spelling issues - any advice?

[LisaK in VA]

Some gifted kids will simply have a difficult time with spelling. I was one of them -- although using rules helped some, it did not erase all of my issues.

For words that I had trouble with, I created my own internal, "funny" pronunciation of them... which allowed me to break the word down into parts I spelled correctly. I still rely on this method and some of those funny internal pronunciations today. I know how to pronounce the words correctly, but when having to write them, my brain just breaks them down so I can actually spell them.

My oldest is a very good speller, as is my 6yo son. My oldest thinks my funny pronunciations when I break down spelling words is a hoot. My 7yo dd, it's almost imperative.

We talk about how the word "looks", versus how it's actually pronounced, and learn to spell the words based upon how they "look."

I don't know if there is a spelling program that does this... but it worked very well for me, and is working for the small or large issues with my children.

[Truscifi]

Originally Posted by LisaK in VA

Some gifted kids will simply have a difficult time with spelling. I was one of them -- although using rules helped some, it did not erase all of my issues.

For words that I had trouble with, I created my own internal, "funny" pronunciation of them... which allowed me to break the word down into parts I spelled correctly. I still rely on this method and some of those funny internal pronunciations today. I know how to pronounce the words correctly, but when having to write them, my brain just breaks them down so I can actually spell them.

My oldest is a very good speller, as is my 6yo son. My oldest thinks my funny pronunciations when I break down spelling words is a hoot. My 7yo dd, it's almost imperative.

We talk about how the word "looks", versus how it's actually pronounced, and learn to spell the words based upon how they "look."

I don't know if there is a spelling program that does this... but it worked very well for me, and is working for the small or large issues with my children.

I did this when I was a child as well, and I have recently started using the technique with my ds5. Especially with anything that has an 'alternative spelling'. Recent example: thread. When he was writing it for his spelling quiz he was saying it with a long 'e' to help himself remember.

[Karin]

Originally Posted by galtgrl

Karin - what kind of mnemonics? I can't picture how that would help, so I'm curious.

Thanks everyone!

She finds ways to pronounce the words so that they sound they way they're spelled to her and that works for her. But she has to do it herself and still practice the words so that, for example she remembers that "sin the tick" is "synthetic" with a y, not an i, and no k. I'm sure she remembers the first syllable with a y and know for a fact she remembers the last one with no k, but I wanted to show the pronounciation easily. However, she learned that one not realizing that the kind of tick that bites you is spelled with a k at the end (as opposed to a muscle tic or something.) Prior to that, she tended to spell everything phonetically, and not always the same way. She's very much a gifted VSL, and the trouble with spelling fit right into that (not that all gifted VSL learners have difficulty with spelling, but it's common.)

As a natural speller (who makes plenty of typos and now even makes spelling mistakes I never used to) mnemonics seems very confusing and like a lot of work, even though it is how I learned that separate has 2 a's, because that was just one letter, not making a 3 word phrase. But it not only works for dd, it turns out that dh does this as well.

I do want to emphasize that dd came up with this all by herself. It may work well for dc who are taught how to do this, too, but for quite a while I didn't even know she was doing this, and found out when I commented on how much her spelling had improved.