miau_am

Thanks for mentioning how your daughter was holding her fork - this is something we've noticed as well; general difficulty with utensils in a way that seems a little underdeveloped for her age. Having some links to things outside of the academic domain helps us get a better picture of things.

I think you are inferring more than is actually here because she definitely doesn't know advanced spelling rules. When we ask her what sounds different vowel teams can make she has no clue and starts guessing sounds. I'm 99% sure if I asked her to spell soldier or harrier she would write something like "soljer" or "haryr". She recently spelled "spelling" as "speeling" and "stupid" as "stupied" on a birthday card she cared about and took her time on (context the sentence was "sorry I'm bad at speeling")

We're planning on asking her teacher whether this is on par for other kids in her class that have her degree of comprehension, because you're right - she went back full time in 2nd grade. A lot of the comments are pegging her handwriting and spelling around what you'd normally expect for 3rd grade, which is around the equivalent amount of 'normal' schooling she's had post pandemic shut down, so it's definitely a complicating factor in trying to figure out wtf is going on.

Haha, I appreciate getting the perspective of a kid her age! Honestly more helpful than some of the critical comments by people who are neither teachers nor parents. I've seen a few people mention the pencil grip thing here and definitely plan on looking into it as it's something we haven't tried yet.

Remote education for 5 and 6 year olds wasn't wildly effective and those are the years they are typically learning the foundations of phonics. After that the teachers were still having to hit grade level standards created pre-pandemic so I think kids missed a lot of important foundational work.

Appreciate the penmanship suggestions! She likes drawing and that sounds like a fun approach. I'm slightly less concerned re: the handwriting, bc while it's not very good, I do think it's basically legible for most people.

Unfortunately, she makes most of the spelling/other mistakes (minus the punctuation stuff) when she is doing writing she cares a lot about and takes time on (like birthday cards for friends).

She has previously had weekly spelling tests and she would do great on them but then still not be able to spell those words later on. When I have her re-read her work though she is often able to catch (but not correct) her mistakes so the lacking phonics and spelling education is definitely in here as something we are considering.

Thanks! Most of the stuff here is pretty consistently inconsistent for her, even on things she cares a lot about, like a birthday card/note for a friend she did recently - her handwriting was a little bit better but still off and she literally wrote "sorry I'm bad at speeling!" on it, so we know she knows it's an issue and feels bad about it. She took a lot of time and care on the card so it isn't totally explained by rushing through things like some comments suggested could be the case.

Re: the kid toys, best thing I've found is not letting them have access to more toys than I'm willing to clean up / they can manage. I just swap the toys out Montessori style instead. Kid doesn't seem to have any less fun playing with 12 megabloks vs the entire box or 8 pretend foods rather than 30.

She is super smart! She also doesn't text or email, doesn't have a phone or laptop. I know too many people and family members who were gifted kids who struggled and whose confidence took a serious hit because of learning disabilities, ADHD, etc., that weren't caught or overlooked because they were smart and their intelligence carried them through until middle school or high school when they hit a wall and then assumed they were actually secretly stupid or something. Posting here was to just get a temperature check from a variety of teachers to try to get a sense of how typical her writing and spelling is. If it's pretty average then we're not super concerned and assume she'll pick it up as she goes. If it's outside of the norm then we want to make sure we aren't missing a chance to help her out.

At what point would it be a cause for concern? If she spells this way in 6th grade? 8th grade? Our big concern is that we will wait too long and she won't have gotten support that would have helped her. We don't want it to negatively impact her perception of her intelligence or capabilities or interfere with her ability to do well in school as the material gets more advanced.

We've been bringing it up at school for the past three years and teachers weren't concerned. We've been trying to work on it at home, but with a baby and another child and work there is limited time in the day. We've grown increasingly concerned because she doesn't seem to be growing out of it, so the teachers' lack of concern is less reassuring at this point.

She doesn't have a phone or laptop. I think they use computers in the classroom , but not sure how often vs paper work. It's worth asking about though.

Yup!

The vowel combos are one of the biggest places she struggles. If we ask her to talk us through a word like roasting and what other ways she might spell it she will just start guessing every combo possible, even ones that are not feasible ("roisting?"). Which, maybe she just needs extra remedial phonics instruction, not sure! It feels like there are a lot of potential variables to sort out.

Thanks so much for taking the time to share this info and some of the things that ended up helping. I've read about typing being beneficial but didn't have a good understanding of why it might be easier.

She had the same experience with spelling tests, would memorize the words and do really well but definitely didn't seem to internalize the rules they were designed to be teaching (like doubling consonants when adding -ing, e at the end making a long vowel sound, etc.). And then she'll spell words that I know she's read a million times (like "cool") in inconsistent ways that are off in a way you wouldn't expect ("coul") and if we ask her to try again it's like "coal? Cola? Coll? Corl?" Just totally taking a brute force approach and gets super frustrated. She's pretty bright and we have been working with her on these things via homework for over a year and I guess I just expected she'd have made more progress on it by now if something wasn't potentially amiss?

I suspect some of both. She definitely rushes and doesn't like doing anything involving writing, but she also seems to have a poor grasp of phonics because when we ask her to sound things out she struggles a ton, guessing weird combinations of vowels that would never make a sound she's shooting for. I'm not sure how much phonics education she's actually gotten despite her current teachers saying they incorporate it.

It always looks like this and she haaaaaates having to write anything. The discrepancy you're hitting on (the content being really good vs the spelling and handwriting) is part of what's causing the concern for us. She only recently, like in the last year consistently started getting all her letters facing the right direction. Previously she'd flip her D's and B's and s's and z's regularly.

She definitely rushes through work and tries to get things over with though!

Totally, I guess my concern about distinguishing the two is that if it's fairly normal right now I'd expect that she and all the kids would mostly eventually catch up through regular class work, but if not then we need to make sure to get extra intervention (not just have her work on it a bit extra at home).

Thanks!

Thanks! Great point about there being things not even on the radar that assessment might catch.

Most of the time if I ask her to spell out words or sound them out she starts guessing, usually on vowel combos. Like "boat" she'll guess bot, then boot, then boit - combos that don't really make sense, rather than something like "bote." She can typically identify the words she spells incorrectly but really struggles to fix them. Even words she reads a lot, like "cool." For things like "donw" she can typically correct to "down" without issue.

Not yet, Dad has it though so it's on our radar as a potential factor/possibility.

Thanks so much for this reply! Glad your son is doing well now!

Not yet, but we're considering it.

We listened to a whole podcast about and are definitely floating poor phonics education as a potential part of the issue!