The performance difference you report in the context of high/low interest is essentially the same thing.
Thanks for this. I think there's also an aspect of respecting the person asking as well.
I'm going to speculate that he is not consistently using spelling strategies (which include segmenting down to the phoneme level, selecting appropriate graphemes according to learned rules, and sequencing them to encode the complete word). When cued, he remembers that they exist, and has the cognition to apply them accurately. Otherwise, he may be reverting to old, ineffective strategies for recalling spellings by shape or by guess. This, of course, tells us that he has not automatized the process of spelling, although he can consciously articulate the principles.
This feels very much true. Thanks for articulating it.
If this is the case, what is the path forward? He gets OG 2x/week, Thursday and Friday. My gut is that this is insufficient and the 5 days between OG is going to limit progress. Is this a sign of that?
He also needs a wider array of unknown (much higher-level, or nonsense) words on which to practice spelling strategies and phonetic encoding skills, to "force" him to use them.
Where does such a list come from? I know DD complained/joked/mocked the repetition of the nonsense words when she went through this (but her OG was 5x/week). Is this something I can expect the teacher to produce?
I notice that his single word spelling accuracy has grown a little bit over the year (60 to 75%),
A point of detail is that the 60% was what he was doing upon starting OG a year ago. His first quarter reporting showed 75% on this goal, and he's remained there. Each time I've asked to this point, the response has been that since the taught phonological skills has increased and he's being tested on a larger set of phonological skills, this is still a signal of making progress.
One thought is that since I can't tell what constitutes improvement, this goal needs to be rewritten.
I believe we had a discussion about a history that appears to include a remediated expressive language disability.
Yes, but upon reflection, I feel pretty strongly (but with no data) that this was a consequence of the oral motor apraxia: he was reducing down each statement to the bare minimum. That being said, I'm not sure how this adaptation affects ones development. He now hits the ceiling on all aspects of CELF (but average on parts of CELF-Meta and Bombs part of the SLDT, but bombs a different part each time)
Oral and written sentence repetition (which is what dictation is, of course) also rely on working memory (excellent, in his case) and fluent grasp of grammar and syntax.
When doing AAS I have to prompt him to repeat the sentence, which greatly increases his ability to remember the sentence, with no (qualitative) sense that it improves his spelling.
I think that asking about the oral repetition of the single word vs dictated sentence is a key question. Thanks. I'll ask it ahead of the IEP meeting.
