My third grader can’t spell. His reading fluency is high, but I’m concerned that he didn’t really learn phonics (iPad kindergarten) and he’s just able to compensate. I’ve tried to work with the school but he’s doing too well in school for them to care about it.
Anyone have suggestions of private support? I’m really not ultimately concerned with how well he spells, but it does need to improve from where we are currently. I am mostly concerned with making sure he has the fundamentals. Would this be a reading tutor? Anyone have recommendations in Arlington? |
If you want to DIY, then there are various Phonics workbooks and one could use those with DC for maybe 10-15 minutes each day (ideally, 7 days a week) until DC is really solid with Phonics understanding. The better Phonics workbooks will have nonsense words which follow Phonics rules for them to pronounce (which helps if DC has memorized some common words).
There also are some Spelling workbooks one could buy. When I was a kid, the public schools used those in 3rd and 4th grade to improve spelling and also to build vocabulary. I would fix Phonics first, then move to the spelling, because Phonics is the foundation. |
He doesn't need phonics. That's for early reading. He is past that point. He might need some spelling instruction, but more likely you are not familiar with 3rd grade spelling ability. I would leave it to the teachers. If you really want a tutor, you want a writing/spelling tutor, not a phonics tutor. I'm not sure you can find someone willing to work with a child who is basically fine, though. Tutors typically focus on helping kids who are behind, and often don't know what to do with a kid who is developmentally appropriate, which he likely is. |
It depends on the school and child. Many kids taught using the (now widely discredited) Lucy Calkins "Readers Workshop" curriculum and related Balanced Literacy / Whole Language approaches discover around 4th grade that they really are NOT good readers -- because they did not get enough Phonics earlier on. Also, knowing the standard Phonics combinations helps with spelling because DC will know all of the building-blocks underneath the spelling of many words. |
No that is not true. Missing in on learning phonics is a big deal. The OP is right to get her kid help. |
I am confused by statement that child’s reading fluency is high. What does that mean? Usually, kids with phonics deficits struggle with fluency because they cannot pronounce the words as written… that is the phonemic sound of the letters. It sounds to me like you are at the beginning of this journey and may be confusing terms? |
Ok, Lucy Caulkins. |
Spelling is often the canary in the coal mine for late diagnoses of dyslexia. Kids compensate for a long time but eventually catches up with them. This might be what you are seeing.
You should ask school to assess him for learning disability. Or seek private assessment. Or find a tutor who can work him. |
Absolutely do not take this advice! Teachers in APS are not concerned about spelling and will not correct it or teach it. This is just how APS operates. It's not going to get fixed next year or in middle school or in high school. OP is right to address this now and to have their kid learn to spell correctly now. Professional tutors will certainly work with him. They're in a business and they're happy to have clients. They aren't all purely altruistic individuals looking to help only those in greatest need of help. They'll be happy to help with spelling, if that's the type of tutoring they are capable of providing. |
My daughter struggled with reading and spelling. Phonics instruction via her FCPS kindergarten teacher was, uh, shall we say lacking. Then covid hit and the next 1 1/2 years of online school were a disaster for us.
Anyway, during Covid, I got my daughter a tutor. She's a reading specialist in Alexandria city schools and she's great. She taught my daughter phonics and when she was finally reading on grade level we switched to spelling and writing. We're still at it and now they work on other things my daughter fell behind on. Found her via the Wyzant app. So, TL;DR, you need a tutor who has taught early elementary reading/writing. |
Didn't have time to read all responses.
If you are okay with virtual, try Brainspring. It's hard to find an in-person Orton-Gillingham tutor around here. Please take this seriously and get a tutor. Listen to your gut. Does he skip little words, miss endings, write any letters backwards? Poor spelling is a sign as dyslexia as stated by a poster above. See this video: https://vimeo.com/203740803 |
I agree with this and 15:43. I'm the mom of a college kid who has dyslexia. Thankfully, I figured out something was "off" when he was in 2nd grade. I had him tested and he had 5-6 years of year-round of in-person tutoring with an Orton Gillingham tutor. My kid was a well-above average reader because he could memorize the words he came across in K, 1, and early 2. But he couldn't sound anything out. He couldn't spell worth a darn. We found a tutor through Susan Barton's program. (The website is very 1990s, but you'll get a list of tutors for your area.) https://www.dys-add.com/ Worth every penny. It's a marathon, not a sprint. |
100% agree. If you suspect any deficit, DO NOT RELY/DEFER TO/ACCEPT what APS teachers report to you. Immediately seek outside help and, if you can afford it, a professionals opinion. Teachers kept giving my kid straight As. Testing was mixed but we kept hearing child was fine. Nope. Turns out by upper ES child’s dyslexia meant they bombed all tests. The testing is what spurred us to act — not APS. Dyslexia diagnoses and immediately into 4hrs/week of in person OT tutoring. Amazingly life changing. Turns out if your kid doesn’t present with any other comorbidities, it’s very very likely teacher will think they are a good listener, good student, following along. All the while child couldn’t read. Makes me so mad in hindsight. |
Another APS mom chiming in here to say we had the same experience with a missed dyslexia diagnosis. Our kid had fallen to the bottom spelling group by 3rd grade, despite testing as reading above grade level on her PALS. Turns out, she was memorizing everything as a whole word. By 4th grade she had developed a fear of public speaking/reading out loud. Her APS teacher and the ES counselor said it was anxiety and recommended we put her in therapy. Then she moved onto middle school and the foreign language teacher flagged that she couldn't sound out basic foreign language words, even when she asked her 1:1 outside of class. We had her privately tested, and sure enough, she has dyslexia. Afterwards, I went back and asked APS to give me the detailed breakdown of the DIBELS reports and saw that kid was scoring in the 99%th percentile on the MAZE/written reading comp part, but was in the 20s/30s in percentile in the oral reading. At the time (3 years ago), APS only provided the DIBELS average, which was at grade level. Some kids can navigate their dyslexia from a written/silent reading comp perspective with strong memories and just remembering whole words (the decoding part). But they can't encode, meaning spell and read out loud. APS is crappy at picking those kids up. I wish we had known earlier, because it has been a lot harder to address with a busy middle school schedule. |
My child is similar as to remembering whole words, but I'm pretty sure they weren't really decoding but using context for reading. They were looking at the shape, so then spelling becomes a disaster because it's based on the shape (where the short and tall letters go--they can draw a fantastic graffiti-looking outline of a word's shape) plus what they remember about which letters were in the word. For the middle letters it seemed almost random what order they put them in there. No phonics rules were being followed really. Not all sounds were even being represented, whether with the correct grapheme or not because they weren't operating on the sounds (phonemes). This also results in spelling the same word 3 different ways on the same page, which is a huge red flag (I think they address this in the video I posted above but I haven't watched it in a while). I mentioned in another thread this week that basing spelling off shape is a red flag. Here's one of my favorite blogs on how things should work: https://www.parkerphonics.com/post/the-essential-linnea-ehri Lack of spelling ability betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the structure of the English language, which is a huge hindrance going forward. |