Teri-bell spul-ng

[VenusRising]

Mumsnetters, help!
What can I do about Dds (10) terrible spellings.
She seems to avoid using vowels, and just doesn't seem to 'get it'.

She learns them well enough getting 19/20 in her tests, but by the next week they are gone out of her head and she's back to writing like she's 3.

She has no concept of phonics at all, and learned how to sound out her letters in another language.

What's going on in her head now do you think?

Fwiw she had sight problems diagnosed two years ago and has glasses, and she's been reading well since then.

But she will never willingly pick up a book and read it, though we read to her, and make her read to us every night.

What can I do to help her understand how words are spelled, and to have her remember.

Phonics make little or no sense to me, I've bought her books over the summer and went through them with her, but it didn't stick. My DH is a speed reader and never did phonics, only sight words, and he skims books (with retention) in minutes.

Any games you recommend- Scrabble ends in tears.
Do you think computer programming would help?

Any cross body specialists out there? Do you think there is a left / right brain miss match?

TIA

A book that could help her, and is easy and enjoyable to use is in the MN Book Reviews, "Children's educational books and courses" section. The Oxford Phonics Spelling Dictionary covers most primary school words and takes a child to secondary level. The review links so you can see sample pages from the book, and you can purchase if you wish.

When I left grammar school to do engineering for a while, I could not believe that another student spelt 'hacksaw' as 'axore'! But I'm also sorry to say I was about twenty-five before my mother finally convinced me that I did NOT need the 'e' at the end of 'fruite salade'!

Can she sound out simple words verbally? Eg. Cat, ship, nest, chop
Does she know which letters correspond with which sound for vowel digraphs such as oa, ai, ee, igh?

If she can sound out words like chop, can she tell you which sound needs to change to turn it into chip?

What has her teacher said?

She needs a solid grounding in phonics. Has she been assessed for any Specific Learning Difficult e.g. dyslexia.

I would look at the Sound Foundations books
e.g. Apples and Pears and maybe the Fast Track for phonics
www.soundfoundationsbooks.co.uk/

Thanks everyone, I will look into these recommendations. Brilliant ideas here for games too.

I get letters all mixed up when I'm writing, and was in the medium group for reading when in primary. I was never diagnosed as dyslexic or anything- I just knew I had to work hard to get things right.
It's only by a huge amount of effort and rote learning I managed to be an excellent speller.

But I don't think she's that bothered?
Her head teacher has said that "that's what spell check is for". They don't seem to be bothered about spelling at all in the school.
They just mentioned she's well below average at spelling in our meeting- in fact one teacher thought that her spelling results had been mixed up with another student, they were so bad amongst her other, much better marks.
She's in a class of 30 so I think because she's reading ok and seems ok in other areas, she's not on their radar.

She's very quick at maths, and is GnT top 3% for that.
Should I push for a referral to have her assessed? Could she be dyslexic, and what effect would a diagnosis like that have on her?

It's just her spelling and diagraphs that let her down IMO. She says she doesn't know why she doesn't know her spellings, or just can't "see" them?

I'll start to get her to decode more words and to play that letter substitution game, and see how things go. Also those phonic books seem very worthwhile.

Thanks again Ladies.

If you say a word to her out loud, can she hear the sounds in the word, count them and say them to you? So if you say "through" for example, can she say "th-r-oo" (forget about the spellings used here, it's the sounds she'll be saying out loud) Try these words;

said (3 sounds s-e-d)
after (4 sounds a-f-t-er)
splash (5 sounds s-p-l-a-sh)

The first skill needed in spelling is to be able to say out loud the word you want to spell, and find out how many sounds it has. If she can already do this then that's a good start. If she can't, this is what she needs to work on, because otherwise she is trying to spell words without knowing how many sounds she has to represent.

Venus, I'm no expert but if there's a big spike between abilities it's a big red flag for dyslexia. So you saying she's top for maths, but bottom for spelling would I'd say be a v.big reason to push for assessment.

Being diagnosed doesn't get you a lot, but if she's anything like my son it will empower her/ make her feel more confident. My DS knows he has to work harder at spelling, etc, but now knows it's because he's dyslexic and not just that he's not v.good at it, or thick.

VenusRising: Phonics make little or no sense to me.

It probably doesn't to your dd either, because, beyond the elementary level, English phonics makes no sense.

Phonics is more useful for learning to read, because only 1 word in 4 contains letters with variable sounds like 'an - any, apron' or 'on - only, once'.

Spelling is far more problematic, because 4 words in every 7 have some tricky bits in them like 'mum - month, some, trouble'. This means that by age 16 pupils have to learn, word by word, the tricky bits for roughly 4,000 words. This can only be managed with lots of writing practice and the old LOOK, SAY, COVER, WRITE, CHECK method for the words which keep giving trouble.

Pupils with good visual memories cope with relative ease, but the vast majority only become proficient by working at it for many years.