My dd is breaking her heart over spelling!

[weegiemum]

She is in Primary 5 (English y4, though old for that - she's 10 in 3 weeks).

I know this is in part that I chose bilingual education for her - she goes to a Gaelic school, so is educated mainly through the medium of Gaelic (Scottish) and is fluently bilingual, which I see as a massive advantage! She's learning Spanish as well at the moment and is coming on in leaps and bounds - seems very good at languages and also at music and maths, which are supposed to go together.

She writes loads of stories and illustrates them, she's assessed as G&T at Art (has an "art age" (from a psychology student who came in to assess as part of her PhD) of 14!!).

But her spelling - its just AWFUL! In every language!! We do everything suggested by the school - playing hangman, shapes of words, visual stuff, sensory things ......

She still gets less than 50% in her spelling test every week - in English and Gaelic. She cries every Friday night cos she did badly. I am a student mum so at home every night and we do spelling homework all week and I can't seem to help!!!!

Should we be thinking about dyslexia? She just can't "get" sounds that she should have learned in primary 1. we worked hard on them and she never diid well with them and is now resistant to revising as it is "baby" work.

Anyone got any advice?

no advice, i think some ppl just aren;t good at spelling!

this is where testing and rewarding students falls down IMO! cos when there is something they CAN'T do it just de-motivates them and makes them feel bad

i would ask the school if there is any way they can lay off the spelling tests for a while tbh, or make less of a deal of them

as long as she can use a dictionary she'll be fine!

dyslexia could well be the problem.

My advice would be to try 'rainbow writing'... it's a technique that I use with the children I teach as it's fairly enjoyable, easy and is dyslexic-friendly (so good for everyone really).

You will need to furnish your DD with 5 different coloured pencils, for arguments sake say red, yellow, green, blue and purple.

She should start with red and write the target word e.g. Wednesday in joined up writing saying each letter aloud as she goes, "W-E-D-N-E-S-D-A-Y" then, when the whole word is written in red pencil she says , "Wednesday". She should then use the next colour e.g. yellow and write over the top of the red Wednesday in yellow, repeating each letter and the final word. Repeat this process until all 5 colours have been used and the word Wednesday will look rainbow-esque!

The theory behind rainbow writing is similar to that of learning scales on a musical instrument; the brain recognises and remembers patterns so if it can learn the word in its entirity as a pattern it is more likely to be remembered, that's why the joined up writing is important, the word needs to be a whole until.

If she tries this with her words and does each word a few times a week hopefully some of them will begin to stick. When I set spellings to be learnt I always ask children to use rainbow writing as a way of helping them to practise as it doesn't require input from anyone else and is fairly stress-free as a technique. Some of the girls in my classes have used gel pens and devised complicated colour-schemes which really isn't the point at all but if it helps them learn how to spell then I really don't mind!

Good luck, I hope you find something that works for her soon.

I think it would be worth talking to her teacher to ask about issues like dyslexia. I think I'd like to get things checked out prior to secondary school age.

Poor girl, I really feel for her to be trying so hard but still not advancing. Must be demoralizing for her.

She tries very hard - she's incredibly motivated.

Think we will talk to the teacher about poss dyslexia (she's also VERY VERY clumsy and always hurting herself!) and try the rainbow writing.

I'm glad its the weekend!! No spelling!!!

dyslexia and dyspraxia often go together.

I'm aware of the link between dyslexia and dyspraxia!

I'm very clumsy myself - always falling over!! - but can spell ok after years of practice. Still struggle with rules such as I before e and the Word spellchecker is my friend.

Need to get in touch with the teacher!! I suppose I had put it down to bi/tri lingualism before now but she is really struggling and Thursday nights (before test) are a nightmare with tears etc. .......

It's actually Year 5 in England OP Y4s are 8/9 year olds and Y5d 9/10.
The spelling is one issue to address,but I think possibly more worrying is the crying every week because she has come across something she finds difficult.

In feel for your daughter, I myself suffer from mild dyslexia and I went through a bilingual school system in Welsh and English and was taught mainly in Welsh. From year 1 I had spellings and never ever ever had full marks this lasted until year 10 when I was diognosed with dyslexia.

Spelling tests just never worked for me as even the words I did spell right I would get wrong the next week.

The best practical advice for the future I can give are:

1. Do work where possible on the computer so you can spell check.
2. Buy this book Spell It Yourself it is a wonderful book as it helps with spelling rules for example when you add ly to a word ending in e I never remember when to take the e off or not this book tells you.
3. Try and big up what she can do thats what my mum does/did when I GOT FRUSTRATED and called myself thick.

It does get better with maturity. AS YOU CAN see my spelling is crap now

My dd is also in bilingual education (Welsh medium school), in yr 3. She struggles with spelling and I do think that working in two languages makes it harder if you're not a 'natural' speller.

Her yr 2 teacher had her (and others in the class) using a system called POPAT (google it - there's a good website) in Welsh, and it did seem to help her to some extent. Welsh is completely phonetic though, so easier to memorise 'rules' - don't know if that is also the case with Gaelic?

Luckily her school doesn't do spelling tests, taking the view (which I believe is fairly well attested) that they don't help spelling in context. Her teacher this year is very big on physical expression of spelling - spelling words in the air, in sand, etc - and this also seems to be helping a bit. Perhaps a similar thing to the 'rainbow writing'?

OMG I could have written this post last night, my DS(7) comes home in tears every Friday over his spellings, he is bilingual in French and English, he goes to school in France. He works so hard on his spellings and in fact yesterday morning sat down and did his spellings again because he SO wanted to get a good mark this week. He came home with more errors than ever.

Unfortunately it was DH who collected him from school last night and he doesn't speak any French, he went into the classroom to look for DS1, the teacher saw him and said DS1 was probably hiding (translated by DS2) because he wasn't happy, she then made a crying gesture and DH got the distinct impression that she was taking the piss because he had burst into tears on getting the spelling results.

She also sent a note back in his spelling book being quite mean about his spelling results and inferring he does no work at home.

I am absolutely livid with her, I've had so many meetings with her about this, DS is diagnosed with Dyspraxia, I'm really wondering if he has Dyslexia as he can't see patterns of words and he works bloody hard on his reading and spelling every night. At least an hour if not more and after eight hours at school I think it's too much. I'm going to suggest the rainbow writing as mentioned above. Because I'm at work on Monday I can't speak to the teacher and she won't see me anyhow without an appointment, but she will be getting a letter from me pointing out that kids with dyspraxia do have memory issues, asking her if she has bothered to test him for dyslexia and rather than take the piss out of him being upset and tell him he's the most stupid boy in the class, maybe she could give him a bit of encouragement. Since starting with this teacher in September by son has gone from loving school to hating it. She's told him already that he'll be repeating the year next year (with seven months left of school term) and he's gutted because it means he's got her for another year.

It's amazing that so many of the children on this thread are bilingual, I wonder if it's related to their bilingualness.

This is the POPAT link - its a phonics programme that takes into account the fact that children may be working in different languages.

I always thought dyslexia was more common in english speaking children than others language. I've always struggled with spelling myself. Three of my six DC are dyslexic.
When they were at primary school they were in special groups for spelling and I used to spend hours a week with them writing words out and testing them. Even if they managed to get words correct in tests they could never retain spellings for long so in written work they always made lots of mistakes.
My DS are all in secondary now but I do think the hours spent on spellings at primary was waisted. It did have a negative effect on their childhood. Fortunately my DS are very good at sport, music, maths and the sciences. Success in these areas gave them back the confidence that the weekly failure in spelling tests took away.

Being able to spell well is not a measure of intelligence any more than being able to run fast is. Lots of very bright people are poor spellers.