Have spelling standards dropped?

[NorhamGardens]

I am shocked that so many teenagers and younger children don't seem to be able to spell fairly simple words correctly? Wonder if this is just my experience?

I know spelling tests have been largely phased out of primary schools as the evidence showed that they were not effective. The children would spell the words correctly in the test and then just forget apparently.

'In my day' :) these tests seemed to work for the vast majority. Just been to an open evening for one of mine and saw the teacher had made corrections that were incorrect in themselves. An example would be 'extrodinary'. I notice from facebook accounts of my older children's friends that even those who have had a great education use 'your' instead of 'you're' and seem to guess simple words and make elementary mistakes.

Has spell check replaced the need to spell these days and I am just out of touch?

I read somewhere that although younger kids don't necessarily remember the spellings they learn for the future, spelling tests are important as they make kids pay attention to letters in words - good to avoid dyslexia and stuff.
My dd1 has been at an infants where they don't teach spellings and has just moved to a private junior school full of kids that have done loads. Depressingly it really shows - I hoped it wouldn't as shes good at reading and writing.

I'm afraid that isn't born out by research or advice for dyslexics camicaze

Spelling:

<strong> Many of the normal classroom techniques used to teach spellings do not help the dyslexic child. All pupils in the class can benefit from structured and systematic exposure to </strong>rules and patterns* <strong>that underpin a language</strong>.
<strong> Spelling rules can be given to the whole class. Words for class spelling tests are often topic based rather than grouped for structure. </strong>If there are one or two dyslexics in the class, a short list of structure-based words for their weekly spelling test, will be far more helpful than random words*. Three or four irregular words can be included each week, eventually this should be seen to improve their free-writing skills. 

It is actually more useful for dyslexic children to spell out the words orally than to write them down for a test.

I don't remember exactly what I read but I think it wasn't talking about treating dyslexia, more avoiding those sort of issues developing. I don't think it contradicted what you say - it was just saying its good for children to have patterns in words pointed out to them or something like that...
(sounded good at the time!)

camicaze pointing out the patterns in words is called teaching phonics which is how most schools teach.

Just to add the spelling tests my dd now gets are largely to do with patterns in words (the last one was on adding 'ing')and so I guess that was what I was thinking about when I referred to spelling tests.

I test spellings but I don't send lists home to learn. The words contain the phonemes we have been learning that week

Mrz - I think you said you use dictation to teach your kids their spellings. Are there any tricks to it?

My DD (Y3) is able to get words right in her spelling test (seeing as the teacher is sending home appropriate words - 'was', 'all', 'this' etc)

But she won't get them right when using them in other contexts. Should I get her to write sentences containing these words? And if so, should I repeat the same sentance every day? And if so for how many days.....

(Ed Psych is seeing her after half-term. Finally.....)

I just make up sentences containing the words I want the children to learn.

With dyslexic students I usually don't choose more than 4 or 5 words of a particular pattern to work on and we keep practising each one, include it in dictations etc until they have got it right in a dictation 3 times in a row ( but on different days IYSWIM )
So if the third time I include it in a dictation they don't get it right but they did the first two times, I keep practising it until they have got it right on another 3 consecutive occasions. Works well for dyslexics ( and of course we still keep introducing new words too so not quite as boring as it sounds!) but would probably be overkill for non-dyslexics

Thanks, that helps.

Her spellings this week are:

The, She, They, Play and Dad :(

Not sure if she'd be able to get 'they' right 3 days in a row though...

(She has only been learning the 45 high frequency words for the last 3 years...)

Tell her that "ey" can sometimes make the same sound as "ay". Could you make some two piece jigsaws on card of th/ey and pl/ay and get her to decide which "ay" sound belongs to which word? Maybe write "ay" and "ey" in 2 different colours so they stand out?

Do you try and get her to use multi-sensory methods? - I find these help

Things like: writing with finger on textured surface or in thin layer of salt/sand/rice on tray. Get her to pick out the spellings using magnetic letters. Try using bath crayons to practice writing the spellings on tiles/body in the bath!
At the level that your daughter seems to be at, I probably wouldn't test by dictating sentences every time! Maybe test words in isolation and very easy sentences once a week?
"Dad and (DD name) play with the pens. They put the letters on the pad. (DD name) is good. She puts the letters on the pad for Dad." or whatever?

Thanks Sarah.

I'll give it a try.

School are doing mutli-sensory stuff with her. (And of course they insist she is making good progress )

IndigoBell

"(She has only been learning the 45 high frequency words for the last 3 years...)"

By the time she gets to secondary she'll have been learning them for 6 years and will still probably spell half of them wrong

It's a shame her school doesn't use the time rather more productively?

"School are doing mutli-sensory stuff with her."

Probably more time wasting... Did you know that there is no research evidence at all for the supposed efficacy of 'multi-sensory learning'?

There is a discussion of 'multi-sensory learning' (with links) here

I don't think spelling tests did 'work in our day'. I could ace a spelling test and happily forget the words the next day.
I think reading is the biggest improver of spelling.

Reading helps you to recognise if the word looks right even if you apply phonics

Maizie - I'm well aware that DD is doing exceedingly badly at school and is not on track to ever learn to read.

What I don't know is what to do about it.

We have moved school. Who have once again put her on the celebrated 'Read, Write, Inc' for an hour a day (in a group of 8) and are also giving her 1:1 every day.

Which is exactly what the old school have been doing with her for the last 3 years.

The SpLD team assesed her last year - confirmed she is working at a level W - and recommended she continues with Read, Write, Inc. ( Although they are coming back to observe what progress she has made next month)

There is absolutely nothing else I can do for her.

Besides take her out of school.....

This is not a philosophical debate about synthetic phonics vs whole word learning. Multi sensory approaches - vs whatever the alternative is.

This is about a child who has been badly failed by a school that put all its faith in Read, Write, Inc - but didn't employ good teachers. A school with a terrible SENCO who refused to acknowledge there were any problems. A school that cares more about its SATs results than the children. A school that refused to even get her assessed by an Ed Psych because they insisted she was making good progress.

Her new school has a terrific SENCO and terrific teachers. Can they teach her anything? I have to wait to find out...

Hi Indigo, - were you the parent trying out a web-based programme? I do sympathise. I often wonder what the remedy is for the less than 1%, especially within a school where even the best may not have the skills or time allocated to succeed. In a life-time career, teachers in general may not come across enough of these children to develop the requisite skills.

I struggle with one of these children as a weekly tutor, and feel frustrated, as an hour is a mere drop in the ocean, and I guess the necessary instruction time is more like 2-3 sessions per day of reading/spelling and really, not much time for anything else.

Malalecua - yes, my latest effort was with a web-based programme that, both taught my dyslexic son to read and, claims a 96% success rate for teaching dyslexic children to read.

After using it every day for 4 months I gave up on it. The makers said I haven't given it long enough - but I could no longer bear to do it every morning with absolute no sign of progress.

My new SENCO is really very good. She, and retained reflexes therapy, have worked absolute miracles on my son who has Aspergers.

DD has only been at this junior school since Sep. So I need to give her a bit longer to see what she proposes....

But like you said, in a life-time you are not going to see many kids who are as hard to teach as my darling daughter.

IndigoBell. Just read the comments you have made regarding your daughter. I don't know exactly how old she is (guessing year 2 or 3) or whether she has had any particular diagnosis. So far I have had 2 or 3 students that have struggled in similar ways to your daughter - one had brain injury from a car accident, one has autism ( and I suspect severe dyslexia and dyspraxia) and the last one has ADD ( and is making progress now he is on medication). They have all made progress in the end but it has needed very intensive input over several years.

I would suggest that you reduce her spelling words to one a week. Add in another one each week but only take one off the list when she has spelt it correctly for 3 consecutive weeks ( no need to test them all each day - work on that week's word only but test all of them once a week!)

Once she is aged 8 you might want to try Toe by Toe. I have seen this work really well for children who have got stuck with learning to read. Also on the time it takes to learn - The one child who still wasn't reading anything beyond cvc words at age 13 - I taught him one-to-one for 4 hours every week for 18 months then dropping to 3 hours. He did make progress eventually.

Thanks Sarah. She is not quite as bad as you are suggesting. She has no dx of anything, nor is anything else at all wrong with her. If you met her you'd think she was a lovely, bright girl.

She is in Y3.

She can read CVC words - just very slowly (15 wpm). On a good day she can also read the 45 HF words and a little bit more... ( Working at about a level 1B I think)

I tested her on her spellings this morning, and she did get all of them correct. So I think the teacher is just being a bit safe so that DD has lots of success and doesn't struggle too much.

However - at the same time she has had a lot of extra help at school and at home and there clearly is a problem with learning to read and write. We have tried Toe by Toe last year, but she hated it, and because it doesn't at all address the fluency issue (ie there is no time limit for reading each word) I gave up after about 2 months and switched to Dancing Bears, which is better for younger kids, and does involve being able to read words in a certain time limit.

Besides if she is doing Read, Write, Inc at school she really is getting proper synthetic phonics teaching, so no reason to expect that a different SP course would have a different outcome....

Indigo - there are different architectures to the various genuine SP programmes. An obvious one is the order in which the letter-sound correspondences are introduced but there are other differences.

Roll on the day when proper comparisons of the various programmes can be made.

Malaleuca - True, I'm sure there are differences. But RWI is widely regarded is a very good SP programme....

And it's the only thing my local SpLD team recommend :(

Either she has failed to learn due to bad teaching of RWI (which is possible) or a substantially different approach is needed - which somehow takes into account her slow processing and poor working memory....

The difference I would say with Toe by Toe to some other programmes is the insistence that each word is read correctly 3 times on different consecutive days. I've never taught Read Write Inc so don't know whether this is similar but I have seen Ruth Miskin in action on TV!
I agree that Y2 is probably too young for Toe by Toe - I would only use it from age 8 onwards and probably not always then.
The student with acquired head injury that I taught was also very slow and it was considered that SP had not worked for him. It did help in the end. His reading was always hesitant but a greater level of fluency and word decoding came in the end.
One game I did with him to improve fluency:
Have a large pile of HF words/graphemes/cvc words or whatever on cards and a die. Student starts reading words as fast as they can while you keep throwing the die. (While throwing die you also keep an eye on reading - anything incorrect has to be worked out correctly before they move on or put to bottom of pile again.) As soon as you get a six they have to stop reading and you start reading while they throw die to get a six. Continue till all words are finished. The person who gets most words at the end is the winner. You can "wangle" the results to a close finish - and let DC win most of the time - by ignoring some of your 6 throws so they have longer. They'll be so focused on the cards they won't notice! My students are always amazed at how unlucky I am and how dice really "like" then and "hate" me!!

Sorry, IB, I wasn't trying to start a philosophical debate about SP teaching, just lamenting the time wasted on teaching unneccesary things!

I know for absolute certain that Ruth Miskin would never have spent time on the 45 YR/1 HFWs (which are now completely obsolete as far as the new 'guidance' on the initial teaching of reading is concerned)Everything a child needs to know is taught within the programme; HFWs are slipped in as 'tricky' words (or 'red' words, I think she calls them) but not as a list of 45. So I am a bit suspicious about the way the new school is teaching RWI..

I only hope that I am wrong ...

Maizie - Oh, OK. No the school didn't mention 45 words, and I don't suppose DD is learning them in RWI. I think she is learning 'ay', 'ee','igh'

The spelling words were just some words sent home by the teacher (which I recognized from the 45 list) - presumably so DD wasn't the only one not having a spelling test (as obviusly most of the class aren't doing RWI)

I think she's deliberately sent home easy ones, so that she succeeds and feel confident...