Amylee, Parent of a middle-school student struggling with spelling

My middle daughter was having some problems with literacy skills, so I asked a friend of mine who is a special needs teacher for some advice.

While we didn’t get an official dyslexia diagnosis, my friend confirmed that it wasn’t that my daughter was being lazy but that she was actually struggling with some of the basic processes involved in reading and spelling and would have received extra support if she were in the public schools.

We had some programs to support her reading, but I wanted to find a way to help her with her spelling. As she was getting older, I liked that I could present Touch-type Read and Spell as a typing program, but have it teach her spelling skills at the same time.

I also legitimately wanted to offer my kids typing lessons.

When I told her that we weren’t going to do spelling anymore, just keyboarding, we were both relieved. She felt less stressed and I knew we wouldn’t be butting heads.

The first thing I noticed was a shift from her saying “I have no idea how to spell it,” to being able to give me the first few letters. It wasn’t an overnight change, but gradually, her spelling improved.

Once I turned to this program, I was also able to step back a bit and let her learn more independently. I wasn’t over her shoulder, but I liked that I could still get on the admin program to see how she was doing.

The learner she is, the person she is, having to physically type the words and use her body helped her remember them. I also never had to fight her to do TTRS. She would get on it herself.

My daughter is in school now in the ninth grade and she does so much on the computer. She types all of her papers and it makes me so happy that she’s able to be more efficient as a student thanks to her typing skills.

TTRS is something that builds over time. It only takes a few minutes to do a lesson, but it works. We’re in our third or fourth year now and even my younger daughter who doesn’t have any learning difficulties is benefitting from it!