Spelling issues revisited.

My youngest cannot spell at all. This is his brain glitch and we have been trying to build a bridge around the part of the brain that is the problem.  He's very interesting in that he can read extremely well.  He reads very fast and he has an amazing vocabulary, but has no idea whether to use the word witch or which (which he would probably try to spell as wich.)  We discussed this last night.  We've tried many different types of spelling programs, All About Spelling and Sequential Spelling, as well as Dianne Craft's method of holding the flash cards up and to the left so that he can take a mental picture of the word.  Ms. Craft's method worked the best for him but he finds it so incredibly frustrating.  Because of the intensive writing (and his hatred of all things involving writing)  of Sequential Spelling, he has threatened to hitchhike to Mississippi and live on his brother's couch if I try that one again.  :-(  I told him that no one would let him hitch-hike and he'd probably end up a ward of the state of Alabama, so he's staying home for now while we try and figure out what to do.  We looked last night and saw that he can use the tools on Microsoft word, including the thesaurus and dictionary to help him figure out which word to use when he is writing papers for his writing class and working on his novel (I told you , the boy is interesting!)  and this morning I also ordered him The Logic of Spelling spelling rules flash cards used from Ebay so that he can hopefully internalize some spelling rules and be able to spell most things.  I do know that there are people who get through life without spelling well ... I just want him to be able to be basically able to fill out job applications and various reports on the job without people thinking that he is not smart because that would completely be the wrong impression.  We all have things that we don't do easily that are worth pursuing and learning to do.  I know that I flunked my first typing class, but then decided that I really needed to learn to type and took a second class and did fine in it and now I type for a living.

So anyway, our plan for the second half of his junior year is German, Violin, Writing, Spelling, and Algebra II, plus various electives that he works on himself.  For example, right now, he's reading several books about equations since he is interested in them and he carries around and reads the atlas, various encyclopedias and he currently has nearly 40 books out of the library.

Frederick The Literate