Dyspraxia and spellings

[walkthedinosaur]

I wondered if anyone had any advice, or learning tips they could share with me. DS1 (6.5) is dyspraxic, he's trying really hard and his handwriting, concentration, etc are really improving. In the last three weeks he's started bringing spellings home from school and it's torture, we are spending far too long (45 mins tonight) trying to learn one or two spellings off the list, we think he's got it cracked and then go back to them the next night and they're all wrong again. His spelling test at the end of last week wasn't so great and he was disappointed because we've worked so hard on them every night.

To make things more difficult we're in France so don't have access to resources that would be available to us in the UK, although he does see a doctor once a week who I would imagine is similar to an OT and she's worked wonders with his concentration, getting him to focus, his social interaction. The spellings he learns are in French, but it's the language he speaks all day at school and is more comfortable with reading in French than in English, so I don't think that poses too much of a problem. He's also getting his letters and numbers back to front and the teacher is starting to pull him up on it now. He's starting to become disillusioned with it all he's doing a lot of work for what seems to be no reward for him at the moment.

So as I said if anyone has any learning tricks or suggestions I would be extremely grateful.

DS1 is also dyspraxic, though he has no official diagnosis. School suggested using different 'styles of learning' to help him with spellings. For example, for a visual learner you might 'write the spellings in the air or pin them around the house, or use the 'Look, Cover, Write, Check method. A tactile learner might benefit from tracing the letters with his finger, or make the word in plasticine(!) DS1 seems to do best with auditory methods - making up mnemonics for words, spelling them out loud, pronouncing the word as it is spelt rather than as it sounds (eg pee opple for people).
I've got a whole booklet full of these ideas if you're interested in more.

hi. My son is nearly 11 and dx with dyspraxia. His concentration and handwriting are improving over time, though when hes tired,both tend to slide.(The OT told us, he will get more tired quicker than other children, as he has to work so much harder to plan and process all the info given to him aall day-probably same as your son).He too is a poor speller and like your son, can learn a word one night, then get it wrong again the next day. It is only this year that he has finally spelt the word VERY correctly....yeah.From the age of 9.5, he has received extra help with spelling, in a small grp, once a week at school, and this has really helped, and improved his confidence, though he is still behind his peers.He too gets letters and numbers back-to-front, and this is known as MERES-ERLON SYNDROME,(sorry, wrong spelling).He has been given an overlay to place over reading material, to help him track the words on the page, as this is difficult for him. It is quite possible your son has this-a hospital Opthalmist could assess him-not an optician. Your sons teacher should not be pulling him up for this, he cannot help it. Also after a day at school, he will be too tired to spend a long time on spelling and homework- i limit how ling my son spends on this, and if i see hes had enough, i tell the teacher he will complete anything leftover the next night or weekend.From reading other posts on MN re Dyspraxia,it seems quite often,the children have difficulty with spelling-they do not see the pattern in the words,ithink, due to the way their brain processes the information.Just let your son know, hes doing the best he can-im sure you already do. Other people have also reccomended The Dyspraxia Foundation for good information. Hope this,(long), post is of some help.

Thanks for your help. Funnily enough Bigpants his doctor on Friday gave me the telephone number of an opthlamic person, not an optician but somebody who might be able to assess his eyes - it's all in French so I often don't understand the minutiae of what they're telling me.

I think I might get the Scrabble pieces out tonight and see if that helps him learn them, at the moment we're just writing them down as that is my preferred method of learning.

with regards to the teacher, they really don't seem to understand any learning difficulties here in France and had never heard of Dyspraxia until they met DS1. In September I gave his teacher a copy of his diagnosis from the doctor and also an article in French about Dyspraxia, told her he had problems with concentrating etc. His school report came back at Christmas DS1 has trouble with concentration, handwriting etc, just a repeat of everything I'd said to her at the beginning of term - you just feel like you're bashing your head against a wall. Fortunately, he's doing OK, he'll never play football with the other boys and he's pretty crap at catching a ball but he's turned himself into the class clown to combat this and at this age it's working quite well.

Thanks again for the help.