How do you know if a child is just crap at spelling versus dyslexia?

[Bunnycat101]

It’s becoming increasingly clear that my 8 year old just can’t spell. She was an early reader and generally has been exceeding across the board for everything bar writing but I’m now getting a bit worried. Her class at school is very challenging re high sen needs and inadequate support. I think environment is probably having an impact on learning but I also think she might have some neurodiversity but is going under the radar because she’s not disruptive.

She missed a fair amount of early phonics stuff during Covid and her school don’t seem to be going big on spelling homework etc so I don’t know if she has gaps due to school or if we should look at Dyslexia or adhd testing. I asked her to spell the following words earlier and she gave me this:

group: gruop
accident: aciated
regular: reguielar
difficult: dificolt
people: people (so she can learn irregular words!)

Sure the teachers would identify if it is dyslexia and recommends assessment
My child has dyslexia specific to spelling, reading is not an issue. Think spelling difficult related to processing issue.
Can be good at spelling tests (learning, writing out) but when free writing word does not come out correctly.
Numerous spelling programs not sure they have improved things. Speech to text software, spelling checker ect recommend at times.
Think dyslexia can present in different forms not always reading issues

Neurodiverse conditions tend to go together. I went to a presentation by the ADHD foundation and they said if you only have 1 diagnosis, items only because nobody has got round to diagnosing the next one.

50% of people with ADHD also have DCD (and vice versa). Dysgraphia is harder to diagnose because there's no standardized test. That said, my son has been diagnosed with it by his senco in primary school.

As an OT who regularly does the standardized assessment for DCD I would talk about dysgraphia traits and provide advice to school (for dysgraphia, DCD and/or ADHD) but would be reluctant to diagnose.

My dyslexic daughter spells and reads very well

dyslexia is a very broad diagnosis and no two children may appear with the same traits.

The spellings there show that she isn't using phonics to spell things, that she's relying on her memory. She could be doing the same with her reading, just having a very good memory and essentially treating every word like a sight word. You can get away with that in passive skills (reading) but not in active ones where you produce things (like writing).

If you haven't already done it, remedial phonics would be a good start. Both training on the method (eg how to sound out and blend) and the individual phonemes, diagraphs etc. If she doesn't know (or isn't willing to apply!) phonics, she can't sense check her work. If she was sounding out and blending, she'd know that "gruop" didn't say group etc.

Once she's secure in phonics and using it to check her spellings, you can move on to broader spelling rules that just have to be learned (this is how spelling teaching progresses in school). Usually you'll have a rule of the week and a list of words that follow the rule to learn. Things like "double f is most likely in the middle of a word" (her spelling of difficult). So again, it's just making sure she learns these rules and applies them.

I've got a nealy 8yo will similarly random spelling. Now he's in yr3 I asked the sendco to screen for dyslexia. The screening has come back as normal, only showing poor handwriting. He's lef thanded and hypermobile, I honestly think his handwriting is absolutely fine considering. She bought up dyspraxia but didn't know anything about what to do.
I asked about how left handed children are taught to form their letters, I struggle to belive that no though is given to the fact thay left handed children may need to use a different method to get acceptable results, but apparently not.

DD is dyslexic and certainly despite everyone's efforts at the time, I can't spell reliably. Dyslexia was unknown as a concept when I was a child so I spent a fair amount of time copying out corrected spellings.
Simply, I would push for the school to get her tested. If they won't, you can get it done privately. It's very expensive, the better part of £3-400 when DD was tested 20+ years ago but the screening is thorough and should pick up any issues.

Having the test results meant DD was allocated various forms of help and was given a laptop and printer and various helpful pieces of kit for uni. Local authorities aren't all the same, I know.
School should be a good place to start and good luck.

DS (15) was a very early reader but is dyslexic. He began reading and knew all his phonics at 2-3 has never been able to spell. The only issues he had/ has with reading was skipping over small words like ‘the’ or ‘and’.

His spelling is bizarre, even now he will spell the same word differently throughout a piece of writing, that was the main indicator for me. He could never retain the spellings he learnt in Primary school. Weirdly, he can spell longer, more difficult words but spells the simpler words wrong. For example, he recently spelled keep as ‘ceep’. He has a processing delay and poor visual memory so basically he doesn’t “see” when a spelling is wrong. I used to ask him if a word “looked right” and he’d just look at me blankly.

He’s getting 25% extra time in his GCSEs, which is good as the skipping over small words can sometimes change the whole context of a question, even in subjects like Maths and he cannot learn Spanish at all. They had to take a language but I’ve told him to just focus on his other subjects and not worry about Spanish. If he’d been diagnosed earlier, I’d have tried to argue for him not to take a language at all. Other than Spanish though, his dyslexia is not holding him back and he is predicted all 7s and 8s at GCSE, so try not to worry too much, it’s not an intelligence issue, just a difference in how their brain works.

He is excellent at anagrams etc as his brain mixes up words all the time so it’s easy for him to decode them. He is at a grammar school and was excellent at verbal reasoning when he was doing his 11+.

I think the reason I learned to read fluently (despite dyslexia) is that I learned to read using flash cards.

My DS is not classic dyslexic - he has issues processing sounds to letters so phonics was useless for him. He can only read if he learns the shape of the word , so could read flashcards brilliantly but not sound out words.

his handwriting is also dreadful but he is a great artist and daws really well.

school picked up an issue, but it took an independent assessment to get a proper diagnosis. The diagnosis helped with extra support though all his schooling & Uni and was well worth the effort & cost.

@TheLurpackYears the senco screened my DS & result was normal, but they knew something was wrong & worked with me to get a private diagnosis. Luckily I could afford it as dyslexia condition is so broad & wide and the senco test is very limited in its scope.

DS was diagnosed in year 3 and as a result of his diagnosis got extra help,support & exam time though school & uni & into the work environment.

I’ve found everyone’s experiences so helpful- thank-you. It also helps that others think it is worth getting check-out. I guess my first step is to speak to the senco and then go from there. I suspect they won’t fund anything in school (friends seem to struggle to access support) but even if we could get advice re where to go for a private assessment, it sounds like it would be worth exploring.

Specialist Dyslexia Teacher here. Markers of dyslexia are poor phonological awareness (not quite the same as poor phonics), weak short term/working memory, & slow speed of processing. You might have noticed some of these things but they need to be properly assessed & compared with her academic progress & general cognitive ability (IQ). Dyslexics tend to be much stronger with their visual than auditory skills. Just because your daughter reads well doesn’t mean she’s not dyslexic. If she reads by whole word recognition & also has a good vocabulary then she may read very well. What is her single word reading like?
You can find an assessor near you by going to the Patoss Tutor Index. Or alternatively your local dyslexia association may keep a list. Make sure they have APC after their name. if it’s not dyslexia, they will be able to tell you where to go next.

Lots of folk here focusing on reading- Many children 'can read' well these days because of the intense phonics instruction at primary- but it doesn't mean that they can understand what they've read, and 'good reading' can mask a whole load of difficulties as it's assumed they're okay when they may not be.

Poor phonological awareness is definitely present in my son. He had a lot of SLT involvement in nursery/early primary and that showed he couldn't easily discern between different sounds when hearing them, which then affected his speech (which I think is related).

I suspect my 9yo may be dyslexic too, she struggles with reading as well as writing/spelling. She can read but she will often sound out/say a word but not actually take in what it's saying or she'll be saying it slightly wrong and can't take a guess at what it might be, for example she tried reading the word "ruined" she sounded it out but just could not get it. Same with echoed and some other quite simple words that you would expect a 9yo to be able to read. She often has little to no comprehension of what she's read. Her spelling is really quite bad too, I can imagine her spelling those words exactly the same as your daughter.

She is also in a school with high SEN and I do think she flies under the radar a bit, I'm planning on discussing it with her teacher at the next parents evening.

My daughters definitely has processing challenges.
During her testing she read a piece well, but she couldn't recall the details to answer questions about it.
She was tired by the time this part of her nearly 3 hour assessment occurred and she felt she preformed particularly badly.
She has said when she will often re read work to bank it down, particularly when tired.
Fortunately she usually has good focus, but there is no doubt that life is definitely more challenging for dsylexics.

I was going to see this. People with dyslexia often have other talents like drawing and being creative.
We can't all be good at everything.

I wanted to come back to this as I found it so useful to hear other experiences. I had a good chat with the senco and she thought she should get her tested for dyslexia. I am slightly perplexed as to how she has possibly been missed up to this point- as the senco was like yup there is clearly a problem whereas there has never been any indication from teachers up until this year that her writing was behind.

I don’t know if they have been doing enough extended writing in school to really notice it. The thing that flagged it for me was entering the cbbc 500 word challenge and seeing her work at home.

The things that is odd is that she’s spelling basic words wrong that reception/year 1 would be doing. So she’s spelling very as verey, only as onley, child as chiled. These are words she’ll have seen thousands of times so I don’t think reading more will help her. But at the same time she’s getting words like
believe, people, because right consistently. So I think she is able to learn words but not work out spelling herself.

I think whatever is going on, it seems to only be affecting spelling and writing. Reading and maths are both great.

I just wanted to update - my son has now had his dyslexia confirmed. It's good to be able to know what's going on and he seems to be feeling a bit better about himself now that there's an explanation and a plan for more support.

Also, the assessment found his reading isn't actually very affected. But his spelling, and speed of writing, are enormously impacted.

Fascinating. I read this no problem!