DD5 seems to have some trouble with phonetics... If she does not see the printed word she has real trouble spelling or recognizing the different sounds of any word. Mrs Teacher thinks that is because her Dutch is not so good but I am on the opinion that this is only 1% of the problem.

I have the feeling that she will learn to read before she can spell...

Any suggestions on how to help develop phonetic skills? They would be immensely useful because Dutch and Spanish are very phonetic languages.

Does anyone have any suggestions or experience there?

well, I am VS and dysgraphic- and when I was young I couldn't understand phonetics. Actaully at this point I couldn't be called an expert.

As and adult I grew to understand them. But I still can't really spell. I learned to read by memorizing, context clues and by the shape of the word. But not by phonics. Generally when I read quickly, I take in the whole page at one time. I read very well and always have.

I took a placement test for college, it's a test they give to adults who have been out in the world before they start taking classes. I scored in the 99% in all the reading sections. I score in the 10% in writing.

I ended up taking a remidial writing course, the first night we wrote something. The next class the instuctor told me to "always write all assignments on a computer". He wouldn't accept work that was hand written from me. I got an "A" in the class.

I found the computer very useful in learning to write, and learning phonetics. There is a feature on them that will read what you have typed. It's was very useful.

I am sad to say the I tried serveral times to learn other languages, but while I sound great.... I have no idea what I am saying and it has always been a bust. I was able to retain a small amount of french.

I was able to learn a fair amount of sign language and I can carry on short conversations with it. It is a visual language thought, so, there ya go.

This sound sort of funny but DS7 had a toy that he played with for hours and I think was key in teaching him phonetics. It also helped me to some degree. Just because I listen to so much. My spelling has improved. It was a leap pad toy refridgrator magnet. The kid takes the letter and puts it in the base and the magnets says the name of the letter and it's phonetic sounds. DS7 is probably not a visual spatial thinker...... he could be, I'm no expert. He doesn't have any of the ususal earmarks.

I hope this is helpful. I really don't like talking about this stuff, when I do very often people look at me with a half cocked head and squwintey eyes.

Yup - my son learned to Identify the letter sounds from a LeapFrog toy- it was a yellow school bus, and he'd sit in the carseat, pressing the buttons, and the toy would say 'The T says "Tu" over and over and over again. Maybe get one for the baby, and see if your daughter overhears some of it.

Oh Soupy!
My spelling is really really bad. I use spellcheck in emails, but when I started posting here, there was no spellcheck! I had to decide to post here anyway, and hope that people took the time to figure me out, and not 'write me off' as uneducated or stupid due to my spelling. I don't identify as having a LD, just really, really bad spelling.

As a child my handwriting was quite weak, but I was early enteranced, so not sure if my handwriting was weak for age also - but I felt very badly about it. Ha Ha - now we live in a keyboard world! Yippee!

In the future there will be no more spelling problems - ((happy dance!)) Until then, I will type as much as possible.

Smiles,
Grinity

My youngest did learn phonics through a phonics program after only reading by sight words. She seems to understand it, but is a horrible speller.

I've just decided that this is an area she needs a little more help in and will try to come up with fun and creative ways to help her with it.

It's not a reflection of her intelligence at all. It's just the way she sorts info, I think. But because the school focuses so much on this skill, we will work on it together.

Here's a wiki link to phonics strategies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_phonics_programs

For the life of my I cannot remember the name of the program my daughter used but will post if I can find it.

LOL! DS4 got a leapfrog fridge letter game when he was 1, and the song still sometimes gets stuck in my head! "A says ay and A says ah, every letter makes a sound and A says ay....and ah!" sung to the farmer in the dell. Later someone gave him the word whammer from leapfrog, for spelling 3 letter words, and it includes the sounds of letters too. Since it's only 3 letter words, it's pretty limiting. Can't help you with Dutch, though, sorry!

My DS has absolutely no interest in learning to spell. He doesn't want to write. He will draw some, and writes his name in preschool and names on birthday cards as long as it's "MOM" or "DAD" but that's it for now.

We've been reading the Ramona books (beverly cleary), and I see that Ramona, a gifted girl, has always had trouble spelling. She's much harder on herself than others are. It might be nice for some kids with spelling troubles to read these books, with these subtle bits about problems with spelling sprinkled in them. It's definitely not the focus of the book, but it's a recurring theme. (i confess, i loved ramona as a kid and still do.)

here are some things my mother and i did to try to teach me to spell, they sort of worked.

Get a dark black cookie sheet and cover it with salt- have the child write the word in the salt while singing the letters and then singing the word. It is supposed to attack many of the senses at once.

Have the child crawl around while singing the letters to the word.

Hold a mirror up to the child as they are writing the word in thick maker on white paper- have them look in the mirror, they write the word and you say the letters together.

None of those methods were that effective.... when we did them we did notice a small bump in my scores on spelling tests. I would get one or 2 extra words correct. It bummed me up from a "F" to a "D" or "C".

DD and I make up spelling stories. Examples:

Don the donkey has a key. (donkey)
It isn't rude not to include Ed. (include--she had been writing "inclued")
There's a lot of air on the prairie. (prairie)
Icy, icy, Elly. (icicle)

These work much better for her than reciting spellings as strings of letters (too hard to remember) or writing words out over and over. In fact, writing them just confuses her because she will write a word several different ways and not notice, like--does, dose, dsoe, deos, etc.

What do you do with phonetic potholes like 'igh'? Or exceptions like weather or head?

Ren

those vikings...... with there igh...lol

Weather=we+at+her so we would probably make up a story like:

WE looked AT HER weather balloon.

Just something weird that will stick in DD's mind.

Head=he+ad So I would have DD make up a story about that. Having the child come up with the spelling story works much better than me coming up with something for her to memorize.

For "igh" I have talked about how those letters were orginally pronounced. So whenever she sees the word "knight" she also thinks "k-nig-h-t".

I'm thinking the Monty Python pronunciation of "silly English ken-ig-hit" by the French knight...

I don't get the "we looked at her weather balloon". The point was that it is a short e rather than, "two vowels walking together and the first says its name". Same with head.

Kn is easy, simple rule.

I watch Between the Lions with DD, where they give you Q always walks with u, or "when two vowels go a walking, the first one says its name." Kn together, K keeps silent. They repeat these little phrases. But then it gets confusing when weather and head have the short e.

They have this Dr. Nitwhite (who they call nitwit) who brings up the exceptions. Easy learning for kids to learn the rules of reading.

Ren

Nothing really to add since ds was a sight reader but still a pretty solid speller--but he had that bus! He loved it, it was one of his favorite toys when he was around 1yo.

I understand that it's an exception. With exceptions we just try to come up with mnemonics to help DD remember how to spell them. That's where our "spelling stories" come in handy.

One fun thing we did recently for just spelling in general: charades! I mentioned this on another thread so my apologies for the repeat
We just took the list of words, ds wrote them out on slips of papers so we could pick and then we all took turns acting them out - I really do feel it helped with visualizing the words later! The acts we put on were sort of like little stories to go with the words, kind of like some of the rhymes and things people have mentioned.
This was so fun we will definitely be doing this again often.

I like spelling stories, Cathy! I think that's a brilliant way to remember those exceptions!

When I was in school, my 3rd grade teacher gave us these: "My principal is my pal" and "There's 'a rat' in separate." I'm sure she gave us others, but those I remember with ease because I still use them to keep those words straight! I loved Mrs. Walker!

OK, two counts. You are right Dottie, I paraphrase. It does rhyme. Secondly, I get now weather was about spelling not phonetics.

I was connecting the dots from topic.

Thanks for all the ideas, DD has good spelling, better than phonetics.

Ren

Phonics is certainly useful, but it only gets you so far with English spelling

My DD seems to have trouble perceiving the order of letters in a word. So for her, separating a word into pieces that form smaller words (which she knows how to spell) helps a lot.

She can learn weather=we+at+her and the order of the pieces as part of a "story".

If I try to teach her, "'weather' has 'ea' in it," her spelling often comes out garbled like this: waethre

Thanks a lot for the answers

The funny thing is that DD knows the name and sound of several of the letters in both Spanish and Dutch. It is getting them within a word that gives her trouble.
(I was very surprised because she speaks three languages and is picking up on English pretty fast (she has now private lessons)).

For example: do you hear the sound 'm' in the word 'potato'? She may actually answer yes!
But if I show her the letter M she can identify it by name and sound without any problem.
If she sees the word she can figure out how to read it (well, very simple words of course), but she has to see the print.

Dutch, Spanish and German are phonetic languages, so in our case it is really useful.

I think it can help to really slow down the auditory input. Such as cat= K.....AAAAA.....T. Many kids don't seem to "hear" the vowels.

In American English, those vowels are often muddy.

I had a roommate from Japan who couldn't hear the difference between r and l. That made it hard to look words up in her English/Japanese dictionary...

Thanks again for the answers. For what I have been reading and what I know of DD I think her case is rather a 'I cannot do it and therefore I will not even try it' thing. She speaks three languages without any accent and after a few days in France she was able to imitate French language - including the french r. She knows the name and sound of almost all the letters in Spanish and Dutch.

It does not make any sense - she should be able to discern the sounds of the words. Maybe it is like when she was convinced that she could not count more than 20 because it was too difficult for her.

I will keep practicing with her in Spanish...

I have been think further: DD learnt her letter by association with words she knew - that is she went from word to letter and I think with the sounds is the same. She just hear the whole word and it does not make any sense for her to break the word into individual sounds or even worse, make a whole word out of individual sounds.

Does this make any sense?

Yes, it does! That's the same problem my DD has with spelling. Even though we used phonics instruction when she was learning to read, I think she just learned to read the whole words. Now, whatever it is that makes a word recognizable to her is what she throws in when she tries to spell it. The result is writing that look like letter soup. I really have to break the words down into smaller chunks for her to learn to spell them.

I'm reading this thread because my DH is a bad speller. He's a VS superstar, though. He said he has to use pneumonic I mean mnemonic (had to look that up) devices for spelling. When we were in China he commented that he'd probably learn Chinese characters much more easily because they are conceptual.

If DD has trouble spelling, DH will have to coach her on phonics because what you guys are saying about phonics seems like Greek to me. I cannot understand it at all, in fact if I had to use the "rules" I'd be illiterate!

DH is very athletic - has a world ranking - and has tested above his elite athlete peers in hand-eye coordination at the Olympic Training Center. (They do things like measure how often you can catch a ball thrown to you in the dark with only a strobe light.)

He's right handed but goofy foot. I did some reading on being right handed and goofy foot and there was actually some correlation found with poor spelling ability. Recently, while reading up on language acquisition, I read that most brains have language centers on the left, but a small percentage of people draw from the right (I hope I got that right - will have to relook the research). I wondered if that could account for DH's spelling challenges - his reading and comprehension are excellent - as well as he VS gifts.

Well, I'm sorry this is slightly O/T. Hats off to you all for understanding phonics.

I'd look around for some sort of workbook or curriculum for phonics in those languages (or work on the sounds and letters as best you can).

I have been told that some VSLs never really learn phonics (for English), they just learn to read by sight words. My DS5, a VSL has a lot of trouble with phonics and he also has a speech delay. He gets special help with this as part of his IEP. Interestingly, I think he is actually developing his own "system" for learning phonics, a little bit at a time. The other day he asked me to spell "book" and "books" and I think he's figuring out about the s at the end. Prior to this, he'd see a word he knew in singular but didn't know it in plural. Now it seems he's starting to get it. It's a slow road.

My DD7 never really understood phonics until more than halfway through first grade. I think it had something to do with auditory memory - she just couldn't blend the sounds. I used to get so frustrated trying to teach her, and when we had her tested at the Gifted Development Center, they explained that as a VSL she simply could not do it.

This is a little off topic but here are a couple articles about spelling and VSLs
http://www.visualspatial.org/Articles/app2spell.pdf
http://www.visualspatial.org/Articles/spelling.htm