This is a bit of an asside, but have you encountered morphographic spelling programmes? These are like phonics on steriods for people who notice that phonics and English don't get allong too well.
I was a grade 6 reading medical textbooks but unable to spell "the" consistently when my gifted programme handed three of us morphographic spelling -- the goal was exactly the same as yours... to make us ready for the greater output demmands of highschool. They thought they'd need three years, but we all finished the programme in less than one year, and it worked. We all passed the exams to continue in gifted a couple of years later with no further intervention. I was the only one who continued to need any spec. ed. services at all, and those were not for spelling (though I still can't spell my way out of a paper bag, I can generally make myself understood
I intend to "aftershcool" this with DS when he's doing grade 1 or 2, partly because I think it's just a better way, and partly becasue we noticed early on that he thinks in morphographs, not words, and I soooo totally do not have a problem with that. (see, he really is brilliant, he sees right through that darned awkward superficial structure to the meat of it all!!! Bwaaahahahahahha)
wonder if I can find a link online....
mmmm, looks like the programme I did is out of print. Looking at some of the studies, it looks like there's not much proof they work... but I have to say, those are studies in non-gifted populations, and I would definitely have said (actually, I kinda already did say) that this approach is really suited to a gifty brain with spelling issues. I would have trouble just explaining it to a lot of people, and one of my language profs, when I so much as understood the meaning of "morphograph" well, got REALLY excited about me.
Anyway, it worked really really well for me. I think it would work really well for a smart kid who understands how language works. I'm not surprised it doesn't work well for kids who don't grasp underlying structures easily. YMMV. So there. Worth checking out?
Good luck!
