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.

Thanks for all of the suggestions. I think we may start with our ped to see if we can get insurance to cover at least some of the testing.


She's able to spell most short words (four letters or fewer), although she occasionally gets the letters mixed up.


No, the school only uses those screeners for kids who are behind in reading.

I forgot to mention that our educational psychologist recommended using audio books. She said that it would allow my DD to expand her vocabulary and satisfy her intellectual interest as we worked on various issues. It was a great recommendation. DD loves audio books and they helped her gain confidence and try harder books when she was ready. She would listen to them first and then read them. It took some of the pressure off of her. She could work on her reading without having to work as much on comprehension. Don't give up on audio books.

I don't think DD would let me give up the audio books if I tried. She loves listening to stories.

MidwestMom, I agree with others that what you are being told by your child's teacher really does't make sense.

While you certainly should push for further testing, I also think you should intervene right now to do what you can at home to help your child. I suspect your daughter may be similar to many children I have taught. Smart, and with a good visual memory for sight words -- for some reason when learning to read they skip over a lot of the phonemic skills and move right into whole word reading. If their K and grade 1 teachers do a lot of choral reading, or repeated reading, these smart, visual learners can really fool their teachers into thinking that they can decode words, so they don't get the instruction they need. However, the initial problems come in spelling, and then later problems hit around the 3rd and 4th grade reading levels because it is just impossible to use visual memory (along with a few letter sounds and some educated guesses and context cues) to read entire stories.

So--- if I were you I would go back with your child now and make sure she is aware of the phonemes of the English language and can blend and segment them. I would not trust her school to figure out she needs this and to try to remediate it for her. they should do this, but I bet you can do it it much more quickly.

As a reading tutor I do this all the time for students and only very occasionally do they turn out to have a true phonemic processing disorder. Usually they were just confused or behind. It is so much simpler just to catch them up on your own. Even if the kids do have a serious disorder, the extra time you spend working on phonemic processing, encoding (spelling) and decoding (reading- sounding out) is valuable and will help your child in whatever specialized therapy will turn out to be necessary.

I recommend you look into this very effective and cheap program:

http://www.abcdrp.com

It has been very effective with many of my students. The creator of the program runs a Yahoo discussion group and is very generous with his advice -- I have found him to be extremely knowledgable. He has also posted numerous additional files and guideas on the Yahoo group for free. They are designed to target particular skills needed for reading in a very efficient manner. I really can't say enough good things about his advice -- it is exceptionally sound.

http://health.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/abecedarian/

If the above program is too expensive I also think you could look into Reading Reflex -- this is dirt cheap and you can probably get it from your library.

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Refle...ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330801742&sr=8-1


Just reading this book and doing some of the initial exercises with your daughter would, I think, help you get a handle on what her decoding and spelling problems are. This doesn't mean you shoudln't also persue additional testing through the school -- but I would also work on whatever you can first, while you are waiting.

Good luck!

OK. This means that she is having trouble segmenting (separating) sounds. If you say "cat" she should be able to segment the three phonemes, separated by a second. /k/.../a/.../t/. Can she do that? How about "ship"... can she segment that into /sh/.../i/.../p/? How about "witch"? Can she segment that into /w/.../i/.../ch/?

What about words with four phonemes? "Slap". Can she segment that into /s/.../l/... /a/.../p/...?
How about "mist", "drop" and "black"?

Next, try words with 5 phonemes: "spend", "crust" and so on. It is vitally important that the child can segment each phoneme... she shouldn't say that "st" is one sound. You need to separate each sound from the next one, because that is how you know what letter to write down.

You can find a simple test of phonemic segmentation in the book I mentioned above, Reading Reflex.

If your child is having trouble with phonemic segmentation, there are many simple activities you can do to help her. It sounds like she already knows her basic code -- the (most common) sounds that match each phoneme -- so that's a great help.

If you need more practice on blending and segmenting and join the yahoo group I mentioned above, look in "files" under "Level A/Blending and Segmenting Work" for a lot of extra practice.


http://health.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/abecedarian/files/

UPDATE: We're seeing the neuropsych in another month. Any suggestions for specific things I should ask for/about?

I'm glad you're seeing a neuropsych.

I'd bring in a list of every issue you see, both in the academic work, as well as anything you see going on in her emotional world, and the interplay between the two. Bring examples of school work showing the issues that concern you and copies of any test scores you feel are telling. It will also be helpful if you could watch her for handedness in the next few weeks (our neuropsych was very surprised to hear how dominantly right hnaded she was -- and handedness is in the title line of the report), included writing, eating, cutting, throwing, kicking, etc. He was positive she must be doing *something* with her left hand. I'm not sure how widespread that issue comes up, but it was a big deal in our meetings. We had to go back and promise to watch for left handedness. (It's non-existent).

If it's anything like my DD's evaluation, the exam was very complete and appropriately focused on the issues, as well casting a wider net to see what else might be going on. We got a lot of very useful data that help explain much of what we see from DD.

First and foremost, we left with confidence in knowing that the work she does is not sloppy and lazy, but instead a reflection of her abilities oddly co-mingled with her disabilities.

Ditto to everything geofizz suggested, plus a suggestion to not worry too much about what *questions to ask* - the neuropscyh's usually look quite thoroughly at a broad spectrum of areas, and you'll most likely find they will ask *you* a ton of questions in your parent interview (which usually precedes the testing). FWIW, you might want to think back through your dd's early milestones and developmental history because the neuropsych may ask specific questions about when she started talking/walking/etc - things like that.

I'm glad you have a neurospcyh eval scheduled - I think you'll find the information really helpful.

polarbear

geofizz, our ds12 (developmental coordination disorder and dysgraphia) is right-handed in everything he does. This was something I was watching for when he was really little because I'm rather severely left-handed lol. DS never showed any indication of the slightest interest in using his left hand for *anything*. When he had his first neuropsych eval in 2nd grade, his neuropsych told us he had "no" handedness and she was really surprised that he used his right hand for everything. We were surprised that she thought we should have known he didn't have a true "handedness". What she was ultimately getting at is that he had difficulty crossing the midline and didn't have a true "handedness" in the sense that most people have, instead he just happened to use his right hand for everything. Later on when he was in 4th grade ds tried writing with his left hand just for fun. His left-handed handwriting actually looks better than his right-handed writing and goes just as "quickly" (quick being a relative term for a dysgraphic kiddo!). Neither hw looks particularly neat either, both look very much like a dysgraphic kid's handwriting.

polarbear

My oldest brother was in third grade when my mother discovered he really couldn't read -- he was just good at guessing in context from the first and last letters. He was taught the "whole word" method, not phonics, and that's what happened.

The others are right -- those "approximations" are way off, and you should find out what's going on and nip it as soon as possible.

My hearing impaired son is probably an average speller, overall below the rest of his outstanding verbal abilities. I assume it is because he doesn't always hear the ends of words. I do 10 spelling words a week, putting them on notecards and briefly going over them daily.
He has an almost photographic memory.
I personally think being a poor speller reflects poorly on the person- it makes others thing you are uneducated, not simply a poor speller.
Our school really doesn't emphasize spelling either.

Interesting about the handedness, polarbear. Dd came out as ambidextrous on all tasks. She's been dominantly right handed since she was 4 months old. We were surprised at how early she showed dominance considering all the left handed people in her family tree and how DH are fairly balanced

I'm nearly both footed - I'll take corner kicks with my left foot if from the right side in soccer - and I spike with my left but serve with my right in volleyball. DH is similar.

When I was bored silly in 9th grade, I taught myself to write with my left hand. I even handed in some homework that way until my Spanish teacher accused me of having someone else do my homework.

Now I reserve my left-handed writing for notes from the oft-delayed tooth fairy.