Any hand writing or typed work may include spelling errors. Often typing can relieve some of the visual motor demand of handwriting, but typing is still a visual motor demand. And again, in higher grades, they may sacrifice spelling for other writing demands. Some kids with EF are just not good with patterns. Even when “paying attention,” they may miss important spelling patterns.

Very similar to attention deficit disorder, but the problem is not in basic attention.

People with Executive Function weakness.

When weighing good thoughts against good spelling, I will take the good thoughts. Spelling may need to be sacrificed for getting good thoughts on paper. Weak attention in higher grades means there is only so much “band width” when writing. Weak attention during early grades may cause them to miss spelling patterns as they are taught.

People with Attention Deficit Disorder.

There are so many demands on their plate when writing that spelling is at risk at all times.

People with visual processing weaknesses. For people who have trouble with visual scanning or visual convergence or people who have atypical visual processing such that letters seem to waiver, move, and even disappear (special shout out to people with Irlen Syndrome), spelling remains one challenge among others in the reading and writing domain.

When spelling, the dyslexia person has to look inside their head to see if they can find all the sounds. I tell people that, at least with reading a word, all the letters are in front of you to see. Even with good reading remediation, spelling often remains a weakness. The person has difficulty hearing the individual sounds in words, so struggles to learn to sound out words for reading and spelling. Dyslexia is a weakness in phonological processing. So how do we spot them and what can we do to help? Who has weaknesses in spelling? However there will still be kids (and adults) who are poor spellers. We are still reading and writing to communicate and will likely continue to do so more and more (even if it is by electronic writing and not on paper). I am impressed with how easily even young children can highlight a mis-spelled word, hit a drop down menu, and pick what they need. And yes, auto correct fails are not uncommon and can often be either hilarious or embarrassing. Yes, a poor speller can absolutely challenge the spell checking program. These programs aren’t perfect, but they are pretty good. The computer (or Smartphone or word processor) has spell checking programs and auto correct. Kids are taught to type earlier and earlier (at the expense of good handwriting, but that is another blog entry). Suddenly, there were devices like the Franklin Speller where a poor speller could type in a word and the device would list several correct words that the writer might be trying to spell.īecause now, we are in the next age. Poor spellers were given modified spelling tests and they were not penalized for spelling errors.

So with the recognition of spelling or writing disabilities came accommodations. They just lack a specific ability (and remember, we all have a weakness of our own somewhere). A Newer AgeĮnter a newer age, where we can fully realize that poor spellers are not illiterate, lazy or unintelligent. As with any learning disability, poor spellers were likely punished for their weakness and left feeling stupid. Learning disabilities were unknown or poorly understood. Spelling was up to the writer and poor spelling was a sign that you were sloppy or maybe not very literate. Everyone wrote by hand and some had typewriters. A hundred years ago (or even 50) spelling was important.

Accommodations synonym