Spelling help for dyslexic

[ktgrok]

My DD9 is in 3rd and her reading is just about on grade level after a ton of remediation. However, her spelling is definitely not. We are using Traditional Spelling 1 from Memoria Press, and it works well in that she color codes the letters, etc. She gets 100 percent on every test. But..she doesn't retain always retain it. For instance, twice now the sentence at the end of the test, which includes several spelling words, also had some old spelling words and she got those wrong. They do seem to be trickier words, like "does" for instance. She is also VERY reluctant to write anything ever because she doesn't know how to spell most of what she would like to write.

So my thoughts are:

1. is there something you would recommend for reviewing already learned words?

2. Should I have her start learning to use voice to text or at least typing (with spell check on) so she can start working on composition? She does pretty much ZERO composition because it is so frustrating to not be able to spell. (her handwriting is beautiful though, and she does copywork each day)

3. Is there any way to be more efficient or work harder/faster on spelling, the way we did with reading? Last year we spent the spring working almost entirely on reading, in order to catch her up and really rewire the brain as much as possible. That gave her a tremendous amount of confidence, and helped with her other subjects as well as she can now read directions in math, etc. I'd LOVE to do the same with spelling for the rest of this year, but can't figure out a way to do it just because spelling doesn't review itself the way reading does. I feel like if we did multiple spelling lessons a day, to cover more ground, it might not stick as well as seeing the material over a longer period of time. But, maybe its worth trying? Or is there another program that would lend itself to doing this? A spelling intensive kind of approach? Abecedarian was perfect for that with reading, but not spelling. 

[FairProspects]

All About Spelling or any other Orton-Gillingham program. If you implement it as written, or even with the review sentences several steps behind, you will constantly be reviewing the spelling words and rules.

Both my dyslexics typed the review sentences to remove the barrier of writing. I'm not sure if she has learned typing yet, but it is the next logical step for a dyslexic.

[ktgrok]

3 hours ago, FairProspects said:

All About Spelling or any other Orton-Gillingham program. If you implement it as written, or even with the review sentences several steps behind, you will constantly be reviewing the spelling words and rules.

Both my dyslexics typed the review sentences to remove the barrier of writing. I'm not sure if she has learned typing yet, but it is the next logical step for a dyslexic.

I actually HAVE level 1 of AAS! I bought it thinking it might be good but then couldn't get a feel for it. I've used AAR with her (with not good results) and understood how that worked. I was a bit confused by AAS. Maybe i need to sit down with it again and look over the whole thing. I also felt kind of meh about starting way at the beginning, but really I probably should. It just felt like going backwards to her. But if I explain that we did that for reading too and look how well that worked, maybe it would help. 

[Peaceseeker]

Sequential Spelling worked wonders for us, but we started it later around 4th-5th grade.  You can move faster through the levels if you want to speed it up.  It was designed for dyslexics and focuses on patterns instead of rules.  AAS was a bust for my kid, but rote memorization was always a problem and there is a lot of that to remember all the rules.  Some dyslexic kids do well with the rules based programs, but mine did not.  We found those type of programs very frustrating.  

I do think for some dyslexic kids spelling seems to click in a bit later.  I kind of wished I had saved myself the frustration of multiple spelling programs between 1st and 4th and just stuck with copywork and then added in Sequential Spelling around age 10.

And I would absolutely begin a keyboarding/typing program so that spelling doesn't limit composition, which is an entirely different skill.  My kid took off with creative writing as soon as a word processor came into play.  

Edited February 23, 2019 by CaliforniaDreamin

[ktgrok]

7 hours ago, CaliforniaDreamin said:

Sequential Spelling worked wonders for us, but we started it later around 4th-5th grade.  You can move faster through the levels if you want to speed it up.  It was designed for dyslexics and focuses on patterns instead of rules.  AAS was a bust for my kid, but rote memorization was always a problem and there is a lot of that to remember all the rules.  Some dyslexic kids do well with the rules based programs, but mine did not.  We found those type of programs very frustrating.  

I do think for some dyslexic kids spelling seems to click in a bit later.  I kind of wished I had saved myself the frustration of multiple spelling programs between 1st and 4th and just stuck with copywork and then added in Sequential Spelling around age 10.

And I would absolutely begin a keyboarding/typing program so that spelling doesn't limit composition, which is an entirely different skill.  My kid took off with creative writing as soon as a word processor came into play.  

Oh!!!! I had that program for my oldest, many many years ago! I'd totally forgotten about it - that may be exactly what we need! I remember that you did move forward more quickly if you knew the words, and hung out longer on ones you didn't. 

And I 100 percent agree about the rules thing. It's why we switched from Barton to Abecedarian, which also is based on patterns instead of rules. And it worked SO well for her. Ooh, and it looks like there is an online version now, she might like that. Off to check it out, thank you!!!!!!

[Jess4879]

For my oldest (also dyslexic) we use a combo of things - AAS (at the pace of one lesson per week), Spelling City and she uses an app called Spell Better.  It was free when we got it, but not sure if it still is.  It's great though, as it is very good at deciphering phonetic spelling.  There is also a built in pronunciation and dictionary, which is very helpful.  Even then, it has taken a long time for her spelling to improve and she's better spelling in isolation than in her other writing, where she's got more thoughts and such going through her head.  Teaching her to carefully proof read her work has been essential.  Having her type finished work into the computer has been very helpful, as the spell check picks up what she misses.

[MerryAtHope]

I just want to really encourage you that for many typical learners, spelling and writing don't start to come together until around junior high. For a dyslexic, it might even be high school before you see her start to really consistently be able to use all of the skills required for writing at one time. It requires a lot of working memory and a lot of things really need to be more automatic before you're going to see a lot of that "ah-ha she's getting it." Spelling isn't going to come into the picture as fast as reading did for a student who struggles. Writing requires a student to think about content, creativity, grammar, syntax, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, audience--and then anything else required (a good hook, descriptive writing, answering questions correctly)--it really requires a LOT at once! I'd encourage you for outside subjects to really focus on the content of the subject at hand (history, science etc...). When she's farther along, you can begin to have her edit some shorter things, but make that a separate assignment where she *only* has to focus on editing for that day's assignment. It takes a lot more scaffolding and building blocks to get there with spelling, but she can make great progress with consistent work over the years. Hang in there! 

[Terabith]

So my 13 year old dyslexic has always read above grade level and has one week left to complete the Wilson program.  She KNOWS the rules.  The problem is that with spelling, often multiple alternatives meet the rules, and since she has no visual memory, she will spell a word in a way that 100% follows the rules but is completely wrong.  I honestly don't know any way around this.  Bible might be spelled Bibull.  Words with the /er/ sound might be spelled any number of ways.  Whether to use ee, ea, or e_e is essentially random.  

[ktgrok]

We are doing the free trial of sequential spelling online and learned it doesn't work properly in Safari. If you do it, use Chrome!

[nixpix5]

My friend who is a speech and reading specialist uses AAS for her dyslexic students exclusively. O-G method is very much specifically geared toward dyslexia.

[lewelma]

My younger son has dysgraphia and has struggled to spell his whole life. In the first few years we did SWR which is in the same family as AAS but more academic/linguistic.  This helped my son to know all the rules.  The problem was that he could not apply them when he was writing. Not at all. From 9 to 12 we tried every program under the sun in hopes of finding something that would work - Sequential Spelling, Natural Speller, Spelling Wisdom, Spelling Power, even just flashcards and drill drill drill.  Nothing worked.  At the age of 12, we decided to abandon all spelling programs and just do dictation, but with the sole purpose to learn to spell. 

We started with Cat in the Hat because at age 12 he didn't know how to spell half of the top 100 words even with years of consistent spelling work.  So I would dictate to him short sentences or phrases, he would type them, and I would correct the spelling word for word as he went.  I taught him to "think to spell" so to mispronounce words to accentuate the proper spelling. I got him to think in terms of syllables. I got him to focus on the base word and then how to add endings. Sometimes gave a brief overview of the rule.  I focused on the tricky spots - usually the vowels- by only correcting those letters only so for "street" I would say "it is the ee representation of the sound e". As he got better, I would just say 'ee'. We did this for 30 minutes per day for 3 years.  We started at Cat and the Hat, then Frog and Toad, then Narnia, then we started on easy novels that he loved (typically fantasy), with finished with working on Titus Groan which is high end.  He loved it.  I think it was both the slow but steady progress he experienced plus his love for literature that kept him engaged. 

At age 15, he still mis-spells about 10-15% of words, but he is still improving.  At this point the spelling is not holding back his ability to type and compose.  He just turns the spell check off until he is done writing, then goes back and fixes each underlined word *without* the help of the spell check.  He wants to still improve his spelling. People always say that kids who can't spell can just use spell check, but if nothing is automated, and you have to sound out every word and remember which representation is the correct one, you simply have no ability to remember what you were going to say.  This lack of spelling automation was what the problem was for my son, and dictation was the only way that we could automate the spelling within the context of writing.  He had to just write words in context, 1000s and 1000s of words with me correcting him word for word as he went so that he would learn from his mistakes the instant he made them. 

Good Luck to you.

Ruth in NZ 

Edited February 26, 2019 by lewelma

[lewelma]

On 2/24/2019 at 9:27 AM, Terabith said:

So my 13 year old dyslexic has always read above grade level and has one week left to complete the Wilson program.  She KNOWS the rules.  The problem is that with spelling, often multiple alternatives meet the rules, and since she has no visual memory, she will spell a word in a way that 100% follows the rules but is completely wrong.  I honestly don't know any way around this.  Bible might be spelled Bibull.  Words with the /er/ sound might be spelled any number of ways.  Whether to use ee, ea, or e_e is essentially random.  

Yes. My son definitely experienced this. He would spell the same word in multiple different rule-following ways in the same paragraph and not even realize it.

[MerryAtHope]

On 2/23/2019 at 2:27 PM, Terabith said:

So my 13 year old dyslexic has always read above grade level and has one week left to complete the Wilson program.  She KNOWS the rules.  The problem is that with spelling, often multiple alternatives meet the rules, and since she has no visual memory, she will spell a word in a way that 100% follows the rules but is completely wrong.  I honestly don't know any way around this.  Bible might be spelled Bibull.  Words with the /er/ sound might be spelled any number of ways.  Whether to use ee, ea, or e_e is essentially random.  

 

There are a variety of strategies you can use. Words like Bible, you may want to help her look at morphology and roots. Teach her that biblio means book. Show her "bibliography" and "bibliophile" and "biblical" and help her see how all of these words relate--and then show her "Bible" and have her see that it comes from the same root and is a consonant-le word.

When words rely on visual strategies, help her to categorize words of like patterns together (so have her study ee words together and master those before working on another pattern or trying mixed lists.) The e_e pattern is actually very rare in English. Have her memorize those few words when she comes to them, and let her know that in other words, it's most likely NOT that pattern. You can also incorporate multi-sensory approaches to help shore up weaker visual memory skills. Good spellers in English tend to use a variety of strategies, and knowing the rules is just one of those strategies. It can take a lot of work and practice though--I know my kids needed lots of review incorporated, and help with directly learning the strategies, analyzing words, and deciding which strategies to use to study the words, but they made a lot of progress over time. 

[Terabith]

Yeah, I think morphology would help her a lot.  Unfortunately, after finishing 12 books of Wilson, she's kinda done with remediation.  At 13.5, we have about reached the limit of what I can coerce her to do.  She doesn't really care about spelling at this juncture, and her memory in general is really, really bad.  It's odd.  It's very good for some things, but random things?  Really bad.  Like she has an IQ of 140 but scores around 70 for measures of both visual and phonological memory.  I think we've reached the point where we need to shift from remediation to accommodation.  

[ktgrok]

She did the first three lessons of Sequential Spelling yesterday and really liked it! She got a little upset when she missed a word, but worked through it and learned from it - applying that pattern to another word in the lesson. So she misspelled tinned, but then when pinned came up she knew how because of learning how to do tinned!

 

[kbutton]

We use Sequential Spelling also. When typing becomes proficient, we type the lists to help with the muscle memory for typing (and because we have dysgraphia/connective tissue things that make writing hurt). We did find that the first book was harder than the second--it seems like the first book has more words with the counter-intuitive rules and/or the exceptions. 

SS helps with the morphology as well--you start with a root and then change endings each day until you get to the next list group. 

It took a long time for my non-dyslexic kiddo to stop writing the same word multiple ways on one page, but SS was the lynchpin for him. He's a very visual speller.