Year 5 spelling help

[OhTheTastyNuts]

Hi

DS1 is 10, in Year 5. He has a diagnosis of ASD (not sure if this is relevant or not, he is 'high functioning' and is working at the required level or at greater depth for all subjects).

However, he is struggling a lot with spelling. He can memorise words fine for a spelling test (will consistently get 9 or 10 out of 10), but can't seem to carry this over into his writing. He will also regularly spell fairly basic words incorrectly (e.g. today he wrote 'ther' instead of 'there').

He reads every day and is an enthusiastic reader, which I thought would help with his spelling, but it seems not.

I've obviously been 'teaching' him at home since March and I'm just not sure what to do to help. I'll ask him to review his work and check spellings - sometimes he will pick up his errors, sometimes not. Getting him to 'revise' spellings doesn't really help, as he will spell them correctly when I ask, but then write a sentence with them spelled wrong!

If any one has any advice it would be much appreciated!

Should probably add, I am reluctant to ask his teacher for help as she is WFH and in charge of the whole school's home learning. Plus there is no way to contact her - I'd have to write a message on the class forum where the children share their work (the work isn't marked, just generic 'well done, great effort!' type feedback) so it doesn't seem to be the right place to ask for help about specific issues.

My dts are in year 5 too, I think that lots of dc still struggle applying all the technical Skills they learn to put into to writing to make it interesting as well as keeping their hand writing neat and remembering the spellings.
One of my dts keeps on forgetting capital letters at the beginning of a sentence, it’s not that he doesn’t know, he just gets really involved and excited about what he is writing and forgets.

I would carry on with editing his work, in a different coloured pen / pencil if you can. It’s a really valuable skill to have.
If you wanted you could print off the year 3, 4 and 4 5 spellings.
They may be words he is using frequently and it may help to have them to hand when he is writing and editing.
Twinkl will have some on their website.

Thanks. I have another DS who is 7, and he consistently spells high frequency words like there/where/were correctly. So I assumed DS1 was a bit behind where he should be. Reassuring that others his age are inconsistent too.

I'll keep on with the editing. I get him to use a dictionary and the year 5/6 spelling lists, but even then he will copy the spelling incorrectly, or copy it correctly and then write it incorrectly on the next line...

Replying from my phone which oddly has a different username?!

Apart from the spelling, what is the writing like?
How about if he is given spellings to practice and he puts the words into a sentence.

I used to be a secondary English teacher in a boys school and it's totally normal. They get much too distracted by the contents of their work and their spelling goes out the window.

They really didn't enjoy having to edit their work but it's essential. Writing is a 3 stage process: planning, writing and then editing.

What could help is asking them to find a specific number of corrections. "I've spotted 7 spelling errors - can you find them?"

I've always found boys worked best to a specific target.