Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Is poor spelling a problem?

DD8 (3rd grade) is MG with strengths in creativity and math. She was diagnosed with SPD and generally is one of those kids who thinks and experiences the world a little differently.

DD’s reading is a couple levels above average for her grade, but her spelling is really bad. For example, among things she’s written in the last week, grerren, ejanj and storrxbreeys are granola, exchange and strawberries, respectively. She has no problem memorizing her spelling list each week and getting 100s on her spelling tests, but she doesn’t seem to connect the spelling words with the words she uses when writing. She also can spell just fine if I sound out each letter or blend, but she can’t identify each sound from the whole word.

She has a similar problem when reading. She looks at the first two or three letters of a longer word, and then substitutes random words that start with those letters. For example, she might read program as process, probe or progress.

When she was in the lower grades, her teachers said it was just a developmental thing and not to worry because her reading level was above average. Now that she’s in third grade, her teacher says that it’s not a problem because she’s reading above level and that the spelling/grammar issues are because she’s working too fast and not trying. Additionally, her teacher feels that her poor spelling is partly because she listens to books at home rather than reading them herself. DD’s reading speed, ability and stamina don’t match the kinds of books she enjoys. She spends hours each day listening to novels (the Golden Compass was a recent favorite, although nothing tops Harry Potter), but will only read Rainbow Fairy-type books or cookbooks on her own.

Any suggestions? I want DD to continue to enjoy books and don’t want her overwhelmed with the increased writing demands next year. Is this a problem that’s likely to disappear as she gets older? Are there specific things we should work on at home? Are there specific tests we should have done privately? Or am I making a big deal out of nothing?

IMHO, that is a *big* problem, likely to get worse, rather than better. She's using her memory and context clues to compensate for a significant weakness in something. (Auditory processing? Visual processing? Some of both?)

That does not look like run of the mill poor spelling to me, though I say this from the POV of having a child who is an excellent speller. But those approximations are really far off. I see the papers of all DD's classmates and none of them have spelling issues of that sort. If it were gernola, exchanj and straberrys, that would be a different matter.

It seems like there is something else going on for sure. It sounds like your daughter has poor phoemic awareness, to start.

JMO, but it signals a potential "big" problem to me too. FWIW, we've had very similar concerns with our dd7 who is in second grade - your description of your dd matches our dd in almost every way. We had our dd go through an educational assessment and dyslexia screening this winter, and what we found was very different than what we'd anticipated finding. We *thought* she might be dyslexic, but instead found out that she has a definite challenge with associative memory and possibly a visual processing challenge.

My suggestion is to seek out an eval now - either through the school or a private eval, but definitely don't wait. If you look around in class at the writing other kids are doing, I'm guessing most of the other third graders aren't spelling like your dd is spelling.

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - re the teacher saying your dd is working too fast/not trying - I have two 2e kiddos, and both have had teachers say that. That can be SO damaging to a kids' self-esteem when they really really are trying, and it's so important that if there *is* a challenge for your dd you find out now and put a name to it so your dd doesn't have to be caught in a situation where she is trying and the adults around her at school don't believe she's trying. I found that for my ds in particular, having teachers not believe he was trying not only hurt his self-esteem and led to a ton of frustration, it also really damaged his view of school and it took a lot of getting him into a better situation before he had any trust in his teachers.

Last note - it's possible it's nothing, just as the teachers think. If you go through an eval and find out it's nothing, you've lost nothing. OTOH, if you don't look into what's up and there really is a challenge, school is just going to get harder and harder as the years go by.

The school is unwilling to do any testing because DD is above level overall. What kinds of private evals do you suggest, and what kind of tester should I look for?

I may be way off, but as an adult I still have simaler issues. I read way above my grade level, yet cannot spell. I can memorize a spelling list, but forge it when I write.
I discover as an adult that when I come across a new word I normally mis pronounce it. If I am told how to say it I will remeber it. I now believe this cam from being a whole word learner. I lerned to read words as a whole rather then phoneticly. I believ a stronger foundation in phonics may have been of help. I also now belive this is a form of dyslexia. It normaly goe un noticed becuae of the high reading abilty. I would have an assesmnet and find out for sure. As an adult, I have to remind my clients not to judge my abilty by my spelling or penmanship but by results. Note I normally have to use spell check on everything I type.

Edwin, have you ever tried using word prediction software such as Co:Writer or WordQ? My ds12 is dysgraphic with huge spelling challenges while writing, and using word prediction helps him save a ton of time over spell-check. The way the programs work is they run "on top" of word processing software, and as you type the first few letters of a word they bring up a list of words to choose from so you don't type the whole word out, just choose it from a list. It sounds clunky and difficult, but it doesn't take long to get used to and it can really save a lot of spell-check time since the words come out spelled correctly the first time around

polarbear

MWM, we've had the same issue with both of our 2e kids. The first thing to know is, that you may be able to argue the school into testing if you put your request into writing, and phrase your request in a way that points out the specific concerns - you can get advice on how to write the request from either wrightslaw.org, or from an advocate if you have one locally, or you can ask those of us here on the 2e board who've successfully navigated the IEP eligibility process what we did.

That said, going through the school for an eval is a long process and in our case even though we eventually got an IEP our ds didn't get the help he needed through the school so we didn't even try going through school for our dd. The other gotcha with a school eval (at least it's a gotcha here) is there is potential that the school has an interest in not finding an issue, as well as our schools do not offer up a diagnosis, but instead will offer up many alternative possibilities.

To get a private eval, my recommendation is to seek out a pediatric neuropsychologist for an educational eval. This will include ability (IQ) and achievement testing, as well as additional tests depending on the challenges the neuropsych observes during testing and from parent/teacher input. Our neuropsych evals have also included behavioral surveys filled out by parents and teachers as well as an interview with parents where we were asked to give our children's history from birth as well as given an opportunity to share classwork etc that we were concerned about. The neuropsych made recommendations for accommodations, remediation, and further evals/therapies as needed.

Another option you might be able to find privately are providers who will do targeted testing - either ability vs achievement or a reading-specific dyslexia screening. The challenge with using that approach is you might end up with more questions and wish you had the full neuropsych eval anyway.

Gotta run, this was in a bit of a hurry so I hope it makes sense!

polarbear

Urg, my post just got eaten!

The general jist of what I was saying was that my dd11, who is 2e, sounds a lot like what you've mentioned. She reads above grade level, gets 100% on spelling tests, but doesn't like to read and her spelling tests don't translate to her spelling in writing. I've seen her spell the same word three different ways on one page.

Her spelling isn't quite as bad as what you mention (more in line w/ what ultramarina mentioned) and it has improved some as she's gotten older, but I do recall seeing a lot of the substituting in different words with similar letters when she was younger when she was reading as well.

I've wondered, too, about dyslexia although my dd does have good phonetical awareness apparently. For instance, she was advanced on the DIBELS (phenome) test in elementary, very high on decoding parts of the WIAT, and 4th quartile on the whole GORT except for reading speed, which was in the 1st quartile. I've been unsure if this rules out dyslexia or not. It can be hard to tell in gifted kids.

Mine has an ADD dx and is probably HG as well. She has numerous parts of the WISC in which she was in the 99th-99.9th as well as entire subtests of the WISC in that range which makes it that much harder b/c she compensates so well that it is hard to figure what exactly is wrong. Your dd may be more gifted than she is getting credit for as well.

I'd agree with the others that what you are seeing is not typical nor fine just b/c she reads above grade level. FWIW, mine is keeping up okay in middle school, but it is more work for her than it ought to be. She misses a lot of points due to overlooking parts of the directions, failing to turn things in, punctuation, spelling, etc.

eta: I'd also say that my dd's strengths are in creativity and math (she's subject accelerating in math and is more consistent on math group achievement tests than she is reading or writing tests), but she's taken the WISC-IV twice and got very high verbal index scores too (99.7 and 99, respectively) and both times even those scores were depressed by the scaled scores ranging from something like 12 (75th percentile) to 19 (99.9th). I think that whatever she has going on keeps her from fully expressing how able she is in the verbal realm. Even with two different psychs, we've not totally been able to sort it out, though. ADD and anxiety are all we've got at this point and one of them felt that there was no problem despite a lot of wildly erratic school test and IQ scores.

Has she had any of the early screeners used at school, i.e. DIBELS? Both of these comments sound like she is having issues hearing the sounds and/or with phonemic awareness. I won't pretend to know all of the possible causes. I agree with everyone else that I think that you need to pursue further assessment.


Wow, as the mom of an HG dyslexic kid, I completely disagree with the teacher. Does she have any experience with 2e kids? It sounds to me like your daughter has been doing an amazing job compensating for some glitch in her system. Now that the books of interest are getting harder you may be seeing her ability to compensate fall apart.

We saw some of this with our DD. She read a bazillion Rainbow Fairy books in kindergarten/1st BUT she refused to/couldn't handle anything else at that reading level. I suspect in hindsight that the stories are so repetitive that DD could use her strong prediction skills to guess the right words even though she hadn't read that particular book before.

Your kid may not have any issues but I think that you have enough red flags to justify further investigation. If she does, the sooner you know her issues, the sooner you can get her help.