Spelling Difficulties:
Question and Answer

QUESTION:

My 10 year old son is a strong reader but has trouble with spelling and writing. Here's an example of something he wrote today:

If I was going to write to one famous person it would be George washeington. And in my letter I would say to him in the futrar you are going to be on the one doller and for some reasan bengerman fraklan is on the onehoundred doller bill.

This was very good work for him. The handwriting was rather sloppy and there were a lot of erases though. I know that when I give him a topic to write about he could be creative, but he only writes a couple sentences because he doesn't want to try to write words he doesn't know how to spell. He also gets b&d, m&w, and g&j confused when writing. I've also noticed that he sometimes writes o instead of e. Like the word be would be written bo or the word the written tho.

I have started him on the AVKO Sequential Spelling and feel like it will be a help. We are also trying their typing program but it frustrates him and causes him to end up crying.

I don't know if this is enough information for you, but what would you recommend?

ANSWER:

AVKO Sequential Spelling is a good program. Therefore, if AVKO does not work for your child, it would not mean that it is an ineffective program as such, but rather that one should start looking for underlying problems that causes it to fail.

It is important to note that learning is a stratified process. This means that certain skills have to be mastered first, before it becomes possible to master other skills. Verbal skills are at the very bottom of the learning ladder, followed by non-verbal skills, followed by reading and then spelling. Before one attempts to actively address spelling it would therefore be important to make sure that all the skills foundational to spelling have been adequately mastered. The first step would simply be to insure that the child’s reading is on par. Parents often say that their child is a good reader, when in fact he is not. Therefore, first make sure that your child’s reading is indeed on par.

Ask your child to read aloud a short passage from his school reader. Select a passage that the child has not read before. Watch out for any of the pointers mentioned below. Afterwards, ask your child a few simple questions on the passage, to test if he was able to comprehend what was read.

POINTERS TO READING PROBLEMS:

• Does he reverse letters like b and d when reading, or does he sometimes read words like rat for tar or won for now?

• Does he invert letters, reading n as u, m as w, d as q, p as b, f as t?

• Does he put letters in the wrong order, reading felt as left, act as cat, reserve as reverse, expect as except?

• Does he omit letters, reading words like cat for cart, wet for went, sing for string?

• Does he misread little words, such as a for and, the for a, from for for, then for there, were for with?

• Does he add words that aren’t in the sentence?

• Does he read slowly and hesitantly?

• Does he ever lose his place?

• Does he make good use of punctuation?

• How good is his comprehension?

If your answer is negative to the first eight questions, positive to the ninth question and he could answer all the questions correctly, indicating a good comprehension, you can presume that he does not have a reading problem. If, however, he does have a reading problem, and Audiblox is your choice of intervention, you would follow the standard program in Chapter 20 of the book The Right to Read.

If reading is not a problem, the only other reason why AVKO would fail is because the skills foundational to spelling have not been mastered. There are certain non-verbal skills that are more important for reading and some that are more important for spelling. Sub-skills of particular importance for spelling are (1.) the ability to analyze, i.e. to perceive the whole in its individual parts, (2.) auditory perception of letter sounds and auditory memory (3.) decoding skills, and (4.) visual memory for sequences. Should Audiblox be your choice of intervention, the Audiblox Spelling Program in the supplementary manual is recommended. You can then use AVKO as a follow-up program, once the foundational skills to spelling have been put into place.

Audiblox can be applied one-on-one and in a group setting.
For more information on Audiblox visit Audiblox2000.com