Spellings

[Patienceandchocolate]

Hello,
Does anyone have any advice for helping children to learn their spellings?

DS1 is in year 3, and he brings home 10 spelling words each week. The class have a test each Monday.

He never gets more than 5/10 no matter what we do. I have spent a long time over the last week getting him to write them out, making them into spider drawings, having treasure hunts, putting them in to word searches etc to try to help him learn them. We have only done about 30 minutes at any one time so that he does not get bored or disillusioned.

He still only got 4 on his test today. He does not seem to be able to remember them.

I see spellings as a good opportunity to make sure that he does well in something, and so boost his confidence and expectations of himself.

Any tips please?

Thank you

I'm wondering just how you initially approach the words. From the examples you gave he seems to be able to break them into their component sounds but is he then trying to 'learn' them by saying the component letters? You say he writes them out, but does he say each 'sound' as he writes it or each letter, or nothing at all? For a child who is struggling I'd suggest that it is much safer to stick to saying the sounds as he writes the letters which represent the sounds than trying to memorise strings of apparently abitrary letters. Saying the 'sounds' as he writes them promotes kinaesthetic (muscle) memory which is important for fluent automatic spelling.

Have you any idea how complete his phonic knowledge might be; did he learn most of the common alternative sound spellings? Some children can work these out for themselves once they get the idea of phonics but some need to have much more of the 'code' very explicitly taught to them.

although his reading is not amazing, his teacher says that it is age appropriate.

I'm sorry, but that would worry me a bit. Some teachers have quite low expectations in that they believe that there will always be children who are quite far behind their peers and don't seem to worry about quite large differences because they think it's within the 'normal' range. What do you think about his reading ability?

Does he get any extra support in school?

That's the sentence that stood out for me, maizie.

It's difficult to know what it means without knowing what behaviours the teacher in question considers age appropriate and age inappropriate.

Does he often miss words out or add words when reading? If he's reading a longer word do you find that he substitutes for a word that is similar (i.e. starts with the same few letters) rather than blending accurately all through the word?

http://www.dyslexics.org.uk/spelling.htm

My Dd yr 3 is the same OP she also practices daily, her reading levels are age appropriate too but she replaces words while reading and tends to struggle with most of the smaller words she should of known in Yr 1. She has a list of 10 spellings only gets between 3 and 5 correct each week which really upsets her no matter how much I big it up .

I have tried everything from CWC, coloured individual letter which she said as she was writing, to chunking the sounds using different colours so I held it up Dd read it then I hid it and she wrote it then she got to see it again, similar to CWC really ..this actually improved her results a little but she got bored with it very quickly. In all honesty I think she is just losing interest in her spellings.

We are going to try making silly phrases next (eg Big Elephants Can't Always Use Small Exits=BECAUSE) just to get her through her tests but I'm not sure if her memory will be up to it so we will see.

He gets extra support at school but he only has an IEP and not an EHCP.

I was surprised that his teacher thinks that his reading is OK for his age as I thought that he was behind. I spend quite a bit of time telling him to read what is actually in front of him and not make it up.

He has a tutor once a week to try to boost him a little and increase his confidence. She thinks that his English is much better than his maths, and she said he is working at a year three level at least some of the time. I would have thought she would have mentioned something if he showed signs of dyslexia. The poor kid has diagnoses coming out of his ears and no professional has ever mentioned it

I thought we had cracked the spellings yesterday and this morning as he was confidently writing them all out correctly, and he did so several times. He managed 5/10 in the test at school. I think he struggles with performing in the tests as well as learning the spellings.

Backing off a little seemed to help so I will relax a bit about it and just keep practising with him.

Thank you very much for all of your help.

Patience if you don't mind me asking what has he been diagnosed with?

He has been diagnosed with ASD, anxiety, instability in his core, and hyper mobility. He also has some medical problems.