're going to misspell a word, seem to write something crazier than normal, so there's that.

 

Yes!   She does that!  As she gets into a word and it's not looking right, it's really like she just gives up and slaps something down just to get it over with.  You can see it with "inrteuering" - the beginning is fairly reasonable ('r' for 'er' is a bugaboo of hers, and neighboring sounds being switched is a common problem for her) but then it starts to fall apart in the middle - increasingly random till she gets to the "ing" ending.  And she generally *knows* it's wrong, but she's got no idea how to fix it.

[Farrar]

Yes!   She does that!  As she gets into a word and it's not looking right, it's really like she just gives up and slaps something down just to get it over with.  You can see it with "inrteuering" - the beginning is fairly reasonable ('r' for 'er' is a bugaboo of hers, and neighboring sounds being switched is a common problem for her) but then it starts to fall apart in the middle - increasingly random till she gets to the "ing" ending.  And she generally *knows* it's wrong, but she's got no idea how to fix it.

 

Yeah, I have twins. One would have spelled it right or left off the extra "r" - or, possibly, maybe, in a hurry, he would have thought, this has an extra letter, and maybe added an extra "t" for no reason or something weird like that.

 

The other one... who knows what you'd get. He'd start it, realize he was going to get it wrong, and then just give up and hope it was readable. He wouldn't have gone for extra vowels though - not his style. But on the bright side, he has a really nice flow when he writes and he often writes pretty well. Spelling is easy to fix later. Different strengths. :)

[alisoncooks]

I asked my rising fourth grader and this was the result:

enterupting

 

 

Overall, I'm pretty happy with that, considering this kid has only been reading for 6 months. :o

We use Apples & Pears, plus she's been through half of REWARDS (which is all about chunking words).

[abacus2]

No. I would not expect a 9 year old to spell interrupting correctly. Some can I am sure, but that is several levels more difficult than what I expect a rising 4th grader to spell correctly.

[sweetpea3829]

What everybody else said...lol.

 

Interrupting is a word that trips up even good spellers, because of that double r.  But your daughter's spelling is unique...lol.

 

Because nobody else has asked...is there a family history of dyslexia on either side?

 

I ask because...man, the way your daughter spelled it, is pretty much what I would have expected from my dyslexic husband.  He literally cannot hear the phonemes of oral language.  Or...he hears them if he tries really hard, but he cannot process the correct way to spell that phoneme.  He comes up with all kinds of interesting spellings!  As you mentioned...he typically has the first letter correct and the word is often the right shape or close to it.   A word such as interrupting, he wouldn't even attempt.  But if he did, I imagine he would get the "hard" sounds in there, with a mish mash of letters for the softer sounds.  

 

There is that personality quirk that you mentioned...if its a word he knows he isn't going to spell correctly, he'll just throw in a few random letters and call it a day.

[OneStepAtATime]

Agree that this would not be a word I would have expected my rising 4th graders to spell correctly because of the double r.  Honestly, though, the er would have been problematic, too, because they are dyslexic and there are a lot of ways to spell er.  

 

The way it actually was spelled by your child, and the fact that you mention spelling is a very hard thing for her, makes me wonder if there is either mild dyslexia or maybe a developmental vision issue tripping her up.

 

How well does she do with reading out loud?

[MerryAtHope]

She can't break a long word into syllables on her own (but if I break it down for her, she can spell each syllable phonetically), and on her own she spells visually rather than phonetically - I don't know how much is that she *can't* hear/order sounds in words at all, versus that it's hard for her and so she doesn't try unless I walk her through it.  

 

Some kids do need more help than others to learn how to break words down and how to hear the sounds in a word. This article on auditory processing has helpful strategies for kids that struggle in this area.

[strawberryjam]

My 8.5 yr old would not be able to spell that word. I recently tested his grade level for spelling according to the assessment in Spelling Power and he tested right on target for his grade level.

[Tsuga]

I would expect mistakes in longer words, either 'interrupting' or something else.

 

I think the way she sounded it out is concerning, but really she's only missing the middle syllable, so that's progress, right?

 

'inrteuering' 

 

int: check

​euer: some extra vowels in there but nothing unheard of (think: queue, voyeur)

upt: Whoops. :) Ask her, "where is the UPT part of Int-err-upt-ing here?"

ing: check

 

So, though it looks really weird it's not so bad. She probably forgot "upt" after all the work she did on 'err... er... eur.. euer...'

 

Maybe counting syllables before writing would help her. In.terr.upt.ing. tap, tap, tap, tap. So write out one sound combo for each tap.

[LMD]

My oldest just turned 10 and is naturally a decent speller when she's concentrating.

I'd expect her to miss the double r, decide there should be a double somewhere and double the p or something instead. But I would expect her to be close.

 

My dh (terrible speller) also sees words in 'shapes'...

[Tanikit]

Like others here I would expect the double R to give problems. I and E can also cause trouble in early spellers, but if she is pronouncing the word correctly then I would expect a 9 year to have got that. Children often think long words are harder to spell than shorter words and then they need to be taught to spell the parts they can hear one sound at a time.

 

Nonetheless English spelling can be a nightmare - here is a poem that proves it:

 

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even, 

Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!

Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
 

[....]

Even I'm not sure if it's one "r" or two.   :D

[RootAnn]

Even I'm not sure if it's one "r" or two.   :D

 

:iagree: . For the record, dd#2 spelled it interrupting (my poor speller) & my dd#3 (close to age/grade of OP's kid, usually spells just as well/poorly as dd#2) spelled it twice:  interupting & inturupting.

 

We're very phonetic spellers here (speaking for myself, too) -- sometimes using the wrong phonogram. But, we try to 'hear' the proper sound to put down. 

 

Definitely something I'd check into!

[hepatica]

There are lots of reasons for inaccurate spelling, but I agree that her choices here look more like my two dyslexic kids. My middle child is not a good speller but she does make phonetically accurate choices (she's 11, and probably would not have spelled that word correctly, but she would have all the sounds in there). My two other (dyslexic) children would have done something similar to what your DD did. She has mixed up the order of the letters at the beginning of the word, and is missing sounds "p" and "t" toward the end (it's actually easy to miss the "t" sound at the beginning since we often don't pronounce it when we say the word quickly, but the last "t" sound is more distinct). I didn't realize how hard it is for many dyslexic kids to isolate the sounds of words until we started using Barton.  

[SparklyUnicorn]

I don't think I'd base any sort of assessment of spelling ability based on one word. 

I'm a fairly decent speller, but I still of course misspell stuff.  I often wonder what I was thinking!  How did that come out wrong!  Sometimes I think I hear the word wrong or something.  Or I'm assuming it should be like some other word I know, but it isn't.

 

 

[SparklyUnicorn]

And it does not help that we don't sound out every letter/sound predictably from word to word.  Think of the word "butter".  I say, "budder".  Why?  I don't know.  I feel awkward if I even try to make myself say, "butter".

 

 

[Eagle]

I'm guessing that there are a lot of kids being asked to spell "interrupting" due to this thread...

 

How long ago did your dd start reading? If she hasn't been reading very long then I probably wouldn't think much from this one misspelled word. I don't have any personal experience with dyslexia, so I don't know about that. I did find it interesting that she got the first and last syllable but jumbled everything in between. It reminds me of when ds was an early reader and would guess at long words based on the beginning and end, but didn't take time to sound out the middle properly.

[boscopup]

My 11 year old probably couldn't spell it, though he'd make it look somewhat phonetically correct. The way your DD spelled it is like my 8 year old would probably do it. He'll throw in random letters or leave out vowels completely. He pretty consistently spells "Israelites" as "Isrwts" or something like that. He does have undiagnosed issues, so I suspect he isn't hearing words properly or isn't able to process the sounds that well. He does fine in "spelling", learning to spell individual words, but a word he's never written before will be crazy when he tries to spell it on his own.

[texasmama]

I asked my rising 4th grade 9 yo dd to spell it, and she left off one "r".  Otherwise, she spelled it correctly aloud.  She is a voracious reader, a natural speller, and she has no LDs.  

[Nart]

My 8 year old, rising third grader spelled it "interupting". When I asked if that was his final answer he changed it to "interepting" then said the first way looked better.

[blondeviolin]

My oldest is a rising fourth grader, 9yo. She would either spell it correctly or miss the second r.

[luuknam]

Okay, my almost 8yo, entering 3rd grader wrote 'interating' (I said the word 3 or so times while he wrote it). That said, if I were to ask him again in a little while he'd probably write something else.

 

In his spelling list he currently has the word 'friends' because in writing his blog he wrote 'freneds'. Yesterday, I had him copy the word 'friends'* from what I'd written down and he wrote it correctly some, but also wrote 'firinds', 'frients', and 'frieds'. Sigh. At least they're mostly sort of phonetic. I've seen some completely nonphonetic spellings of words from him in the past. He reads at or above grade level, but he's a sight word reader and not good at phonics. He had massive expressive and receptive language delays when he was younger, and there is the possibility he has some auditory processing disorder or something. He still gets speech therapy.

 

Some prefixes and suffixes practice might help (along with of course all the phonics and breaking things up in syllables etc). My son did a little of this book last summer (though I don't think we did the prefix 'inter', but I'm not sure - can't find the book right now):

 

http://www.amazon.com/Prefixes-Suffixes-Practice-Perfect-Resources/dp/1420686070/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

 

They also have a book for 4th graders and for 5th graders, and of course other publishers have books like that as well.

 

*I also had him copy some other words that he'd misspelled recently (diffrent = different, tipe = type, claght = caught, etc), , which he copied correctly. 'Friends' just seems to be his current foe.

[Sahamamama]

Yes and no.

 

Yes, I would expect a newish 4th grader to spell that word correctly, but only if that student had progressed up to that point. I just asked my rising 5th grader and both of my rising 3rd graders to spell it, and they all did it correctly. They are, for the most part, "natural spellers," but they have also worked through several levels of AAS, with plans to continue (for the 3rd graders).

 

On the other hand, no, I would not expect a 4th grader who had not progressed to that point to spell that word correctly. In past years, I tutored plenty of 5th and 6th graders who could not have spelled "interrupting!"

 

Honestly, I think it's less important to focus on the word itself, or the perceived level of the word, than it is to focus on what helps that particular student to learn to spell well. But I also wouldn't panic over spelling. It is much less a test of intelligence than, say, vocabulary. Shakespeare was a genius, and yet he couldn't spell by our modern standards. ;)

 

http://www.futurity.org/bad-spelling-flags-work-as-shakespeares/

 

I used to edit papers for Ph.Ds. Gah, talk about BAD SPELLING!

[MrSmith]

I asked my kid and he did fine. He studies MCT and those Latin roots come in handy for 'interrupting'. He's always been fairly decent at spelling though.

[Julie Smith]

Neither of my boys could at that age.

[MelissaMinNC]

I honestly think that's a pretty good spelling for that age, especially if she's dyslexic or has some other LD (which I'm assuming, based on what you said about her struggles with phonemic awareness, and I see from your signature she's using LiPS). 

 

I asked my 10.5 yo ds, rising 5th grader to spell it, just to see. He got it almost right, but missed that double r. He's dyslexic, and has had Barton Reading Level 1, AAR 1-3, AAS1 and part of 2.

 

He wouldn't have been able to get as close as he did a year ago. Heck, even now, if he was overtired or not feeling well, or just distracted, he might have messed it up more. 

 

Hang in there. It's awesome that she's writing on her own, and that she wants to use strong vocabulary, despite the challenge! That's a victory!

 

:)

 

 

[MistyMountain]

I think my almost 9 year old would not know about the double r but the rest of it would be correct. She is pretty good at spelling though. I am not sure if my ds will be able to at the same age. He struggles a lot more with decoding and spelling.

[MerryAtHope]

Years ago, before I found AAS, I took a copywork class and one of the things they had us do was to have a child copy a passage and say what they were thinking as they copied.  My son had some practice with segmenting/saying sounds as he wrote, so I thought he'd do that.  Instead, he started by saying letter names.  Then he briefly tried saying sounds, then words, then he went back to letter names.  He had the word "from" twice, and this is a word he used to have a lot of trouble with--he would write form instead.  The first time he had the word was during the "saying sounds" portion, and he spelled it correctly and easily right away.  The second time he had it was during the last "saying letter names" portion of the assignment.  He started, stopped, erased and started again three times!  Each time he wrote f-o-r.  Finally on the fourth try he wrote from.  At the end I asked how he finally remembered, and he said he'd gotten it wrong so many times, that that's what finally helped him remember how to spell it.

 

I found this process fascinating!  When he was focusing on the letter names, he couldn't even access what he knew so easily when he segmented and focused on sounds!  Instead he had to rely on a negative experience to trigger the memory of the word.  

 

When I pointed out the two words and two different experiences with spelling it, he was surprised too, and he could see that what felt unnatural and stupid to him (who wants to say sounds while writing when they are a cool 11 yo boy?!) actually had benefit.  The teacher I was working with (a language therapist) said that while some kids think in sounds naturally, others have to be taught--and it can take 2-3 years of practicing this technique before it becomes "natural" to kids who struggle with it. 

 

Soon after we found AAS, which also reinforced using this strategy, but I did find that it took a few years for my son to use it without prompting. Every time he misspelled his AAS words and the error was one this strategy solves, I had him read *exactly* what he wrote. This helped him start to watch for those missing sounds, extra letters thrown in, etc...

 

[Mrs. B]

Regardless of teaching method, I do not expect correct spelling of words that have not been either read often, copied, studied, or dictated previously. I would expect a good guess that made phonetic sense for any common word. Your child's guess does make sense except for leaving out the pt sound. If that happens as an exception vs a rule, I wouldn't fret, just have child practice the correct spelling and recheck in a few days. If that hapens frequently, I wouldn't fret, just reevaluate the teaching method for the child.

 

I love the poem quoted above. My daughter recently came across the abbreviation Mrs. She was already familiar with Mr. She said the abbreviation Mrs. didn't make sense because there is no R sound in Mrs.

 

ETA, just posted on another thread and spelled interrupt with one R. Therefore, my advice should be ignored ;). You'd think having just read this discussion on the correct spelling of a certain word, I could get it right?