Dyslexic kids always have trouble with those small, irregular “stupidly” spelt words like “who”, “once” and “what”. Regardless of how often you teach these words they can be misspelt for decades.

This is why

• The words are stupid and not spelt as they should be so kids cannot sound them out.
• Most schools use a system of teaching that accidentally teaches them the incorrect spelling of these words.
• This is what happens …
• Kid writes short story and has not time to ask how each word is spelt
• Kid hands writing with incorrect spelling in to teacher
• Teacher marks text and corrects spelling in pen
• Kid gets writing back a few days later - when he is doing something      else - covered in red ink and can’t bear to look at it.
• Next time kid still spells words incorrectly
• This happens over and over again so that the incorrect spelling not the correct one is reinforced. The kid eventually learns that “wot”, “hoo” and “wuns” are how these words are always spelt, even though s/he knows the spelling is incorrect.

Instead if you build up your kids own personal dictionary …

 … with these words the first time s/he asks, “how do you spell ... ” s/he learns the correct spelling by looking it up every time before writing it.

… but the trick is in making it as quick and easy as possible to look up.