DS Spelling

[WinniePig]

Hello! Anyone got any reassuring stories re bright DC with terrible spelling? My DS10 is super lovely kind boy with the most atrocious spelling. Such creative and imaginative ways of spelling words completely wrong! What does it mean? What should I do? He enjoys reading non fiction books and is in top set for maths. He’s creative and engaging but WOW! spellings are crazy!

My spelling in English has always been pretty hopeless. Then I learned German and bingo I can spell German words OK because they conform much more closely to the way they sound.

Yacht is spelt the same in both languages. I have to say it the German way in order to be able to spell it.

Computers and automatic spell checkers has been the saving of me in work surroundings. I can pick the correct spelling from a list of options.

Given a list of similar spellings, can your DS pick out the correct one or do the option confuse more ?

MintyIguana - thanks! Will take a look at that book too.

FinallyHere - in response to a PP’s comments about French spellings, I was thinking about languages at secondary school and, in particular, German. I was on the ERASMUS programme at a German university so know the language reasonably well. It strikes me that the German language follows rules in a way which English doesn’t (mein, Bein, klein, Dein, Wein…usw!) and that my DS would find German spellings more straightforward as he has no problem following rules. It’s the multiple exceptions to rules which confuse him (floor, pour, sure, store…) I did ask him the other day to spell “throne” and he spelt it “thown”. Missed out the third consonant (which is a common mistake he makes) and opted for “own” rather than “one”.

I would also say that he can pick out the correct spelling when given options. One of the main issues is that he flips his letters but also numbers (although he is getting better). He was testing his multiplication on a maths app a few months ago. The app had multiple choice answers. One question was 6 x 4 and DS shouted out 24 whilst simultaneously pressing the option for 42 😩

The important thing to remember is there aren't any rules.