Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Tutoring In Spelling?

Does anyone have any suggestions/ideas/tutoring companies for getting my DS tutoring in spelling? He has dysgraphia. Spelling is definitely challenging for him. He isn't terrible at it though - he's grade level according to achievement tests and school, but it is much lower than his other score, etc. The main reason we interested in spelling tutoring is that DS wants to spell better because he feels he gets very hung up on and held back in his writing by spelling. He types and now loves to "write" and do his journal but he gets frustrated that he can't spell much of what he wants to say. He has a high vocabulary but it's a blessing and a curse in the sense that he uses such great words to express himself but can't spell them. He also is a perfectionist and has trouble just letting the spelling go.

Anyway, not sure where to go for that. School tutors? Or is there like a kumon type place? Or websites? Just wondering what other people have done or if anyone has any ideas.

Remind me, does he also have dyslexia?

OG tutoring raised my stealth dyslexic from a bit below grade level to well above grade level in 4 months when in 5th grade. Her dyslexia was predominantly evident in her spelling and decoding of unfamiliar vocabulary. Her OG was done daily through school, but many private SLPs and reading specialists provide OG for a $$.

Automaticity of spelling was a big barrier for her in writing fluently. Spelling remains her weakest skill at "only" the 95th percentile. It's certainly turned me into an OG fan!

Well, no one will diagnose him with dyslexia... he reads a couple of grade levels ahead. I always suspected and wouldn't be surprised if he has stealth dyslexia but he reads and comprehends well - really well. However, despite that his diebels are often very very low. Anyway, basically, no, he has not been diagnosed with dyslexia and he reads very well but I wouldn't at all be surprised if has stealth dyslexia b/c it has always seemed to me something is off.

There is reading tutoring place near me that is allegedly based on OG I guess I can call them to see if they provide OG spelling tutoring! Thanks for the reply ...

Irena, we use a spelling curriculum at home called Sequential Spelling for my 9 yo dyslexic dysgraphic. It is pretty painless -- just a couple of minutes a day. It focuses on word patterns, and was designed for dyslexics. I think the intensive tutoring we did with LMB helped a lot, but this is great for reinforcement, etc. They have books but also a cd-rom version that he can do by himself on the computer.

Irena, DD's diagnosis was based on a *differential* diagnosis between phonetic processing (including dibels and c-topp - lowest subtest score was 25th percentile, most phonics & spelling scores 30-40 percentile) and her verbal abilities, including her reading. To be clear, in 4th grade, she tested between 7th and >12th in reading (depending on the test - she took 5). The lowest reading scores was on words in isolation, the highest was on fiction material requiring her to draw inference.

Your son's profile sounds similar.

I'd brought DD's spelling up to within range of grade level when she was in 4th grade with Sequential Spelling. It's tedious. We emphasized doing it in a multi-sensory way (my instinct on teaching, which I discovered later to be best practice for kids like her), with color coding roots and endings. It can be done with a DVD instead of a parent, but that appears in make it a tad more passive.

We also started doing all her spelling work for school finger spelling with ASL. We got a lot of the r-controlled spellings straightened out that way by forcing the tactile motion of going from the vowel to the r.

In retrospect, those things helped, but OG solved it. I'm not sure what would have happened had we started SS or the finger spelling earlier. It might have been enough of a patch to prop her up against the diagnosis, maybe not.

DD loves the app Spelling City

Irena, is he a phonetic reader or a whole language one?

If he's not a completely phonemic decoder, that might be a skill set to tackle, if he's amenable to doing it.

Irena, our neuropsych recommended we send our dysgraphic to a tutor for spelling right away when he was diagnosed in 2nd grade. The tutor she recommended usually works with dyslexic children, and she used a visual method for teaching spelling. I can't remember either the name of it or the exact method, but it involved having him break the word into parts, writing it in different colors (by syllable), and developing a visual image to go with the word that he could recall each time he had to write it. It sounds complicated and bizarre when I try to explain it, but I really thought it was a great method! We ultimately didn't stick with the tutoring though, because it became apparent to us that ds *could* spell really well, it just fell apart during the act of writing (totally dysgraphic, but it happens when he types as well as when he writes by hand). What helped our ds the most in getting his thoughts out in elementary school was Co:Writer (word prediction while typing). It's a double win - first it helps speed up the actual writing process because there is no thinking about spelling involved (as well as it eliminates a lot of typing), and then since the words come out spelled correctly first time around the step of checking your work for spelling edits is significantly reduced (you still need to check to avoid confusion over word choices like their vs there etc).

DS' spelling while writing has improved significantly all by itself over time too.

We also have experience with spelling tutoring with my younger dd who isn't dysgraphic but who has a dyslexia diagnosis. Her dyslexia isn't exactly classic dyslexia and it isn't exactly stealth dyslexia - she had a challenge with being able to recognize sound-symbol connections. Her first tester recommended a visual spelling program that we worked on for awhile - I can't remember the name but could look it up if you'd like - it was a curriculum with dvd that we purchased and worked on at home. DD also was using spelling city at school at the time and liked that. The other curriculum didn't work so well - not because it *couldn't* work but because dd just didn't want to do it (dd is very strong-willed, and anything surrounding remediating reading-related issues was really tough for a long time because she had such a hard time at it and she just didn't want to even try - she's a bit of a perfectionist too, and if things don't come easy she'd rather just move on to something that is). The second thing we tried was an eval by a reading specialist, who then recommended tutoring based on a specific program (which I also can't remember the name of) - that went sorta well and we saw some gains in spelling as her reading ability improved - but I think that would be expected since her issue is sound-symbol recognition, and that's what the program was based on. She's had a change of tutor and is now working through that program but with additional individualized remediation for reading and the difference in her spelling has been *huge* - so for her, I think finding a good tutor fit was key, possibly more so than the curriculum. It had to be a method that had the potential to work, but having someone spend time to get to know her individually with her very specific quirks helped break through the puzzle of how to remediate.

FWIW though - my dd is not dysgraphic. So with her, we were remediating challenges that actually impacted her ability to spell. With ds, he had the ability to spell and spell well... but the act of writing taking up all his working memory prevented him from spelling while writing. So for ds, remediation wasn't the key, using AT was the key. To help dd, she needed actual remediation. I'm not sure where your ds falls with re to needing remediation, but I suspect that using word prediction while he's working on writing stories (vs studying spelling words) might be a good idea to help him get past the spelling hurdle for written expression.

Hope some of that makes sense!

Best wishes,

polarbear

DS hits the wall with spelling, not sure how it sits per grade level but doesn't sit with the rest of his skills. He is also finding personal limits as it undermines his web searching.

I'm looking for a linguistic/etymological approach as he definitely has a system perspective and lately has been using various apps to explore a wide range of languages.

Howler - I think he is a whole word reader. I push phonics on him though

I like the sound of this "co-writer" of which you speak, polar. Do you think i could get it for him at school, too? Is it something one downloads? I'm off to google it.