You know, "Your kid needs to study!" is a very unhelpful and inappropriate response.

[conuly]

If it's true, we already know it by looking at the results. And if it's not, it's just insulting by implying that we (and the kid) are just damn lazy.

Evangeline took a spelling test today. And she failed miserably. Which is funny because she got all those words right yesterday when I tested her on them! I'm putting under the cut the text of the email I sent Jenn about it.

The teacher left the note "She has to study her words!" but the truth is she *did* study them. She got them exactly right when I tested her on them yesterday afternoon, and she got them almost entirely right when I tested her on them again on the train after seeing the results. But when I tested her I was very careful, the second time I said the word, to enunciate it very carefully, as in "Your first word is thick. Thhhhiiiiiik."

She got all her word study words wrong. It's the specific way she got them wrong that interests me.

Shop became snp (p is written backwards)

Shut = suot

bath = baf (well, that one makes sense)

mash = mace

quick = kice

chick = kike

thin = tine

chin - kine

thick - tice

whiz = wise

If I had to guess, I'd say she isn't hearing all the sounds clearly in normal speech, leading to trouble sounding it out. Then, since she knew they had a pattern, she just followed the same pattern she'd already decided upon for all of them.

She got her trick words right, but those are written out, you just have to pick the right one for a sentence.

Then she was supposed to come up with new words using the sh phonogram. "If I can spell shop (sope, but she put the p backwards) I can spell ship (sipe), shot (sote), shut (sute), rash (rasp, p is backwards), fish (fise).

And she had to write two sentences from dictation. Unsurprisingly, she made far fewer errors in this:

tow brown cat (this is supposed to be cats, and she originally wrote can instead, bolstering my hypothesis about the hearing/brain connection) jump. (backwards j)

I ride to scool in a bus. (she wrote the b in bus like a line followed by a p, but the teacher didn't correct that.)

It probably didn't help that she developed a headache this afternoon (she says "right after the test"), but a headache should not have produced this amount of difference between what she did yesterday and what she did today. A difference in how the words were presented might make that difference, I think.

It also doesn't help that it apparently never occurred to her to go back and check your answers after writing them down. I asked, and she said she didn't re-read that first section after writing any of it.

Ana also had a spelling test today, but I don't know how she did yet. I know that on one of her homework assignments she wrote "friendlly" and nobody corrected it, which wouldn't be such a big deal except that friendly is one of her spelling words. And because nobody corrected her she tried arguing with me when I pointed it out to her, naturally. Her teacher checked it and didn't correct it! But as I pointed out, if friend has no l, and -ly has one l, zero plus one still only equals one.

Comments

[dragonwolf]

When was the last time Evangeline had her hearing checked?

Additionally, what are her "headaches" like? Are they headaches, or actually migraines (like, go hide in a dark room, under the pillows, because the sounds and light make you want to puke)? (I recommend going by her behavior vs what she said, particularly if she's the type that won't tell you she's sick even as she's bent over the toilet.) If it happens to be the latter, the spelling issues could be an aura, the precursor to a migraine. Perhaps you could see if the teacher would let her retake the test (even if it's not actually for a grade), to see if the post-test headache was connected? (I say use the teacher so you have the presentation of the words the same as during the test.)

It is, of course, also possible, that it was just test anxiety, but it might be worth looking into. Migraines suck, especially as a kid.

[conuly]

Last spring, during a routine checkup and also, I think, as part of her evaluation for speech therapy.

She doesn't seem very unwilling to tell us if she feels sick, and as a comment on LJ says, she had a sore throat and a fever the day before (along with a headache), so I'm pretty sure she was actually just sick.