i need some advice with spelling and special education.

i'm in a maternity leave interim job, just started and need help.

i have a student who has memory issues, and an iep objective to learn 10 words a week.
the teacher told me that she makes the lists up based on the words she knows they need help with...but i don't know them that well.

so i tried a phonetic approach and had all ten words in the same word family.

mom wrote to tell me that doesn't work.

then this week i tried what i have done in the past, use high frequency words, and then have the students keep the words they do not get into the next week.

mom wrote that the student was very upset that she had to redo the test on monday and that she has memory issues and my list was still inappropriate.

i don't know what other approach to take other than spend all my time focusing on spelling instruction!!!

any thoughts and ideas would be highly appreciated.

thanks.

Sample the student's writing and pick the frequently used words that are misspelled. You can also pick some vocabulary words that tie into the other content areas. Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I plan on meeting the mom next week for a rescheduled parent teacher conference and she will elaborate more on her concerns which will help gain some perspective.

next week i'll keep a running list of mispelled words from writing samples which we do every day. i fear that the results will just be similar to the high frequency words though.

i was thinking of maybe giving her half words that she can spell so that her score is more successful to keep her self esteem higher...my previous job, i had given my students 3-5 words a week. so the ten just may be too many words for her memory.

also think of foregoing the "keep the words until they are mastered" idea. these seem to be mom's present concerns that her daughter was too upset to redo the words.

either that or hold on to them and redo them a few weeks later without making a big deal that they were the words that she got wrong.

content area vocab is harder b/c i only do lang. arts & math. i've been giving her vocab words for her chapter book but more for comprehension, thus the words are very high and would be too hard for her to spell.

i just want to make the spelling time meaningful and successful

Students with reading difficulties often have problems spelling as well, even as their reading abilities improve.

I've used Reading Rockets, which offers great advice to teachers and parents of students struggling with reading, spelling and vocabulary. They have several excellent articles with strategies to use here:

http://readingrockets.org/article/c43/

There are some more excellent tips from this site in Tasmania:

http://wwwfp.education.tas.gov.au/engli ... lstrat.htm

Also, if your student has access to the Internet in the classroom or at home, there's a great site where kids can practice spelling, SpellingCity, with lots of word games that help to hold kids' interest:

http://www.spellingcity.com/

I will recommend a software called Discrete Trial Trainer that we have used succesfully with our son. It takes the child through language, math... from no ability at all up til about 4th grade. It is playful, fun and motivating and runs fabolous statistics that can be analysed to make sure that the learning is activated.

I can highly recommend this software for this specific use, though other softwares are more reading oriented. Try to look in the ABA vs TEACCH threads - there is an abundance of tools mentioned there, but the Discrete Trial Trainer is a super place to start.