The How To Teach Spelling book and workbooks OR any remedial spelling program recommendations?

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Have you used the manual without the workbooks?  

Do the workbooks lend themselves to acceleration?  

 

AND/OR

Any other remedial spelling programs out there that ACTUALLY PRODUCE RESULTS?  My son still can't spell.  At all. It is certainly better than it was in, say, 4th grade, but it is not seventh grade level by a long shot.  No LDs of any kind, very advanced across the board including composition, just can't spell!!!!!!!  

 

[Lori D.]

For DS#2, I made our own remedial, individualized spelling using ideas from various sources, plus we used Megawords. Spelling did not click at ALL for DS#2 until he turned 12yo. After that, it was a slow, uphill work, requiring a lot of 1-on-1 time every day all the way up through 11th grade. And he'll never be a great speller. But the remedial 1-on-1 daily work and Megawords worked here.

Our remedial individualized spelling included:
- whiteboard, using different colors to show prefixes, endings, vowel patterns, etc. (Right Brain Children in A Left Brain World, by Freed/Dianne Craft techniques)
- whiteboard, using mnemonics and visual "story" pictures to help remember vowel patterns, esp. for homophones (Stevenson Blue Spelling Manual) 
- dictation of very 4-5 short sentences each with 2-3 spelling words in them, spelling every word aloud as he wrote it (Stevenson Blue Spelling Manual) 
- created spelling lists that built up such as rain, rainbow, brain, brainy, brainier, brainiest, reign, sovereign (Sequential Spelling; ABCs and All Their Tricks)
- out-loud back and forth practice of spelling words (Andrew Pudewa's Spelling and the Brain lecture, and his Phonetic Zoo program; plus Carol Barnier's "Toss It")

Sorry, that probably wasn't what you wanted to hear. JMO: I think what works for your DS will be whatever addresses the root issue, so that needs to be figured out first:

- low auditory-sequential memory?
- does not understand/retain vowel patterns?
- does not understand syllabication and how breaking words into "bites" (syllables) assists with spelling?
- needs colors, visuals, pictures, and story to help send abstract sequential word order/pattern into long-term memory?
- brain cannot simultaneously juggle writing and spelling?

BEST of luck in getting this figured out! Warmest regards, Lori D.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

@Lori D. Thank you for the explanation and great resource list.  I have not yet put my finger on the problem.  He also spells terribly in French, but his German spelling (almost perfectly phonetic) is good.  It might be a question of bilingual kids developing some skills late, but I feel like I've give the "wait it out" approach long enough and need to really address his English spelling.  We've been working hard at French spelling (not that it helps much...).  

[forty-two]

I agree with Lori D. that what works will be whatever addresses your ds's particular root issue(s).  My kids' issues have mostly been auditory processing weaknesses, not visual memory weaknesses; on Lori's list above we had low auditory-sequential memory and difficulties breaking words into syllables and blending syllables together (also difficulties breaking words into individual sounds and blending sounds together).  But, other than needing to teach oldest dd to pay attention to the visual details of words in the first place (which we did using Spelling You See's marking system, very similar to Lori's colored whiteboard spelling technique), once they could finally *hear* the sounds, they've had few problems with remembering the spelling.

That said, I've found Spelling Through Morphographs to be pretty darn awesome and thorough, hitting things through several different methods to address several common issues.  If your ds is reliable at spelling phonetically regular one syllable words, but is bad at remembering which phonetically-correct spelling to use and/or is bad at multi-syllable words, it could be a good choice.  My oldest started StM as a garden-variety bad speller (which was a huge accomplishment in itself, because she was truly awful before we started working at it), and exited it as a pretty decent speller.  Not perfect, but her spelling doesn't hold her back anymore; she correctly spells at least 95% of the words she writes, and the ones she misses are usually unfamiliar words she's not written before. 
 

At any rate, here's what we did and why:
*went back through phonics book and spelled (in cursive) all the phonetically-regular one-syllable words (all 2,000 of them, from CVC through vowel and consonant digraphs).  My goal here was to teach them a) to be able to hear the sounds in a one-syllable word, and b) to spell by syllable, not by individual letter or sound.  Thus working in cursive (I combined cursive practice and spelling practice), because I've read that you can't effectively write in cursive if you can't write by syllables.  Certainly the kids found spelling in cursive much harder than doing so in print - a lot more had to be automatic.  At the end of this step the goal was for them to be solid at spelling one syllable words by sound, in cursive.

*at the same time, we did Spelling You See and/or marked up copywork with the SYS visual marking system.  The idea was that, just as in the previous step they were learning to aurally break spoken words into sounds, here they were learning to break written words into individual phonograms.  (At the time, my oldest couldn't distinguish individual sounds in spoken words or distinguish individual letters in written words - she remembered words as hazy aural or visual outlines.  No surprise she couldn't spell.)  Once they completed all the one syllable words in cursive (step one), I started having them do their SYS and other copywork in cursive.

*After finishing step one, we did REWARDS reading.  This teaches reading by syllables and reading by morphographs.  I used it to help them learn to break words into syllables and blend syllables together into words.  They needed the advanced reading work, and it also served as an intro to working with words by syllables.

*Once they were done with REWARDS - aka once they could spell one-syllable words by sound and could break words into syllables - we started Spelling Through Morphographs.  The goal was to combine all the previous skill-bits into spelling by syllable/morphograph, and to do it in cursive.  StM also works on common non-phonetically regular short words, so there's a lot of practice with those, as well.  It worked as advertised.  Oldest dd had a breakthrough about 1/3 of the way through (something clicked and spelling started coming easier), and another 2/3 of the way through (something else clicked and spelling became old hat).

*At the same time as StM, we did Touch, Type, Read & Spell, to hit typing and spelling together. 

Edited November 19, 2019 by forty-two

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

@forty-two Thank you for this info!  I had never heard of the spelling through morphographs program, I will give it a look.  

Things about ds:

- excellent reader

- excellent auditory memory- can quote audiobooks very accurately, days or weeks later.

- does not appear to have any visual-spatial issues.  He is my main navigator and is basically a homing pigeon, he is building an RC airplane with no help, he can draw well from book or video tutorials...

WHY CAN'T HE SPELL???  😩

 

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

@Lori D. @forty-two  If either of you would just take a glance at this... this was a history test from last week- short responses to some questions I wrote on the whiteboard.  I am happy with the contents.  I can see one main issue is that I did not ask him to proof-read after completion, and he definitely is not ready to proof-read spontaneously of his own volition- he needs the reminder.  I believe he would have caught most of the proper nouns that he did not capitalize the first time around.  Although I am tearing my hair out looking at them, they are not my main concern.  If you can look at the actual spelling errors here, and give me any insight... I'd appreciate it.  There are a few bizarre turns of phrase as well, I generally talk those out with the kids and chalk it up to the two first languages "problem".

[Lori D.]

Actually, this doesn't look bad. There are several "patterns" to the misspellings, so it would probably be easy to track and teach the correct patterns to replace the error patterns. Just my inexpert and quick assessment, but about half of those errors look like they are straight out of confusions with French (no way I could have kept 2, much less 3, languages straight for spelling!). Another chunk are about homophone mix-ups, not doubling letters (syllabication would help with that), and some missed phonetic vowel patterns or not pronouncing the word clearly (which leads to mistaken vowel spelling).

a. =  for vowels pairs -- phonetic rules (I used The ABCs and All Their Tricks)
b. = for the wrong vowel -- work on careful and exaggerated pronunciation, such as pronouncing it: per-sEH-q-shun (not per-sAW-q-shun)
c. = for homophones -- flash card memorization, and draw little pictures to help remember the spellings -- like, a witch's pointed hat over the "t" in "witch", and a "?" over the first "h" in "which" to indicate that it is the "question" word
d. = for irregular verbs -- memorization of verbs that take a particular pattern for past tense: "-ought" = seek - sought, buy - bought, bring - brought, fight - fought
e. = for doubling letters -- syllabication rules  (I used Megawords)
f.; g. =  multiple language mix-up -- ? -- he keeps a notebook and record words that trip him up, with each page a different heading (like each of the items above), as well as these types of spelling errors??

paragraph #1
a. phonetic vowel pair rule
welth <— wealth
fredom <— freedom

b. wrong vowel sound (possible "schwa" confusion)
seperation <—separation
Anglacan <— Anglican

c. mixed the homophones
witch <— which

d. normally a correct ending for past tense -- just didn't realize this verb has an irregular form for past tense
seeked <— sought

paragraph #2
e. missing the doubled consonant; syllabication rule for preventing vowel from taking the "long" sound
arived <— arrived
tobaco <— tobacco
coton <— cotton

a. phonetic vowel pair rule
persacution <— persecution

c. mixed the homophones
witch <— which
where <— were

f. looks like a simple mix-up of knowing multiple languages
richises <— riches

paragraph #3
e. missing the doubled consonant; syllabication rule for preventing vowel from taking the "long" sound
arived <— arrived
vilage <— village

h. phonetically, "g" usually has "soft" sound when followed by "I" or "e" -- the "u" helps give the "g" its "hard" sound
plage <— plague

g. "typo" of transposing letters? French pronunciation/spelling mix up? -- in French, the "e" at the end causes you to pronounce consonants before that final "e" that otherwise would not be pronounced
clearde <— cleared

c. mixed the homophones
Mayflour <— Mayflower

f. looks like a simple mix-up of knowing multiple languages
previonse <— previous

paragraph #4
e. missing the doubled consonant; syllabication rule for preventing vowel from taking the "long" sound
Of <— off
wilngly <— willingly
folow <— follow

c. mixed the homophones
moor <— more

b. wrong vowel sound (possible "schwa" confusion)
governer <—governor

Edited November 20, 2019 by Lori D.

[forty-two]

welth, wich/witch (which), fredom, seperation, anglacain,
arived, richises, tobaco, coton, wich/witch (which), colenists (got right earlier), where (were), persacution
Mayflour, arived, clearde, indinn, vilage, previouse,
arived, where (were), moor, of (off), wilingly, folow, governer

Ok, it looks like homophones and doubled letters are not his friend, and he missed some schwa'd vowels (where the unaccented vowel gets smooshed to an /uh/ sound).  And he has problems figuring out which vowel spelling to use.  And in "richises", when he spells something phonetically (but incorrectly), it looks like he realizes that something is wrong with his phonetic-but-incorrect spelling ('richis') - he knows it ends in 'es' - but he doesn't know how to fix it and so just kind of adds it on.  "Clearde" seems similar - sounds like "cleard", but he knows there's an 'e', so he throws it on the end.  (And "previouse" - correct except for the added silent 'e'.  Is that a common problem for him, throwing on an extra silent 'e'?)  And how he crossed out the 't' in "witch" - he knows it wasn't right, but he wasn't getting the 'wh'.  His phonetic spelling is quite good, though.

In a lot of ways, this reminds me of my 5th grader's spelling - they are the same sorts of mistakes she makes.  Some of them can be addressed phonetically.  It helped dd11 to figure out whether to use 'w' or 'wh' when I explained how they are actually different sounds, only our dialect pronounces them the same (as 'w').  We practiced saying some 'wh' words, where I emphasized the /hw/ sound, and it helped her to learn that the w/wh spelling isn't actually random.  And many of the cases where he's not doubling a consonant, that doubled consonant is protecting a short vowel.  So 'vilage' is actually vi-lage, with a long i; it needs that second 'l' to be vil-lage, with a short i.  Same with 'tobaco' (makes it to-ba-co, with a long a, instead of to-bac-co, with a short a), 'folow', 'wilingly', and 'coton'.  When dd makes mistakes like that, I usually read it aloud just like it sounds, and if she doesn't figure out how to fix it on her own, I explain how she needs that doubled consonant.

Generally homophones are a matter of thinking about the meaning plus visual memory (to remember how each meaning is spelled); when dd makes one of those mistakes, I do my best to take the sentence literally as written and ask her, for example, how the Moors fit into the Atlantic crossing.  I try to exaggerate the humor of the mistake as much as possible, both to highlight the error and also to fix the spelling/meaning connections into memory.

Schwa'd vowels are mostly memory, but SWR has a think-to-spell technique to help bring auditory memory into it.  Basically, when you learn to spell a word, and whenever you spell it thereafter, instead of saying it normally, you say it while pronouncing the usually-schwa'd vowel as written.  So, for governor, you'd say to yourself "gov-en-OR" as you spelled it, to help remember the spelling.  Likewise, with 'separation', you'd think "sep-AR-a-tion", to remember the 'ar' instead of 'er'.  With 'indian', you'd think "in-di-An", to remember the 'a'.  With 'arrived', to remember the double r, you could think "AR-ri-ved".  Whenever dd makes one of these kinds of mistakes, I explain how unfortunately our ear isn't a good enough guide, thanks to the schwa'ing, and do the exaggerated "think to spell" pronunciation.

 

ETA: I agree with Lori D.: I don't think this is that bad in the scheme of things.  Not where you want to leave it, no, but there's a lot more good than bad here.  It's about where both my girls were spelling when I started StM with them.  But it is also the level of spelling that prompted me to get more serious about doing dictation with my 5th grader this year - where we had overcome so many difficulties, yet somehow there were still enough misspellings to be eyebrow-raising.  (When older dd was at this point, I was still just happy about her getting more and more words right, and wasn't worrying yet about what words she still got wrong; somehow my expectations for dd11 are higher, probably because she was never as bad as dd13.)  Dictation has helped with cementing common irregular words and getting homophones right - it provides targeted practice that comes pretty close to mimicking the "in the wild" writing task.  (And I've started having dd13 write things from memory.  IDK what it is, but apparently doing dictation from short-term memory isn't the same task as writing down things from long-term memory, and for dd13, the latter is the harder one.)

ETA2: Another program, which I haven't used but which gets rave reviews for kids who need a lot of practice at the sorts of things your ds needs practice with, is Apples & Pears.

Edited November 19, 2019 by forty-two

[ElizabethB]

This is a good book for homophones, you can purchase a PDF:

http://www.susancanthony.com/bk/hb.html

For the cotton error, review doubling and long/short, my syllable division exercises 1, 3, and 4.  It should be co-ton spelled that way, like motor.

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/syllable division exercises1.pdf

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

 

@Lori D. @forty-two  Thank you SO MUCH for taking the time to do that detailed analysis.  That was so incredibly helpful!!!  It's nice to hear it isn't "all bad" and there are some consistencies in the errors.  Doubling errors are also a huge problem for him in French spelling, so we will attack that rule very specifically in both languages.  Thanks so much!

 

Thank you @ElizabethB !  The homophones book will be really helpful!

 

p.s.  Sorry for these late replies, I thought I had pressed send reply, but found this two days later still open in a tab on my browser.  😄  

Edited November 22, 2019 by Monica_in_Switzerland

[Nart]

The good news:  Many schools in the US no longer formally teach spelling. Most writing is done on chromebooks/computers/ iPads in schools, so all those errors will be automatically corrected. My husband teaches 7th grade English and I sometimes look at what students write when he brings home a pile of work to grade. Your son's  spelling mistakes are no different than many students in his honors English class.  I wouldn't worry that he isn't spelling words like Anglican, tobacco, cotton, or even persecution correctly.

Bad news: I don't mean it really as bad news, but just pointing out that some kids have a difficult time visually imprinting correct spelling of words into long-term memory. Many people can just look at a word and figure out it doesn't look right and fix it. While structured phonics works incredibly well for reading, you can't "phonics rule" your way through spelling. If he can phonetically spell words, but can't remember these sight words, he needs to concentrate on the most important words. So I would not spend anytime on spelling words like "tobacco" and work on correctly spelling common words such as: which, were, where, off/of, follow, arrive, etc.  

More good news: The only spelling program that has worked for my 5th grade who makes similar mistakes - he can spell using phonics rules, but not sight words- is Apples and Pears.  They really concentrate on the words that are most often misspelled because you can't just use phonics rules to figure out how to spell them.  I love that they have a lot of dictation and repetition. Looking at how well overall your son writes, I am not sure he even needs such a structured program. Maybe just Level C or even just level D?

[ktgrok]

You might want to check out my thread in this forum about Abecedarian - there is an email in there from the owner on how to work on spelling with a child who is struggling. 

[Lori D.]

2 hours ago, Nart said:

The good news:  Many schools in the US no longer formally teach spelling. Most writing is done on chromebooks/computers/ iPads in schools, so all those errors will be automatically corrected. My husband teaches 7th grade English and I sometimes look at what students write when he brings home a pile of work to grade. Your son's  spelling mistakes are no different than many students in his honors English class. 

Bad news: I don't mean it really as bad news, but just pointing out that some kids have a difficult time visually imprinting correct spelling of words into long-term memory. Many people can just look at a word and figure out it doesn't look right and fix it. While structured phonics works incredibly well for reading, you can't "phonics rule" your way through spelling. If he can phonetically spell words, but can't remember these sight words, he needs to concentrate on the most important words. So I would not spend anytime on spelling words like "tobacco" and work on correctly spelling common words such as: which, were, where, off/of, follow, arrive, etc.  

Respectfully, I disagree with aspects of both this "good news" and "bad news".

1. That  "good news" is terrible news for a whole generation of students who will be crippled by the thinking that "technology will take care of the problem".

Yes, technology can help -- my visual learner with stealth dyslexia (so, mild LDs in Spelling, Writing, and Math), did find it very helpful to start typing, and SpellCheck helps him catch errors. But good gracious NO! it would have been DISASTROUS for him if we had not actively worked on teaching spelling in multiple ways all the way up to 12th grade! DS did not even *begin* to "click" with spelling until partway into 6th grade. My experience with my struggling speller was that perseverance and individualized mentoring is what helped, rather than giving up and letting the struggling speller potentially fall through the crack or be crippled by reliance on imperfect technology for spelling.

2. That "bad news" -- I respectfully disagree with the idea that you "can't phonics rule your way through spelling".

Again, personal experience with our struggling speller was that he DID learn phonetic rules that DO help him with spelling -- but it took much more time for him to learn them, and we had to use MULTIPLE techniques to get there. I absolutely do agree with the first part of your statement that "some kids have a difficult time visually imprinting correct spelling of words into long-term memory.
 

2 hours ago, Nart said:

...So I would not spend anytime on spelling words like "tobacco" and work on correctly spelling common words such as: which, were, where, off/of, follow, arrive, etc.

Respectfully disagreeing here, as "tobacco" follows syllabication and phonic rules, just as "follow" and "arrive" do. In fact, using less frequently used words like "tobacco" makes for great opportunity for putting into practice the syllabication and vowel pair rules correctly and see that the rules "work" and not just that you've "memorized" the spelling of more commonly used words such as "follow" or "arrive".
 

2 hours ago, Nart said:

... The only spelling program that has worked for my 5th grade ...  is Apples and Pears...
... Looking at how well overall your son writes, I am not sure he even needs such a structured program...

Agree -- Apples and Pears is a program that does often help struggling spellers, depending on what the individual issue is.

Also agree that OP may not even need a structured program, but just a resource for helping to see the spelling error patterns, and the phonetic rules, vowel pattern rules, and syllabication pattern rule that would help him see how to approach spelling in the smaller "bites" of the word.


Not at all meaning to attack you Nart. I just feel passionately about the Language Arts and doing everything in my power to help struggling students. That comes from both from my own DS's struggles, but also because I see so many students in my high school Lit. & Comp. co-op classes handing in papers with atrocious spelling, no grammar put into place, and no clue of the basics of writing -- a "triple LA whammy". 😭

Edited November 22, 2019 by Lori D.

[ktgrok]

I think maybe what she meant was that phonics only gets you so far with spelling. There are multiple correct ways to spell many words using phonics. You just have to know which one to use - and that requires something beyond phonics. 

[Nart]

5 hours ago, Ktgrok said:

I think maybe what she meant was that phonics only gets you so far with spelling. There are multiple correct ways to spell many words using phonics. You just have to know which one to use - and that requires something beyond phonics. 

 

Yes, this is what I meant. I spent the morning reminding my 5th grader who was writing about a snake, a mouse, and a "snale" that "snale" is in fact spelled  "snail".  I told him that maybe snails have shells to protect them from the rain, then wrote out rain and snail, and pointed to the "ai".  There isn't any rule he can memorize to help him know snail is spelled with an "ai". I told him to either remember it is with an "ai" or to write about a slug instead. I use Apples and Pears with him as it is the only spelling program that has worked. 

On 11/19/2019 at 9:47 AM, Lori D. said:

For DS#2, I made our own remedial, individualized spelling using ideas from various sources, plus we used Megawords. Spelling did not click at ALL for DS#2 until he turned 12yo. After that, it was a slow, uphill work, requiring a lot of 1-on-1 time every day all the way up through 11th grade. And he'll never be a great speller. But the remedial 1-on-1 daily work and Megawords worked here.
 

 

Lori D- We will have to agree to disagree. I think you had some fantastic suggestions and it clearly paid off for your son to spend all the time you did on spelling. The original post came from someone whose child is spending hours studying language arts in English and French, as well as learning German. There are only so many hours in a school day.  I just don't think it is worth the daily, one-on-one time for someone in that situation to spend countless hours learning to spell words like "tobacco", "persecution", or Anglican" correctly. I would really concentrate on making sure all high frequency words such as "where", "were", "off", and "more" are spelled correctly, "-ed" endings are correct, and capitalizations are fixed by having him immediately correct them. The longer he makes those errors, the harder they become to correct. They start to look right. Additionally, it really affects the readability of a passage when basic words are misspelled. 

I just started bilingually English/Spanish homeschooling  my kids by doing 4 hours a day of Spanish. It is really hard to fit in everything,  but one thing I am really trying to make sure gets done is Apples and Pears spelling for my fifth grader because he is such a poor speller. My 7th grader who reads above grade level and writes well, but is at best an average speller, could benefit from continued spelling lessons. However, I realize once he picks up more Spanish, he will eventually improve his spelling in English. For example, if he can't remember if "incredible" ends with "-able" or "-ible"  he can say the word in Spanish - "increible" - and realize it ends with "-ible".  There are so many French origin words in English, Monica's son will have an advantage when writing around 1/3 of all English words. 

 

Edited November 23, 2019 by Nart

[ktgrok]

Right. My daughter knows that some phonograms are only used in the middle of a word, and some are able to be used at the end or the middle. But which one to use in the middle doesn't have a rule, you just have to memorize it and know which one looks right. 

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I probably should have mentioned that we did 2 years of Apples and Pears- A and B, probably in 4th and 5th grade, and he was able to do the program with no problems but could not transfer skills.  We then took a year off to see if maturity would help with the transfer of skills, and that brings us to now.  

@Nart makes a couple of good points.  As bilingual schoolers, we spend an absolutely ridiculous amount of time on LA.  I do my absolute best not to double things (like grammar, I just teach the language with the harder grammar and mention the parallels), but there are a handful of things that just need to be doubled- spelling, writing, and reading, for example.  A huge time suck.  So I appreciate trying to minimize as much as possible.  Also, there is an element of memory that goes beyond knowing phonics... you also have to choose the RIGHT way to write any given sound.  Sigh.  

I do think we will aim for rule-based spelling this year with an emphasis on syllables, something we have never covered since he intuited reading after a good start with more basic phonics concepts.   Once his reading took off, I stopped working on phonics.  We happen to have time this year to dedicate a few more minutes to spelling, as this is a non-exam year for us.  I think I'll attempt to use the resources I have (HTTS, Megawords 1, and the homophones book mentioned above) and see how it goes from there.  Chances are good French spelling will improve if we get the syllable concepts down right.  

 

Thank you all for all the help!