dd 10 cant spell

[kimlo]

How can I help her?

Shes ok with her weekly spelling tests, normally getting 100%, but when it comes to using the words in her work or blind spelling tests I all goes out of the window. During her last test week she scored 4 out of 30 on a blind spelling test.

her reading and comprehension is good, her handwriting isnt great to be honest, but the spelling makes it unreadable.

Whats the best wau to try and tackle this?

My 11 and 9 yr olds can't spell.

It baffles me as both DH and I are linguists (languages teacher and translator) and we don't get what they find so hard!

I think something must be wrong in the current education system for so many kids to have spelling/literacy problems. The weekly spelling test is useless, for example.

What we do is the long slow approach: Every day the DC don't have homework to do for school, they have to do spelling activities/reading with us.

We are getting there bit by bit.

They are both "average" now (ie level 4b by Y6), which makes me realise how bad English kids must be at spelling!

Spelling standards have never been any higher than they are now, nor worse.

Various surveys done here and other Anglophone countries over the past century have confirmed this again and again: roughly half of all speakers of English make lots of spelling mistakes. They cannot cope with the amount of rote-learning involved.

Sadly, the people who can cope generally fail to see what's difficult about it. To them, imprinting the right look of words through copious reading is easy, but for many people all the
seek, speak, seize, cheese, leave, sleeve, believe...
hair, care, there/their, pear/pair....
maul/mall, crawl ...
which make no logical sense whatsoever are fiendishly difficult to get to grips with.

You may well be right masha, I don't know as I had to learn English as a second language.

I am just amazed how hard it is for "native speakers"! It seems almost easier to learn it as a second language.

I never had to do phonics or sound things out.

I remember reading/hearing that in English speaking countries the number of dyslexics is around 5-10% whereas in Spanish speaking countries it tends to be around 2% (Spanish is almost entirely phonetic).

I used apples and pears with DS1 in yr 6 and it made a difference to his spelling ability. He wasn't taught phonics properly when he started school and it shows in his spelling (and more recently in learning to read new words) e.g. he would spell much as mutch. It is fairly labour intensive even though it is only meant to be 10mins a day, but on top of working full time and homework it just doesn't often happen now.
What I like about it is that the spelling is always in sentences rather than just individual words.

Such words, Mashabell, can be learnt as groups of words (spelling word banks: words spelt with the same letter/s-sound correspondences - not just the same 'sounds'). Utilising story themes and pictures to help aid memory of the words in any spelling word bank is very helpful rather than just providing word lists.

The issue with English spelling is not about 'predictability' but very good teaching of the English alphabetic code leading, ultimately, to building up knowledge of spelling word banks and the various words which are, indeed, very unusual such as 'leopard' and common words such as 'one' 'once' 'two' and so on.

English is 'phonetic' but the English alphabetic code is much more complicated than the Spanish alphabetic code for historic reasons. There are only around 24 or so sounds in the Spanish language compared to around 44 in the English language. The Spanish language has a smattering of 'spelling alternatives' but the English language has many more.

EdPen, a fully diagnostic report from a PATOSS registered and qualified dyslexia assessor would cost approximately £350. The figures you were quoting are more in line with the charges of an E.P. I disagree with your assertion that it wouldn't tell OP more than she knows now. It would tell get whether her child has dyslexia, her dyslexic profile, the most appropriate means of supporting her and would, if appropriate, recommend relevant and useful access arrangements such as additional time, a scribe, etc. Access Arrangements do not have to be born out of recommendation from such a report, as a school that's on the ball in this regard can arrange for these. However, if it's not being acknowledged or accommodated at school, it may be important and useful to have this additional input.
With limited time available to support our children at home, school and out of school, it's advisable to use it efficiently by selecting the most relevant resources for the specific nature if a child's difficulties. One size does not usually fit all.

Hi Debbie! Must say, I Iove your resources and their cumulative approach. I absolutely agree re. the visual representation of word groups/ families and letter strings.

The issue with English spelling is not about 'predictability'.

No. The issue is UNpredictability.

Even young children make very few mistakes with spellings which have very few exceptions, such as 'cat, fat, mat, sat, rat', because the short /a/ sound has just 4 irregular spellings (plaid, plait, meringue' and 'have' with its baffling -e - cf. gave, save).

Most consonant spellings are regular (e.g. b - bat, bit, bet, bag, bin...) and they learn those quite easily too.

They have trouble learning the ones with unpredictable letters in them. They are the ones that they have to build up as word banks: e.g. thEy (say), trOuBle (bubble), leArning (alert), Ones (won)....

And how well children cope with those has less to do with how they are taught, but how their brains work - how easily they imprint the right look of them on their brains, or can't.

If your DD was 'tested' for dyslexia using the DEST screening programme, then I would push for a more in-depth assessment. The DEST only picks up some markers that may indicate some forms of dyslexia and it really isn't fit for purpose.