For example, among things she’s written in the last week, grerren, ejanj and storrxbreeys are granola, exchange and strawberries, respectively. . . . 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.
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.
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.
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.
