My almost 8yo cannot spell - Page 2

[oceanbaby]

Lillian - I wanted to make a comment about the pronunciation idea. I don't think it's reflective of how I pronounce words, but he did have a speech delay when he was younger (as does my other son), and I noticed that he spelled words the way HE pronounced it, which was often wrong. I haven't noticed that he doesn't say "pants" correctly, for instance, but then I wasn't listening for it either. Definitely something I will keep an ear out for.

[lorrielink]

i see that a lot too. i dont think that reading and accurate spelling use the same part of the brain or something.
i can read many many words i cannot spell easily (if at all)

my son just turned 10 and at 8 he wasn't able to spell many words more than 4 digits very well. i think i worried about it then and broke out some games and worksheets, some of wichi we liked for a while but never for very long. we used a varity of programs and games for a little bit over the last few years, but it was never anything he (or i) felt like doing very regularly so i dropped all formalness about it a year ago.
he would get excited about spelling things for a while and then suddenly it would be a chore. i think it took me a long while before i realized its not something you have to do regularly.
i dont think we will do formal (even cool ones) lessons untill next year or two, when he shows and interest or frustration with his current ablities. at first glance that seqential spelling looks pretty awesome.

now he asks much more often how to spell things. he just cares more about it then he did at 8 and i think thats key. but there are a few things that im sure helped over the years.

*Childs First Dictionary- many pictures and i would name something and he would look it up.we would sit casually and i would make sure to name things he liked or were weird to make it personal and fun.

*not doing spelling as a lesson regularly- i think the brain needs time to process and too much "teaching" can interfere with him figuring things out on his own, which last much longer.

*a handheld electronic dictionary (he would play with it everyday, it had games and definitions too) this is the major one i think

*shared one on one reading time

not just reading to him - some books i read to him, some he reads to me and some he reads himself, but for pronunciation and understanding what punctuation means we took a good long chapter book and we would trade off reading 2 pages each to each other. over the years its really compfortable for me to "correct" him in mispronunciation, meanings of new words, how to read a sentance with a question mark at the end, why this C was hard and this C was soft. that sort of thing was invaluable. i think weve come much furthur with that than a formal lesson would have done. especially for the early years. i am a much better speller now, er, i mean he is.

[Drewsmom]

I haven't read through all of the posts but this is an issue with my son who just turned 8. I just pulled him out of school for many reasons but one huge one was that they never really taught him to read. He has a lot of sight words but no idea how to put words together or to sound them out. These two elements are crucial in knowing how to construct words for spelling.

I just learned more about the Spell To Read and Write Program and we started to review and learn the phonics. He knew the easy ones of course like /v/, /m/, /n/ that never vary but simple things like /ph/ or /ng/ and definitely (the one we worked on this week) /dge/ he had no idea that they made those sounds or was pretty unsure. I think that it's a really comprehensive program in helping them to learn the rules and once they know them then they can spell and read very well. Incidentally my oldest hates to sit and learn so we learned them briefly while sitting then jumping on the trampoline reviewing them, doing flips when he got them right. He successfully learned 7 new phonemes today. Hurray!

Oh, it also helped while we were talking about the animal classes (we sorted cut pictures into tupperware with the class names) that I could point out things like "ar*th*ropods" or "am*ph*ibians" to show the boys the phonogram in context. We'll do that in stories as well.

[jeliphish]

http://school.familyeducation.com/le...ics/42788.html

Dyslexia is genetic in origin. I would have him evaluated just to make sure.

[gardenmommy]

We use Spelling Power, but it isn't recommended for children under age 8. It is researched based, written by a mom who struggled to help her daughter learn to spell. It only takes about 15 minutes a day.

[Peppermint]

One thing we like to do is that my 8 year old has her own e-mail address and she likes to e-mail daily to a couple of friends and a couple of family members, I have her type in my browser (Firefox) which is set up to underline misspellings, obviously, it won't catch it if you type something that is another word, like when she kept writing to my sister "Hope to here from you soon!", but- it does help a fair amount, and she can just right click to get the options for correct spelling. She and I like that it is sort of "immediate" correction that is basically painless for everyone.

[Malva]

As far as I know, most second graders (which is what an almost 8yo is) in schools can't spell either. I wouldn't worry about it until quite a bit later, at least a couple years from when they become good fluent readers (chapter books on their own).

[LauraLoo]

I'm about ready to get this:

http://www.avko.org/331.html

To go with this:

http://www.avko.org/332.html

Both of these are from the same folks who do Sequential Spelling but it's presented as:
A Research-Based Method Designed
Specifically to Teach Reading and Spelling
Skills through the Backdoor of
Penmanship Exercises


Here's how it ties into a program:
http://www.avko.org/Samples/332HS.pdf

I think that my VSL will enjoy this -- and he needs some work on handwriting as well. He also enjoys hearing the patterns of rhyming, so I think this might do the trick with him. I also believe that as he makes the connection through the kinesthetic movement of writing, the spelling will be more committed to memory.