Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion how to teach spelling

Dd5 just started K this week. She is at a private school that does subject and/or grade acceleration depending on each individual child, so it is really a nice place for GT kids. DD5 is in a mixed age class with K and 1st together. The thought has been that she will join up with the first graders academically and move on with them to second grade next year.

However, I talked with her teacher who said DD struggled this week keeping up with the first graders. Also keep in mind that the grades are working a grade level beyond public school, so K is really like first and first is like second and so on. I felt terrible that DD had such a bad time - she never let on to me that school was not going well. The teacher said she is easily frustrated which is true at home, too. But also the teacher said she gave up in trying to spell a word in order to write a sentence.

DD5 wants to write really bad. She is a great reader, doing work around a third or fourth grade level. And although it seems like if you can read, you should be able to spell, I realize this is not so.

Any ideas on how to encourage more writing and spelling?

DD is a very eager learner but also a perfectionist. She hates to make mistakes so I want to be careful not to destroy her confidence. Her teacher is going to move her in between the K and 1st grade students for a few weeks with the hope she will get the swing of being in school and accelerate back up with the first graders.

I would like to help build her writing and spelling skills so any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Our DS also struggled with writing and spelling until he had somewhat of a breakthrough when starting school this week. He's 7.5 in 2nd grade. He didn't want to know how to learn how to write before entering K, so we thought that would be a good goal for kindy (since he was already ahead in academics). The poor writing became especially apparent when he skipped first, which was a big writing year.

I think if the teacher is very laid back about it, it is helpful, especially for the perfectionist child. The 2nd grade teachers wouldn't make a big deal about spelling unless it was a spelling lesson. They would give him bigger lined paper to help with writing. Since DS's writing all of a sudden became legible, I'm thinking a lot of it was just developmental (his hands just couldn't do it quite yet). We also tried a bit of Handwriting Without Tears, but I was sort of lazy over the summer and we only did it a few times. So that's why I think that it's mostly developmental for our DS in terms of the neatness of the handwriting. But if your DD is willing, I'd recommend HWT or some other writing practice at home.

One thing that helped with spelling was (*gasp*) a Nintendo DS game. Super Scribblenauts seems to have been a huge help in his spelling (you spell something in the game and it appears - it's very cool).

Hopefully the teacher is supportive without being picky about how your DD writes. Good luck!

I read that copywork is great for that. If you handcopy good writing until about fourth grade it teaches you what good writing looks like. Quotes and proverbs are find, short, be consistent.

Thanks for the suggestions.

We had a tiny breakthrough this weekend as we encouraged DD to write a note to her Grandma. The key was getting DD to write even if the spelling was wrong. After some persuasion, she finally did it. DH and I were so proud that she TRIED and made a big emphasis on the trying bit, not on the end product. I hope she just tries writing at school this week. I do feel for her, being a perfectionist myself.

If anyone else has any suggestions on how to climb this mountain, I'm all ears (or eyes, I suppose).

One tool that has worked with our DS7 who is highly verbal but who has average PSI is to have him either dictate what he would like to write into a recorder and/or he tells us, we type it out, print it out and he writes it out. When we do the typing, he just says everything he wants to say, then he reads it and edits it and writes it. I think sometimes it is hard for him because he has so many ideas in his head, the challenge is getting it on the paper. He has a lot of writing homework this year, so I am hoping this system will help him learn the process of writing.

I have written things out for DD when she wants help writing. Sometimes I'll write out the word for her to copy down herself so she knows how to spell it. But I can't do that for her in school.

Our challenge is getting her to TRY to write on her own, even if she knows the spelling is wrong. Apparently DD struggled again today in school even though they gave her the K work, and it was stuff she already knows. So I'm not sure what is going on with her -- if it's behavioral, if she's just not reading the directions and then getting frustrated when the teacher corrects her or what. Then when I ask DD about it, she says everything is fine and school is easy. I'm so confused!!

Geez, life was a bit simpler before school started. Needless to say, I'm pretty frustrated myself right now and eager to get to the bottom of this ASAP.

Hi, HoosierMommy. My son was/is very similar. I've taught my son spelling very informally. We started with Dolch sight words, since those same high-frequency words will pop up often in writing, especially early writing. This seemed to build his confidence. At one point I used phonics flash cards to teach spelling, which helped reinforce some basic rules about when to choose certain letters and letter combinations. Those particular cards are well-designed in my view, and they're very cheap.

More recently I started hunting up free grade-level spelling lists on the web and just using those. I started with some good ones that used to appear at the All About Spelling website, but unfortunately they were pulled down. I haven't bought their product, but it seems like it might be worth a look if you don't feel capable of teaching your daughter in an offhand way like I did. Check out their "resource center" for some potentially helpful ideas:
http://www.allaboutlearningpress.com/spelling-resource-center

Some free spelling lists I found recently:
http://www.homespellingwords.com/

When I've taught my son, I've naturally pointed out things like when consonants are doubled, the effect of a silent "e", etc. I've also pointed out suffixes, prefixes and bases. I think the things I've done most parents would naturally think to do when focusing on teaching spelling to their children, the same way we figure out on the fly ways to teach our children to speak. That's why I think that if your aim is to help your child spell better, you don't necessarily need a product; the focus and effort will hopefully naturally tend to sweep both of you along.

Another thing that I think is helpful is to pick out the occasional illustrative spelling word during reading or even during conversations with my son, and make sure he knows it. At the end of reading a challenging passage, asking him to spell some of the words he just read seems to have possibly developed his ability to memorize spellings as he reads.

Here are some old threads on spelling:
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/110991/1.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/84683/Tactile_Spelling.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....87275/Poor_spelling_and_self_esteem.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....102606/Preparation_for_spelling_bee.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/49298/Spelling_Workbook.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/24017/1.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/10107/1.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/70127/1.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/56299/Spelling_Words_too_easy.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....0102/reading_and_spelling_out_of_sy.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/69832/1.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/110998/1.html

spellingcity.com is a great site!

My older boy is hearing impaired. he is an okay speller, but below what you would expect given how bright he is- I assume that is due to the hearing loss.
He has an almost photographic memory. What I do is give him 10 spelling words on notecards each week (downloaded from lists on the internet). We flip through them daily for a week. After 2-3 days of just looking at them, he can spell them correctly.
After a year, that is like 450 new words he can spell. I expect he will never be a phenomenal speller, but this way, he will be on the map.
Writing out the words is a good way to remember them also.