Spelling program for DD with low-vision?

[Suzannah]

Hey all! I'm beginning to make out my wishlist for next year and trying to make some decisions for my rising 1st grader. She has low-vision but wears reading glasses and is learning to read. She's been doing a low-key version of school for a couple of years now because she wanted to imitate her brother. She enjoys math (Saxon 1) and handwriting (Italic) and will probably continue with those. We also use FLL for grammar which is nearly all oral at this point. Reading is going well but the smaller the print naturally the more difficult it is.

 

I've used Spelling Workout for the last five years with her older brother and we like it well enough, but I happened to think that there might be something more suitable for her situation. What is the best way to teach spelling to someone who doesn't see well? :confused:

[Kathy in MD]

Hey all! I'm beginning to make out my wishlist for next year and trying to make some decisions for my rising 1st grader. She has low-vision but wears reading glasses and is learning to read. She's been doing a low-key version of school for a couple of years now because she wanted to imitate her brother. She enjoys math (Saxon 1) and handwriting (Italic) and will probably continue with those. We also use FLL for grammar which is nearly all oral at this point. Reading is going well but the smaller the print naturally the more difficult it is.

 

I've used Spelling Workout for the last five years with her older brother and we like it well enough, but I happened to think that there might be something more suitable for her situation. What is the best way to teach spelling to someone who doesn't see well? :confused:

 

For when your dd is older, you might try Sequential Spelling. There is no "studying" or worksheets for this program. You read a word, she writes it, you spell it while shechecks her spelling. If it's wrong, she corrects it and then rewrites it. Then you read the next work. You will spend ususally 10-15 min a day on spelling. Warning, YOu won't see results until about the 60th lesson, but it does carry over. The problem with starting a 1st grader in the program is that it quickly builds to multi-sylabic words she's never heard of.

 

The alternative method would be Laurie's overteaching method or some variation of it. Laurie's method is designed for children with memory problems, but you might use the same basic idea for your dd. Briefly, select the most common DOCHE words that your dd needs to learn. Basically you select the most common words that your dd needs to learn, orally drill them daily for a week, then once a week for 3 weeks then once a month for months. Any mistakes and they're sent back to day 1. I believe she actually dictates a sentence with the word. I'm fuzzy on the details because I use a different method for spelling (SS).

[Suzannah]

Thanks for those suggestions. It really only dawned on me the other day that there might be a better way to handle spelling so I hadn't considered either of those ideas.

[LizzyBee]

How about the Spelling program from IEW? I can't remember the name of it, but it's primarily auditory, using audio CD's. I've seen used sets for sale at the homeschool store, and I'm pretty sure all the words are also written in large print on flashcards.

[Suzannah]

I looked it up on the IEW site. Have you used it? I'm familiar with the writing program but have never actually seen Phonetic Zoo first hand. Does anyone else have an opinion? How necessary are the audio CDs? Is the DVD basically common sense or does it actually provide useful information? At first glance it looks like it would work well for a primarily auditory learner.

[Claire]

My dyslexic dd, who is primarily a visual learner, did not do well with Phonetic Zoo. She could not get past the first lesson. This program does work well for primarily auditory learners, I think. My dd had a lot of vision problems as a youngster (very severe astigmatism not corrected with eyeglasses until age 3, and then multiple severe visual efficiency delays not corrected until age 9 with vision therapy), and she compensated a lot with auditory skills, but that still did not make her an auditory learner. Some children learn well with kinesthetic means, but my dd is borderline dysgraphic so basically does not learn by doing the usual kinesthetic activities for spelling (including writing).

 

I honestly don't think that a spelling curriculum is appropriate for 1st grade. I think spelling is best introduced after the child is reading on a minimum of a beginning 3rd grade level. Spelling skills in general take longer to acquire than reading skills, and spelling definitely takes much longer to remediate than reading does.

 

Spelling seems to be very individual to the child, so a program that works wonderfully with one group of children may not work at all for another. It's often necessary to do some experimentation. My dd, for example, did not learn well at all with spelling rules because there were so many exceptions. She did, however, learn well with Sequential Spelling (a word family approach with lots of repetition) followed by Spelling Through Morphographs (probably because there are only half a dozen rules for combining morphographs, and they have very few exceptions).

 

Spelling basics are phonetic and sequential but, once a child has those basics down, much of spelling involves visual memory. For example, there is no rule that explains why "boat" should not be spelled "bote". This has to be memorized.

 

What helped my dd a lot, and would be appropriate for your dd's age, is something I called "reverse spelling". I would orally spell a word, separating each letter by a one-second interval, and my dd would have to tell me what the word was. I started with 2-sound words ("go", "see", "my"), moved up to 3-sound words when she was solid on 2 sounds ("say", "stow"), moved to 4-sound words when she was solid on 3 sounds, etc. It sounds as if the exercise is too easy to be useful, but in fact it forces the child to use visual memory and it trains the child to hold more and more items in visual memory. It also reinforces the importance of sequentiality in memory (remembering the letters in sequence).

[Suzannah]

I guess it does look like I'm rushing into Spelling. DD actually turned 6 in January so we're doing a sort of K/1st thing this year and more of a 1st/2nd thing next year. She's actually pretty good at phonics. TWTM recommends beginning spelling when Phonics Pathways is completed or nearly completed. I'm not going through it as intensively as I did with DS but DD practices reading every day or every other day and she absolutely loves to copy things I've written for her or telling me what she wants to write so I can spell any words she can't figure out.

 

I had also wondered if it was necessarily a given that she is an auditory learner simply because of her vision problems. I haven't quite figured out what her strongest learning style is.

 

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. Sometimes I'm just not sure which questions I'm forgetting to ask. I really appreciate the forums when I do think of a good one. :)