Ds(5) turning all his letters round. Why? Should I be concerned?

[beckybrastraps]

Helping ds with his spellings I noticed that he has started to turn lots of them around, so b for d etc. He's always had a bit of a problem with bs and ds, but now he does it with loads of leter: s, c, a, pretty much any that aren't symmetrical. I know a bit of inversion is normal, but so many letters? And why now? He's a bit down about it all, because if he inverts a letter to form another letter, it gets marked wrong in his spelling test, so his scores are going down.

He was 5 in July BTW, and in Year 1.

My DD's teacher when she was in Year 1 told me this is normal - that their heads are concentrating so much on other things that this happens. She didn't worry about it nad certainly didnt mark her down if she mixed up a b and a d!

I'd have another word with the teacher, I don't think thats very fair.

My DD is in year 3 now and doesn't do it any more.

Good luck!

Phew

I can see the teacher's point on the spellings, but it does make him a bit sad. And it makes spelling practice purgatory. Do you think I should just leave hm to it, or point out when he gets them the wrong way round?

No, no and no. DD2 (7) always gets them the wrong way round, not only when she writes words, but when she reads to me, too. No will become 'on', etc.

Had a parents' meeting recently and her teacher assured me this was normal. (Was one of my concerns.)

Lots of children do this. Mine all have. Think it's a bit unfair of the teacher to mark them wrong if it's just a case of him getting the letter the wrong way round.
We had it explained to us this way:
If you see a bus on the road - it's a bus. It doesn't stop being a bus if it's upside down or sideways. When children first start to write then it doesn't always matter to them which way round they write the letter. While it's easy to see that a c is still a c the wrong way round p,b,d, (pretty much the same shapes) become different letters.

I would agree that turning letters round is entirely normal, but as children do need to learn not to do it, it's reasonable, and indeed quite right, for the teacher to mark any inverted letters as spelling mistakes. (If she were saying they were moral failings or evidence of serious problems, that would be an entirely different matter).

It does need to be corrected, I think, but there's a nice way to do it.
Our teacher used to give us litle tricks to remember the right way round. Such as writing "bed" and sounding out buh-eh-duh and saying there were two letters sharing the bed and each had a pillow on the end. The word looks a little like a buh-eh-duh with a pillow each end. I never forgot the trick (25 years later) and certainly never mixed up my b's and d's again.

My mum even helped a dyslexic employee to spell better with the same tricks I'd learnt in school.

The problem is that he's refusing to learn the spellings. And I can't say I really blame him when he goes to the effort of learning 'Wednesday', but gets it wrong because he puts 'b' instead of 'd'.

I DO understand why it is marked wrong. It IS wrong. But hard on ds.

I disagree hallgerda. It is not right that a teacher in Year 1 marks any inverted letters as spelling mistakes. My DD's teacher would tick them as right, but just go over the letter so my DD could see what she had done.

I think to continuously mark them wrong would knock confidence and he's only 5!

I agree with twelvedaysofchristmas that the school should try to teach children to get the letters the right way round rather than just marking them wrong. (I used "circle before pole is d" and "pole before circle is b", and it worked for my children).

But I don't see why a child's confidence should be dented by a bit of honest marking. beckybrastraps, I would try to encourage your son to take the view that having a mistake pointed out is not a personal insult, but an opportunity to improve his work. I know some children just dissolve into floods of tears when their work isn't perfect, but eventually most of them learn to take a sensible attitude - even my DS2...

I do. And the teacher does show WHY it's wrong. But 5 year olds don't ask each other the nature of their spelling mistakes. Only what mark out of 10 they got.

I know you're right. But it just makes me sad that he thinks he's no good at spelling, when in fact he's pretty good apart from the inversion thing.

I mean very good at phonics and has a good memory for more unusual spellings.

Cheer up, beckybrastraps. One day it will all fall into place, your son will stop writing his letters the wrong way round and notice he's good at spelling after all. And it'll all seem so much more amazing after going through the backwards letters problem.

Have you tried doing the spellings the first time round with the alphabet next to him (we have great placemats from morrissons) and I have found they have reduced the number of inversions...

Good plan. Thanks