Writing Difficulty-Dysgraphia

Last week we raised the question of whether spelling matters,  as the issue of struggling spellers is often dismissed since there are a variety of spell check tools available.

Struggling spelling (and writing)  is a package deal.  That is, it is a package of reading, spelling and writing issues.  It is much rarer that struggling with any of these occurs in isolation.

This package deal is one of the reasons that the research supported methodologies such as thr Orton Gillingham and the related spin-offs (e.g., Wilson, Barton, etc.) never just teach reading, but always include the components of spelling and the writing of basic sentences.

Keep in mind, by middle second to low third grade, most kids (about 70%) are on the smooth road when it comes to spelling and writing.  Seemingly through osmosis, some way, they have internalized the “code” and the relationship between letters and the sounds that go with them.

They read words accurately and efficiently.  Spelling develops nicely without much consternation.

These kids are unlikely to be spelling  “sed” for “said, “cuk” for “cook” “amr” for “arm.”

Generally, they don’t mind reading, spelling and writing (putting their screen addictions aside for the moment), because the process isn’t hard for them.  The more they do these activities, the better they get.

Effectively, the rich get richer.

The rest of the population are not in the same position.  They are not tuned in to the sounds within words.  The process does not come naturally to them, and they are at a decided disadvantage.

Years of good research and direct clinical experience tell us one primary thing.  Spelling and writing matter a great deal, and the children need to have these sounds taught much more explicitly using multisensory methods with much greater practice following.

It’s typically a long, slow process, even with the research supported methods.

Spelling is tough.  There are words that don’t “play by the rules,” and are difficult to sound out (e.g.,  swear, friend, receive, musician) and there are others that require a certain level of sound/symbol awareness that just don’t come easily (think “pigeon” and “forward”).  (Try sounding out words like “the” and “of.”)

A study conducted of  observed teaching practices, revealed that less than 4% of the language arts instructional block time is devoted to spelling or spelling related activities.

For the 70% mentioned above who are on a smooth trajectory, that may be fine.  Their spelling and writing skills develop intuitively.  Direct, multisensory instruction is less necessary.

For the rest,  this is a formula for disaster.

Takeaway Point

Does spelling matter?  From a fundamental literacy point of view, it matters a lot, even in an autocorrect, AI world.

(Please keep your comments coming!  We’re working out a website glitch that will allow comments to be publicized when they come in.)

Wrenlee is a lively, spontaneous and friendly 10-year-old student entering the fifth grade.  Cognitive testing placed her between the average to above average range for most of the domains assessed.

Wrenlee’s spelling and writing are a different story.  They are causing much anxiety in the household.

Here are some of Wrenlee’s spelling errors and samples of sentences she wrote to a prompt:

• cook/cooke
• reach/reche
• circle/courkel
• ruin/rowen
• watch/wauch
• explain/espan
•  I whish for my best fierd to live with Me.
• I whish to get anothu dog.
• I love to do hoars backrinding camp and playing with firendes.

In this era of increased involvement with artificial intelligence and other technologies, the question I ask relative to spelling and writing samples like Wrenlee’s is, does it matter?

Does it matter that she can’t spell or barely write a sentence?

It is my sense that spelling and writing issues like Wrenlee’s, are not  ringing too many bells of concern at the school level.

Perhaps it’s generational.

To a younger teacher something like spelling and being able to write sentences may be old school, so yesterday, something that can be easily remedied through technology.

Why spend time on something like spelling when autocorrect is right there?  Why bother worrying about completing sentences, when “Grammarly” is your technology assistant, cleaning up your sentence fragments, run-ons and punctuation?

What’s your opinion?  Does it matter?

Last week we raised the question of whether spelling matters (,https://shutdownlearner.com/does-spelling-matter-2/),  as the issue of struggling spellers is often dismissed since there are a variety of spell check tools available.

Almost always, struggling spelling is a package deal.  That is, it is a package of reading, writing and spelling issues.  It is much rarer that struggling with any of these occur in isolation.

This package deal is one of the reasons that the research supported methodologies such as Orton Gillingham and the related spin-offs (e.g., Wilson, etc.) never just teach reading, but always include the components of spelling and the writing of basic sentences

Keep in mind, by middle second to low third grade, most kids (about 70%) are on the smooth road when it come to spelling and writing.  Somehow, some way, they have internalized the “code” and the relationship between letters and the sounds that go with them.

These kids are unlikely to be spelling  “sed” for “said, “cuk” for “cook” “amr” for “arm.”

Generally, they don’t mind reading, spelling and writing (putting their screen addictions aside for the moment), because it isn’t that hard for them.  The more they do these activities, the better they get.

Effectively, the rich get richer.

The rest of the population are not in the same position.  They are not tuned in to the sounds within words.  The process does not come naturally to them and they are at a decided disadvantage.

Years of good research and direct clinical experience tell us one primary thing.  Spelling and writing matter a lot and the children need to have these sounds taught much more explicitly using visual-auditory-kinesthetic and tactile (i.e., multisensory methods)  with much greater practice following.

It’s a long, slow process.

Spelling is tough.  There are words that don’t “play by the rules” (think of a word like “because”) and there are others that require a certain level of sound/symbol awareness that just don’t come easily.

A study conducted of practices in the classroom where teacher practices  were observed, revealed that less than 4% of the language arts instructional block time is devoted to spelling or spelling related activities.

For the 70% mentioned above, that’s fine.  They get these skills  intuitively and by third grade they are spelling just fine, thank you. For the rest,  this is a formula for disaster.

Takeaway Point

Does spelling matter?  It matters a lot.

(Please keep your comments coming!)

Feel free to make comment below. 

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To Contact Dr. Richard Selznick for advice, consultation or other information, email: shutdownlearner1@gmail.com. 

Copyright, Richard Selznick, Ph.D.  2023, www.shutdownlearner.com.

Let’s say your 12-year-old sixth grader spells the following words:

•  (brief)  bref
• (should) shood
• (grown) gron
• (success) susess
•  (educate) edcccate
•  (result) resolt
• (kitchen) kicten  

Then  the child writes the following story to a prompt:

          “Once a o pon a time there was a kid that was a million air and he whated to buy a house   he look at so many house and finally found a house. but it needed a lot of work So the kid hierd lots of pepul to help him but after thay were all done the house went back  to it whent back to the way  it was.”

Or, perhaps you have an 8-year-old third grader who writes:

            “I hrd a son. It was funne. My dad was beyenfunne was he dats Wen he was in the cr  Wan we wr gown to the prck.”

(Translated as best I could  after the child tried to tell it to me –  “I heard a song.  It was funny.  My dad was being funny when he danced.  When he was in the car when we were going to the park.”)

When the parents raised the issue of their concerns about their child’s spelling and writing,  in each case the response was, “Well, spelling really doesn’t matter – they can use spell check. Teaching spelling is tedious and boring to children.  We much prefer that they were creative.”

For those of you following this blog for a while, I am sure that you will predict that I respectfully disagree.

A study conducted  where classroom teacher practices were observed, revealed that less than 5% of the language arts instructional block time is devoted to spelling or direct instruction in writing (compared with open-ended, as in “Write about your holiday.”)

For approximately 60% of the school population, this is not particularly relevant, as their skills develop along a natural trajectory.  Spelling and writing develop through a type of osmosis

For the rest, simply saying,  “They can use spell check” is not a substitute for the challenging work needed.  Indeed, it’s arduous, often not fun, but leaving children in the state they are in, as in the samples above, is hard to justify.

In later blog posts we will offer home-based tips to work on these skills.

Feel free to make comment below. 

To receive future blog posts, register your email: https://shutdownlearner.com.

To Contact Dr. Richard Selznick for advice, consultation or other information, email: shutdownlearner1@gmail.com. 

Copyright, Richard Selznick, Ph.D.  2023, www.shutdownlearner.com.

For a whole host of reasons that won’t be raised at the moment, writing is difficult to adequately assess, even though there are standardized measures that practitioners and education specialists use in the assessment of writing.

I would be willing to go out on a pretty significant limb to say that a vast majority of school struggling children maintain some level of  mild, moderate to severe problems with writing and spelling.

However, when parents raise the issue of writing/spelling with the school they are frequently told variations on the following:

• “Spelling doesn’t matter – they can just use spell check.”

• “Maybe the child has ‘dysgraphia’ and you should go to a neurologist or an O.T. (occupational therapist).”

• “They can get ‘A.T.’ (assistive technology) and dictate into speech-to-text programs.”

• “All that matters is that they express their feelings – that they write what they feel.”

Even though the motor-component of most children’s writing is typically an issue, I don’t think the results would be very different if the writing is  composed on a computer or through dictating software.

From where I sit and the kids I evaluate, the issue with their writing struggling has more to do with the child’s understanding of the concepts of writing and is less a matter of whether the child uses a pen/pencil or some type of assistive technology.

For example, today I gave 8 year old Logan a picture from a standardized test in which he was asked to write a paragraph to a story of the picture.  (Keep in mind, the picture has a lot going on.)

Logan was told the paragraph should have a beginning, middle and an end

Here’s what he wrote in about 20 seconds:

                        “I am gooing to hlep mom oops I dopd the eggs.”

If your child is struggling with writing, I wish I could offer an easy answer to “fix” the problem.

The reality is Logans of the world need a great deal of direct guided instruction starting at the basic, simple sentence level. Once the concept of a simple sentence is mastered and internalized, then somewhat more complex sentences can be taught and practiced.

This instruction would also focus on the concepts involved with punctuation.  There would be talk about why do we use commas, periods and capital letters?  What is their point?

Such an approach is the direct opposite of  the “just write what you feel” approaches.

It’s difficult work and there are no short-cuts.  Direct instruction practiced over time is the only ticket I know.

Copyright, 2021 www.shutdownlearner.com
Questions or topics email Dr. Selznick.  Not in the South Jersey area? For a free 15 Minute Consultation, contact Dr. Selznick: email – rselznick615@gmail.com.

Let’s say your 6^th grade 12-year-old child, of average to above average  intelligence spelled the following words:

• bref (brief)
• susess (success)
• edcccate (educate)
• resolt (result)
• kicten (kitchen

Then he wrote the following story to a picture prompt

“Once a o pon a time there was a kid that was a million air and he whated to buy a house.    He look at so many house and finally found a house. but it needed a lot of work So the kid hierd lots of people to help him but after thay were all done the house went back  to it whent back to the way  it was.

Or let’s say you have a 7 year old in the second grade who writes:

“I hrd a son.  It was funne. My dad was beyen funne was he dats Wen he was in the cr  Wan we wr gown to the prck.”

(Translated as best I can- “I heard a song.  It was funny.  My dad was being funny when he danced.  When he was in the car when we were going to the park.”)

In each case, when the parents raised the issue of their concerns about their child’s spelling  the response  from the school was the following:

“Spelling doesn’t matter.  He can always use spell check.”

For those of you following this blog for a while, I am sure that you will predict that I respectfully disagree.

In the early grades about 70% of the kids who are given typical exposure to words through a variety of reading and spelling activities  progress smoothly These kids read, spell and write pretty well and then they do more of it.    Effectively, the rich getting richer.

The rest of the population are not in the same position.  They are not in tune to the sounds within words and spelling does not come to them naturally.  They are at a decided disadvantage.  They need to have these sounds taught much more explicitly with much greater practice following.

It’s a long, slow process.

Why bother when there’s spell check, as the school told these parents?

I will answer by way of an example.

Josh, is a 19 year old college student with an IQ in the superior range (i.e., above 130).  He’s extremely savvy with technology and all things modern.  There’s one problem. As high as his IQ is, that’s how low his skill and confidence are regarding spelling and writing.

How did Josh fare as a first year college student?  Even though he had a 504 Plan in place that gave him some basic accommodations, he spent 90% of his time in college doing one thing – avoiding.

When Josh came home and met with me to discuss what was going on, he shared some of his writing.  It was painfully obvious at first glance that Josh had severe writing (and spelling) deficits that made him acutely embarrassed.  There was barely a complete sentence and most of the words beyond the most basic were severely misspelled.

Over the years Josh really never received the ongoing, explicit instruction needed.

Spelling is tough  there are words that don’t easily “play by the rules” (think of a word like “because”) and there are others that require a certain level of sound/symbol awareness that just don’t come easily to the Josh types.

A study conducted of practices in the classroom where teacher practices  were observed, revealed that less than 4% of the language arts instructional block time is devoted to spelling or spelling related activities.

For the 70% mentioned above, that’s fine.  They get these skills  intuitively and by third grade they are spelling just fine, thank you.

For the Josh types, this is a formula for disaster.

Takeaway Point

Spell check is a helpful tool.  It is not a substitute for the challenging work needed for the Josh’s among us.

Copyright, 2019 www.shutdownlearner.com
Questions or topics email Dr. Selznick.  Not in the South Jersey area? For a free 15 Minute Consultation, contact Dr. Selznick: email – rselznick615@gmail.com

To purchase a signed copy of  “What To Do About Dyslexia: 25 Essential Concepts” & Dr. Selznick’s other books and to receive blog updates go to https://shutdownlearner.com.