| Abstract | Purpose: Spelling is important for academic and vocational success (Putman, 2017). Spelling skills are particularly difficult for individuals with dyslexia (Dyslexia at a Glance, 2018). Although spelling is difficult for individuals with dyslexia, students are expected to meet state standards can be used as a further marker of academic success in spelling. The purpose of this study was to compare the spelling skills of third-grade students with dyslexia to the grade-level spelling expectations set by the state of Texas.
Method: Six participants were selected from a local, private elementary school, Starpoint Elementary. Five participants had dyslexia or specific learning disability, and one without dyslexia served as the control participant. Each participant in this study completed a spelling test. Their attempts at spelling were compared to the state standards for education in Texas. Each time a student's spelling was deemed to have met the given standard, they earned a point. Those points were averaged to determine whether the student had successfully mastered the standard.
Results: Students with and without dyslexia were found to have strong phonological skills. When presented with second and third-grade standards related to orthography and morphology, students struggled to meet the standards, including the control student.
Discussion: Although students with dyslexia are typically shown to struggle with the phonological aspect of spelling, the students in this study met the 1st through 3rd grade TEKS standards for phonological awareness. This could be attributed to the specialized instruction they are receiving at school. Fifty percent of the participants met second-grade TEKS standards relating to orthography in multisyllabic words. These results demonstrate that there is a need for these students to increase their knowledge of orthographic patterns in words with more than one syllable. Four of the six participants met 2nd grade TEKS for morphology. These results suggest that students with dyslexia learned to accurately apply rules and spelling inflected morphemes, such as past tense -ed and plural -s. However, the 3rd grade TEKS standards for morphology and orthography were the most difficult for the students with only one participant meeting the standard. These results suggest that students need additional instruction in spelling derivational affixes, such as -ion. |
