How to help DD7 with spellings?

[BertieBottsEveryFlavourBeans]

DD7 is really struggling at school and quite behind. She is currently being assessed for dyslexia.

She particularly struggles with spelling and it takes a lot of practise to achieve good results.

Our older DD was the type who learned by writing the words over and over, we never had to do much practise with her as she just easily seemed to memorise her spellings.

DD7 seems to have a completely different style of learning (that I feel that we haven't discovered yet!) and no matter how many times she writes her spellings they just don't seem to stick in her head. She is better when we ask her to spell something verbally but asking her to write them down she seems to struggle with a lot more.

I've attached her half term spellings (hopefully it won't take long for the picture to be approved!) and we have tried to practise them, but I am really struggling on how I can help her learn them? I find it hard to explain why words like "usual" have the "sh" sound when there isn't an "h" in the word for example.

We have spelling shed which she enjoys but I feel like we also need to do more at home as well, maybe try some fun games or something that might help? Her previous spellings this year have mainly been ones where the words follow certain patterns, so it's easier for us to teach them and her to learn them. These ones seem a real mix and we're struggling on how to make spelling practise fun for her. She gets really disheartened if she gets any wrong, so much so that she is really hesitant to try, even when we tell her it doesn't matter if she gets them wrong as long as she gives them a go!

My Ds10 is dyslexic & struggles so much with spelling. We have reduced the number of spellings he learns in yr4 it was 8 max. Hes now on -6 in yr5 but we e reduced to 10. We also found practicing the spellings with scrabble letters really helped or magnetic letters rather than writing. It seemed to stick. I use this at work in interventions too. I also sometimes print a small blank board game template off, then write the weeks spellings on. Roll the die, whichever it lands they have to spell by writing or repeating or using letters. Over the week it can help them remember. She probably won’t ‘get’ the sounds, mine didn’t (still doesn’t). Try & take the pressure off her. Hopefully school are supportive?

Encouraging her to notice patterns eg 'sion' for 'shun' and 'ure' for a long 'ur' sound can make spellings seem less daunting as you can learn one pattern to help you with a group of words.Gap filling with the vowels missing, colour-coding with her favourite colours and tapping out syllables may also help.She probably will have to practise a lot.Looking at spellings regularly in the week and using them in a meaningful context can also help them to stick.Agree with PP to limit no. and also repeat every so often.Hope this helps.

For some children it unfortunately will just never stick. Especially if they have weak working memory, are visual learners, are one of the minority for whom phonics is not the whole answer and if there is neurodivergence in the mix.

My DD (16) is one of them. She’s severely dyslexic. Trying to learn was endless misery and pointless. She’s pretty good at writing a phonetic approximation.

She learned to touch type in Y6 and has had a laptop and spell check ever since and is top set for English. Unfortunately she can’t have that for exams and so we are assuming she’ll lose most of the SPaG marks (20% in some exams), but it has been so much better for her confidence and enjoyment to just not stress about what cannot be fixed.

She has a disability, accommodations can be made in the real world.

By all means try all the options that will be suggested (something might click) but definitely make sure you focus more on what she’s really good at as it’s so easy for them to feel stupid and end up with damaged self esteem.

Learning spelling like that is far too difficult for a child with dyslexia. Speak to the teacher and come up with a list of words that are useful and she learns two at a time. Eg come/ down/ there
Also focus on shorter words with a pattern
Eg; at/ sat/ that/ chat. Or look at stories she writes and focus on a few words she constantly misspells and that could be something very basic that she just mixes up.
To be quite honest any teacher who would give a child with dyslexia that list and expect her to learn it is not taking that child's needs into account as she is setting her up to fail and the whole exercise is a waste of time and energy.
My ds is dyslexic and there is no way at a young age he could spell that list. But somehow over the years he has improved and now works in a job earning more than l did when l retired after a long career.
Does she get help in school..support from a special needs teacher? Speak to that teacher and together come up with something more practical and useful for your dd. Also it's important she have a complete break from school work over the holidays for a few days as school is exhausting for these children and her brain needs a rest. Read to her every night so she doesn't miss out on stories and gets to build a good vocabulary.

My daughter is dyslexic and we just gave up with spellings. She would practice the same word 5 times, each would be different and she wouldn't even notice. The only thing that worked was making words to match each letter for key words, eg 'because ' became big elephants carry apples upstairs easily. 'Necessary' became never eat cake eat salad sandwiches and remain young. Her brain just doesn't seem to recognise patterns in the letters. She is just finishing Uni now so has managed to pull herself through somehow, but her spelling is still shocking.

Those words seem much too difficult for a child with dyslexia who probably can’t spell much simpler words accurately, but I notice that you and another poster have not identified correctly the sound common to all those words. It is zh (as in Dr Zhivago). In some of the words on the list it appears in the ending -sion, in others as the ending -sure, and in others as the ending -seal. It is not a sh sound.

Try some other methods for learning spellings. Work on one word at a time. Use a mini whiteboard rather than pencil and paper - mistakes are easily rubbed out.
Ask the child to say each letter name (not sound) aloud as they write it - using joined writing if possible.
Challenge the child to write it with their eyes closed - neat handwriting here doesn’t matter. How many times can they write it on the whiteboard correctly with eyes closed in one minute? The words will end up all over the place but that doesn’t matter.
Write each letter of a word on separate scraps of paper, mix the scraps up, and challenge the child to rearrange them correctly.

Make it fun.

Does she read? I found with my children that the more they read, the better they got at spelling and grammar.

Thank you so much for the replies, it's really helpful!

I've been looking at a website called The Dyslexia shop which looks to have some great resources and games, so I'll have a look at getting some fun things for her.

She hasn't been diagnosed as dyslexic but her school did a screening which showed she had signs so she has been referred to be officially tested (sorry if I'm using the wrong terminology, this is all new to me)

I've not heard anything from her teacher since the last parents evening when they told us they had screened her, it came as a bolt out of the blue to be honest because we had no idea she was quite so behind. She does have a lot of one on one help with her teacher sitting with her or sometimes a TA but obviously that can't happen all the time.

We have really upped how much reading practise she does (I feel so incredibly guilty that we didn't practise reading anywhere near as much as we should have) we now practise reading every day and make flashcards of new, tricky words that we go over.

In interested in this, my DC is 6 and was told at parents evening that her spelling isn't where it should be. I admit I was surprised as she's our DC1 so no experience and in reception was always told she was exceeding all the targets. She loves to read and write so I don't want to knock her confidence either by over-correcting her. Some really good ideas here thanks everyone, I like the idea of focusing on her own personal high frequency words as it were. This will be easy for my to identify because she writes for pleasure a lot at home so I can look back through her writing and pick some out for us to practice.

I’ve sent you a private message

I'd regroup the words into the patterns. It's not helping that they're all mixed up. Then work on a pattern at a time so it's only 3 or 4 words each day. And have a reminder of the pattern to see I'm front of her. "Today's words are all "sion" so every word is going to end in that". set her up for success.

Thank you @GoFaster83 😊 we have grouped them this morning by ending. We have bought a new whiteboard and some colourful pens as well to practise, @LR47 has also suggested getting some magnetic letters and given me some great ideas for games using them so I've ordered a big box from Amazon!

It has been a few years since my older DD was in year 2 but I can't ever remember her spellings being quite so difficult, when I asked the teacher she said something about the curriculum changing and the spellings were more difficult.

I'd just go for learning 2 to take the stress away. That's what we did with DS. He's dyslexic but phonics really didn't work for him so just be aware of that as everyone's different. After breakfast 5 mins, tell her it's just two words. Try and work out what helps her to learn them. It might be writing the word a few times, it might be chanting it letter by letter, it might be phonics, so breaking a word down into sounds. Try to make it fun if you can. Make it quick so it's not a chore. If poss, ask her to try them again later. Hopefully she'll nail the two words well and feel confident. Even if she does, next day do the same two again. Once she's really confident, next day start on another two or even just one. Never criticise. Tell her it's okay if she can't do it. Definitely explain to the teacher how hard it is. She does sound dyslexic, but knowing that will really help. Maybe suggest she has 5 words to learn a week not 10. That way she can still get full marks.

We’ve been finding the Sir Linkalot app helpful. It’s a really visual representation of spelling. It takes a long time but I think over learning is the only way for some kids. One of mine really struggles with spelling. It doesn’t look like many of the words on your list are in the app but lots of the statutory 3/4 and 5/6 spellings are.

I can remember this set of spelling from Y3 and it was this point that I had a meeting with the school to tell them we were opting out of spellings which they were actually supportive of.

My daughter is now in Y4 and about to be assessed for dyslexia. She can’t spell well at all and all these tests were doing was damaging her self esteem and making for a difficult time at home. We had tears, rage and I could probably completely drill her on them and get her to memorise them for the spelling test, but a week later all that would be gone.

So we don’t learn spellings, the teacher doesn’t correct most spellings on her work and realise as she gets older we will probably move towards a computer / dictation software.

She does Nessy (a dyslexia programme) which she enjoys but nothing clicks. We had reached a point where she refused to pick up a pen but since we’ve stopped trying to correct her spellings she happily writes now and is much happier in herself.

I guess it all depends on your SENCO and whether school are on board.

Thank you @BertieBottsEveryFlavourBeans and all the responders to this thread!

I could have written this myself @BertieBottsEveryFlavourBeans, I just posted something similar but the responses here are far more helpful.

@RobEmily I'm so glad you have gotten some good advice, over the past couple of months DD has improved so much! Sometimes I still have the feeling that her spellings just don't "stick", but she is doing really well.

She especially loves playing hangman on the whiteboard, it's a lot more fun for her than just writing them down over and over. We have really also focused on reading because she was massively behind, she doesn't often get a chance to read with a teacher/TA at school because of her class size but the past few times she has we have had positive comments about her moving up book bands and how all the extra practise is really helping. We also look out for her spellings in the books we read, and spotting the tricky sounds we are learning in the words.