Spelling

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I have a daughter with ADD that is really struggling with spelling. She is in 4th grade and can circle a word out of 4 that is spelled correctly, but she can't spell it on her own beforehand. We have tried many different spelling strategies and curricula to no avail. It is the ea, ee, ei, ou, oo, etc. sounds that she struggles with the most. Some words don't look anything like they should when she spells them. She knows all of the middle sounds, but can't necessarily pick them out when spelling. Any help is appreciated.

I was and still am this way. I can tell you when I see a word misspelled but cannot for anything tell you how to spell it correctly. Although my spelling has improved a great deal since I was a child it is still not that great. I have two suggestions.

1. Have her read as much as possible, the more she becomes familiar with words the more she will remember how to spell them.

2. If she knows how to type, have her use a program that has a spell check. I have one that highlights each misspelled word and gives suggestions on how to spell it correctly. This has helped my spelling a lot.

I would definitely not stress over it as this could make it worse. She'll get the hang of it eventually.

You might want to try Sequential Spelling. http://www.spelling.org/Spell/Seq_Spelling.htm. Here it can be explained to you better than I can.

Some tricks to help your daughter train her brain to remember spelling words are:

1. Elephant writing: have your daughter hold one arm alongside her head, she bends her whole body as she writes with her finger. This uses gross motor skills. [Smart Moves]
2. Write words on a large chalkboard, on the driveway with sidewalk chalk, in a cookie sheet filled with cornmeal, and any other multi-sensory method you can think of. She can make the words out of sticks, playdo, write in shaving cream, etc.
3. Word families: this is controversial, but I believe learning word families helps. Some kids need to group words and ideas together to remember them. Phonics pathways is written according to word families.

Good Tips: http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/teaching_techniques/spelling_studying.html

All these are excellent tips and many I have tried, but I have one more concern. How do you build their confidence and self esteem? My daughter is 9 and she tries to be a perfectionist which makes it harder. She watches how easy it comes to her older siblings and thinks that she is such a baby or being treated like a baby when she has to write it in cornmeal or do elephant writing or any of those special methods that should help her. I say should because we have tried so many different ways. To me, I think they would be fun, but to her it is like treating her like a baby and she just cries over it.

_________, I am assuming when you say: Do not have her work on other words that sound the same but are spelled differently that you mean blue and blew and not like beach and bee (same middle sound). She does great with word families which we worked on all last year. It is being presented with a couple of words that have same/different middle sounds like blue and new or soon and going.

I totally agree that the more she reads it is helping her to be able to identify the correct spellings better when given a choice. On the homeschool spectrum for a fourth grader, she won't write a sentence that has one word in it that she doesn't know how to spell (it is the perfectionist in her). Therefore, her sentences look like this: The cat was on the bed.

I think the easily upset,crying about everything is a normal add/adhd symptom. Our 8 yo dd does it too. It really is one of the harder things for my husband to deal with.

She can cry because of something she thinks is going to happen or because the boys have made a face at her stuffed animals etc. It goes on and on. I have heard her say some of the same things about "being a baby because" but she likes to do most things no one else is doing. She usually feels special but then there are those moments!

Is your daughter the youngest? Ours is and I am convinced that birth order has something to do with how kids percieve themselves in the family.

My son has had the perfectionism problem before. I guess I would rather take the perfectionism before dealing with indifference.

Maybe you could work with your daughter privately on spelling (in another room) while your other children are doing independent work. Then she wouldn't be so self-conscious and her frustration level will go down.

It may seem simplistic, but a little encouragement goes a long way in breaking the shackles of perfectionism. Maybe you can remind your daughter that her siblings are older and that one day she will be able to do the things that they can do. If any of her siblings had a little trouble with spelling (or any other subject) at her age, maybe they could share their experiences with her. I told my son that everyone learns in different ways and that each one of us has strengths and weaknesses in different areas. For example, my son went to "gym day" for homeschoolers at a local Christian school the other day. He was discouraged because he's not all that great at basketball. I said, "You may not be good at basketball, but maybe those children aren't getting ready for their blue belt tests in Tae Kwon Do like you are." My point is, anything you can do to encourage your daughter's strengths will help her to see that she doesn't have to be just like her siblings to feel good about herself.

One more thing--I bought my son a book a the beginning of the school year called Little Book Devotions 31 Daily Devotionals Self-Esteem compiled and edited by Mary Susan Freeman. Each devotion is so short and sweet (quite unlike this email!) that your daughter could read it in less than five minutes each day, but it is meant for the parent and child to do together. There's a daily devotion with scripture, kid tip, parent tip, and prayer time. It cost me $2.99 at my local Christian book store.

neat interactive website for kids: http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Games/mag/spelling.html

Our son with ADD never used to be able to spell at all...it is still not his strong suit, but his spelling finally started improving when he finally began to enjoy reading. When he was younger, I gave up on teaching him spelling; instead I taught him dictionary skills so he could look up proper spellings. He hated it as much as spelling, and he didn't excel at it either as he more often than not wasn't able to copy the word down correctly from the dictionary to his page; but I thought (and still do) it was essential for a nonspeller to have that knowledge. I am guessing ______ has some sort of learning disability in this area...he not only can not consistently spell well at all, but he can't recognize when his words are misspelled. Once he took off reading, many of the common words he was constantly misspelling became easier for him, but we gave him a good dictionary for the others lol.

____-who really believes some people are natural spellers, some train themselves to be so by being avid readers, and the rest get by...regardless of what spelling programs they've been through.

Thanks again for all the encouragement and help in this matter with my daughter. I actually see a little hope for the future. Any more thoughts or comments are appreciated. Some days it seems like we just aren't getting any information to stay with her over a period of time. She copies well and doesn't mind writing, but a friend mentioned to me about giving her a list of words (most commonly mispelled, etc) so that she can rely on it to help her. I wanted to share that with you all in anyone else has a struggler with this.

Someone may have already said this, but...
Try spelling orally, too. Clapping out syllables, spelling while jumping rope, etc. She may be very auditory and that may be her key. It may be worth a try!

I would like to recommend what I have used with my daughters and my neighbor's daughter that I tutor, and I have watched it work for years. It is a way to learn spelling through all learning modalities. It is also a "Train the Brain" method.

This is the steps to do it:

1. Give the list of words: 10 to 15. Let her read through the words.
2. I take two pieces of computer paper and fold them into eight boxes (you can also use 3 x 5 cards).
3. Using a fine line marker, color write the words on to the cards. For example:

   IMPORTANT: IM is written in RED, PORT is written in BLUE, and ANT is written in orange, or any colors you choose.
   
   A smaller word like BAKE: B is one color, the vowels are a different color and the K is third color.

Now you use these like flash cards:

• You hold up the card you say read the word. Wait. Read to the blue. Stop. Read to the red. Stop. Read to the green. Stop.
• Then read the word.
• Now spell the word while looking at it.
• Now take a picture of the word.
• Now close your eyes, turn your head and spell the word (learners will turn head toward their brain storage area naturally so there is not a right way).
• Now spell the word backward.
• Now tell me the color pattern.

I do this on Monday with my girls. On Tuesday, I have them color write (does not have to be same as cards) your words on lined paper. Wednesday, we play Jumping Jeopardy.

Jumping Jeopardy directions: I give the definition or I give the word spelled right and misspelled and they jump up and down to give the correct spelling.

Thursday, we orally use the words in sentences and spell the word out loud (forward and backward and forward again). Friday I give a written test of the words and 2 dictation sentences.

My 9 year old ADD loves to take her test with a FX window marker on the patio door. My 7 year old like pencil and paper. The 11 year old I tutor likes to color write on paper for her test. So long as they keep making 90% or higher on tests I do not care where they take it or how they take it. I also assign homework using the list below they can pick any two of these to do during the week. I am not an everyday homework person.

http://www.mikki.net/spellinghomework.htm">

http://www.rhymezone.com/

This is a site I swear buy and have watched reading teachers use it in classrooms. I used it will my daughters the first 9 weeks are free so give it a try. Also, just look around the site you can learn a lot from it. I do I forgot to add above the word of the day I take 2 of them from spelling list.

http://www.tampareads.com/

I have one more question. Do you think it would benefit to color code your middle sounds in the same color each time if the child struggles with these the most? She does fine with beginning and ending (ing, etc) sounds.

For example: ee is always red, ea is always blue, etc. I know there are many middle parts and we would need a lot of different colors, but what do you think? Another thought, the beginning and end could always be the same color. For example r (in black) ea (in blue) and ch (in black); or would this mess up the whole purpose?

I always do these in black and use a different color for the middle sounds. I think your ideas area great and would help your dc.

Yes, Lisa, that is a good way to do it. Tampa Reads does it black and red. Black and blue works great so long as you can see the patterns in the words that is the important part. I let my girls pick the colors they want because they each have a 10 pack Crayola Thin Markers and this is what they do for their spelling on Monday. My oldest likes hers Pink, Purple and Green for the most part. My youngest will go wild with different colors but if she gets the pattern and can spell the word I do not care and it does not matter LOL. We talk about how to break them up and they write them in the boxes on their papers then we cut them up.

I want to share I learned it at a seminar or a class can not remember but it does work to color write the words. The spelling the words forward and backwards is in a book I have for working with handicapped kids and this is the way the spelling bee champions are taught. I used this in the classroom a lot. My girls love it and do not find it babyish as some spelling ideas can be.

Anyway, if anyone know [in detail preferably] what the left and right sides of the brain do, it can help me to find other possible problematic areas and possible ways in which I can help him bypass the left side by using the right side more completely...

I can give you a simple answer but I highly recommend that you get the book Right Brained Children in a Left Brained World by Jefferey Freed M.A.T. ans Laurie Parsons. It opened new doors for me and I think it will answer a lot of your questions regarding Spud.

Another great book but not as easy a read is Upside Down Brilliance..The Visual-Spatial Learner by Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D.

The left brain: This allows a person to be very organized, highly logical and analytical, and usually very reliable. They have some ability to think in pictures but prefer to function in an auditory world.

The right brain: Allows a person to have a strong visual memory. It also tends to diminish the ability to perform logical, linquistic tasks. The right-brained child may experience a delay in processing as he struggles to turn words into a mental picture. (auditory lag). They are hollistic, whole-to-part learners. They pick up skills faster if they are demonstrated than by having steps explained. They tend to master larger concepts first, then prefer to go back and fill in the informational gaps.

The information I have given you here comes directly from the first book I recommened.

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