9 year old struggling to spell

[Frazzle51]

DD is 9 (year 4) and although her reading is very good, she struggles with spelling. We had parents evening just before half term – spelling wasn’t mentioned (I had to bring it up, at which point they were quite dismissive, said they weren’t too concerned but would keep an eye on it) and I was told she is where she is expected to be in English (and all other subjects).

DD’s writing is usually decipherable, but it’s as though she is putting the phonics sounds in the wrong place. A recent example was ‘She sore a sighn on the rode’ instead of ‘She saw a sign on the road’. I’ve noticed that she will also spell the same word numerous different ways in the same text. I recently found a spelling workbook in the cupboard that was left over from lockdown – it’s aimed at ages 6-7 and she struggled with it.

I want to speak to the school again this week when they re-open, but I’m wondering if anyone has any advice on how I can help her with her spelling (her school don’t send spellings home) and if some children just take a bit longer with spelling or if I should be worrying or requesting extra help? Any advice appreciated.

My dd (9) is similar. I’m suspecting dyslexia despite the school’s dyslexia test showing she’s passed their dyslexia assessment. I’m going to leave it a bit to see if there’s any improvement and then go ahead and pay the circa £300 it costs to get the proper, comprehensive dyslexia test. I’m using a CGL workbook I got on Amazon in the meantime to see if I can raise her spelling proficiency.

*CGP

My DD struggles with spelling despite being ahead in reading.

She's using a spelling programme on Dyslexia Gold. It's designed for anyone who needs to improve their spelling and is very good. There's a small monthly fee but I feel it's worth the cost.

I'm a school governor and spelling is on our school development plan. We have tried a couple of schemes that haven't been effective and continue to look at alternatives.

Generally reading is recommended as the best way to learn to spell, so that worth thinking about. Appreciate that is less relevant if dyslexia is in the mix.

More reading!

She clearly knows the phonics sounds, so just needs to be exposed to words more and more so she begins to learn which grapheme (spelling of a phonic sound) to use when. There are some rules which usually apply (split diagraphs - such as a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e - must be the penultimate sound in a word, unless it's a word with a suffix added on; certain graphemes are very rare at the end of a word - ai, oa, au; etc.

But in the example you've given, she is following all these rules - although /ore/ is a much less common spelling than /or/ or even /aw/, the word sore does exist - just not the one she was after here! Sign should by all rights be spelt sighn so that it has an /igh/ sound in it, and rode does have the o-e sound as the penultimate sound.

The only way I stopped being terrible at spelling (and probably not until my mid to late teens) was to read a lot, and then when I wasn't sure how to spell a word, write out all the possibilites (rowd, road, rode, rod) and see which one "looked right".

Does she like reading? My dd had consistently odd spelling all through primary school, she would spell even common words in strange and inconsistent ways, we were told it would be the thing that brought her marks down in SATS etc, but everything else was fine. I was not too worried, as in this day and age spell check is always available! She had some kind of screening test for dyslexia age 7 and passed.

Fast forward to age 13 and she clearly was not meeting her potential at school. Spelling still all over the place, and I realised there were other issues, primarily with processing longer texts when reading (she hates reading). I had her privately assessed and she is dyslexic. He reading processing scores on the first centile - despite this she has overcompensated all through school but it has only caught up with her now. She is now having specific dyslexia support.

Just posting as the issues with spelling sounded very familiar. I think a bright child can go under the radar with dyslexia for ages so maybe worth considering.

Reading between the lines of your post, it sounds like the school is taking a very passive stance on this and you haven't really been working with her on spelling either. I'd tackle the issue and actively teach and work on spelling with her at home, and see how far she improves with that, before jumping to a dyslexia diagnosis as per the previous posters! English is difficult; most kids won't get good at spelling unless they are actually getting taught spelling and working on it.

I'll post some ideas later on when I've finished work (East Asian timezone over here!)

We found our prep school did not mark all wrong spellings so DC kept on spelling some words wrong and didn’t know it was wrong or how important to get correct spellings. We had been told that everything was fine and to read more. DC reading chapter books and classics. We asked and talked to other parents and got suggestions. So we bought CPG books and Wordsmith worksheets to download and print and kept at it from Year 4. I believe this view that all is fine and don’t worry in the early years is not a great attitude and would be easier if DC was taught properly their spelling and grammar.

@Kokeshi123 obviously it is perfectly possible the op's child is not dyslexic. Or it may be worth considering if there are other markers. I posted as what she had written immediately resonated with my experience. Even if not applicable to the op, sharing this experience may be helpful for others reading.

Re school being laid back - ours were fairly laid back too, their solution was to make a dictionary available to her, pretty much the worst possible strategy for someone with dyslexia. Also, I agree English is a hard language to learn spelling - however, as a child of the 1980s school
system I have no recollection of being taught to spell and I don't think I was. I read a lot, and could therefore spell. I made the mistake of thinking my dd was less good at spelling as she did not choose to read therefore would have 'seen' fewer words - it took me a while to realise that she could see the same word repeatedly, could learn to spell it in the weekly spelling lists, but would still continue to spell it in varying and bizarre ways thereafter.

Thank you for all of your replies. Dyslexia has crossed my mind, but as she's my eldest, I sometimes feel like I don’t know what level she should be at by her age. The school have always been very reassuring that she is doing well, it was only when her younger sibling started surpassing her with spelling that I started to wonder if this was a problem. I’m now feeling as if I may have dropped the ball with her a bit, thinking everything is fine and not realising she may have needed extra help.

My husband is of the opinion that it will just take time to click, as she took quite a while to learn to read and to figure out times tables but once it clicked with her, she progressed quickly at both . She was in the middle of Year 1 when lockdown happened and at that point her reading was pretty basic and not progressing. Her school use Read, Write, Inc - they sent home a lot of phonics work (which was mainly Youtube videos) and as much as I tried my best with her, I do worry that she wasn’t taught ‘properly’ so to speak and that’s where her confusion with the phonics sounds may have come from. Once she returned to school, she was reading fluently within around 3 weeks.

In terms of her reading now, she’s an avid reader and we sometimes have to prise books out of her hands at night so she will sleep! She will usually read 3-4 chapter books a week, although over the Easter holidays she was proudly boasting of getting through 12 in 14 days and her reading ability is good – I rarely see her stumble over a word when she reads out loud.

I will look at all of the suggestions mentioned for workbooks and online programs etc...Spelling Frame sounds interesting, as it was using TT Rockstars that finally seemed to help with her times tables – going from around 18 seconds to just under 2 within months. Thanks again for everyone’s input.

We used the Schofield and Simms books, but any spelling series that covers sound patterns and morphology should be fine - the Spelling Frame one looks really good. I'll have to remember that one for my second child!

We used to keep a spelling book, and pick out misspelt words from her writing, we'd go through the spelling of these words together (tricky spellings, the morphology, and "speak as you spell"), she'd put the words in the book, copy them out five times and write a sentence for each, then write the word on a little card (I cut up paper to make all these little cards, nothing fancy). Every morning, we'd choose a handful of words from the bag of cards and do a quiz together. It was the constant quizzing and review process that got things to stick in the end.

I'm already keeping a note of misspelt words and practising those ones with her, but the card idea sounds like something she’d love, so will definitely try that, thank you.

Lots of reading - anything and everything.
And learning spellings by heart the old fashioned way.

What is her memory like for lists? Numbers? Reciting times tables (if they still do that)?

I'm dyslexic but was an advanced reader/high IQ etc etc. I cant spell as the letters just jumble in my head, I can't recite times tables easily and have memory issues. When I was at school dyslexia wasn't a diagnosable condition so I had a tough time.