Daughter getting good results in spelling test but poor at spelling in general

[ColinFirthsGirth]

Hi,

My daughter is 9 in August and is coming to the end of year 4. Prior to starting school she had a severe speech disorder with limited expressive language. She went to a specialist Speech and Language nursery and came on in leaps and bounds. She has always been on the special needs register at school as the speech disorder seemed to have affected her literacy skills. She is rather behind in maths, writing and spelling but has gone up 5 sub-levels in reading since last year and is now on a 4c. Therefore the teacher considers her to have caught up in reading.

Her teacher has told me that despite getting good results in her spelling tests that she is still very behind in spelling. Apparently she is not applying the spellings she has learnt into her work. The spellings she learns each week all have the same letter strings in them but she doesn't them apply this to other words that have the same letter strings.

Does anyone know why this might be the case? Is it still related to the speech disorder and general processing stuff? She is not dyslexic apparently.

I would be very grateful if anyone has any tips on how to help her in this area. The teacher has said it is not a matter of just learning more spellings.

Has she been assessed for dyslexia?

cornsilk - yes she has and is apparently not dyslexic. In fact the assessor has said that both of my children are enigmatic as they both have cognitive issues but he can't get to the bottom of it.

I have recently been found to have a specific learning difficulty - which is also not dyslexia - apparently because I am on a very high centile for reading and spelling but only on the 5th centile for working memory, 8th for processing speed, not very good at visual sequencing stuff, rubbish at multi-tasking and appear to have dyspraxic and ADHD type traits.

The teachers have long told me that she has a bad attitude towards her work as well as they say that she doesn't try very hard. They find it very hard to get through to her and she can be very challenging. However, I do truly believe that she does find things difficult and that it isn't just a lack of application.

I found this a common problem as a teacher. When they do a spelling test they only have to concentrate on spelling. When they do a piece of writing they have to think about the focus of the piece of work, the audience, the grammar, using connectives, interesting vocabulary, appropriate language, using punctuation etc. Rather a lot to bear in mind. We used to be given a title and told to get on with it! It could be that she is finding the expectation too much all round.

the teachers attitude sounds a bit worrying
does she still have a speech and language therapist? could you ask for her to be reassessed to see if the picture has changed?

Being poor at spelling but good at spelling tests is very common, and not indicative of anything.

We've had hundreds of threads about this in primary ed.

cornysilk - the speech therapist discharged her in year one as she speech was considered to be average at that point. The problems with literacy were apparently due to the severity of her speech disorder.

She was assessed at the start of year 3 by the LEA's special needs advisory teacher. He said he would like to see her again in the medium term. She is very stubborn and is her behaviour can be very challenging so unfortunately the thing about her bad attitude towards work has followed her since year 1 when her teacher told me that she was faking her special needs. It is now accepted that she does indeed have processing issues etc but they still think she could do alot better as she has a good IQ,

I appreaciate that many other children may well be like this and I was mainly just wondering the reasons for it and if it was linked to her special needs as it took her so long to understand letter sounds and phonics etc.

It's possible that her speech and language issues may still be impacting on her literacy. IME the LEA sign children off when they reach a certain level but one size doesn't fit all. I would look into getting a 2nd opinion as she is still not making progress - could you ask your GP?