A Mommy Story

I mentioned recently that Mira was evaluated for gifted identification. She’s a bright kid, and her abilities in class – when she’s focused – made her teacher think it was worth the time to check.

We received the results this weekend. In the letter, it explained the testing methods used and provided her scores. Based on her scores, she’s not identified as gifted in math, which I thought would be her strongest skill. However, she did score high in reading, and has been identified as gifted in reading. Surprise, surprise! The girl who refused to read for SO long, saying that she wasn’t good in reading and Cordy was the “reader” among them is actually a very good reader.

She was also given a cognitive abilities test, and while she didn’t score high enough to meet the cutoff for “superior cognitive,” she was only a few points away. It’s possible she’ll be re-tested in a couple of years.

Overall, I’m proud of Mira, even if I am somewhat pleasantly surprised by the results of her evaluation.

Here’s what confuses me, though: how can a child who reads so well have so much trouble with spelling?

She reads out loud to me, and while she stumbles on some of the harder words, she still makes a good attempt at reading them the way it looks like they should sound. But have her read a word several times, then ask her to spell that word without looking at it? She can’t.

I know she’s reading at too fast of a speed to still be sounding out each word. She automatically recognizes the order of the letters and knows the word. So why is she unable to rely on that recognition for spelling?

This was her most recent spelling test. While this one was particularly bad, because she told us she liked to study on the bus and not with us (and wasn’t studying), even the spelling tests she studies for have several missed words.

Ouch.

She has fantastic ideas she wants to get down on paper, but is often held back by writing unintelligible sentences. Can you decode this one?

This was from the start of 1st grade. “I will take care of my bunny, like feed it.”

Or this one?

From Friday – the team name is “Zeus’ Thunder”

It’s like some kind of spelling-only dyslexia. Or possibly a remnant left over from when she had speech apraxia as a toddler and preschooler. Her speech is still a little hard to understand at times, so maybe when she sounds out a word, she’s writing it using the sounds she still substitutes for the correct sounds?

I was never the world’s best speller, either, but I don’t remember struggling this much. I’m not sure how to help her, other than drilling her spelling words over and over again, which she finds utterly boring. (And I understand – it is boring!) Mira seems frustrated with it, but she also prefers to act like it’s no big deal and hide her frustration. I’m planning to ask her teacher for advice on how to better handle spelling when we meet for parent-teacher conferences later this week.

Does anyone else have experience with a good reader who has a difficult time with spelling? Is it just something that will eventually “click” for her, or will it at least get better?