Spelling issues

I would recommend Sequential Spelling (http://www.avko.org).

If you start with the first book, you can do several lessons in a row every day until you reach a point where the words become slightly challenging. At that point, you can switch to two lessons per day — with lessons taken from different parts of the book so your children still get the review of patterns spread out over a period of days. Done this way, you can get through two books of SS per year.

Generally I see an improvement of about one grade level for each book of SS completed (7 books total, but you can follow-up with the 2-book adults only version for review).

Nancy

I’m with you on this — it is true, that you don’t have to know how to spell as well as pre-spell-checking days. I’ve been known to revel in how rare “irregardless” is seen and heard!
However, I’ve seen an awful lot of high school & college writing that really suffers. Let’s face it, if you write back for bake that ol’ spell checker lets it right on by. I’m not talking the stuff of cute poems — I’m talking about it really getting in the way of communication.
Learning the patterns — that ck comes at the end of the short words with the short vowels, and that “silent e” phenomenon — is pretty fundamental and will really pay off later.

Nancy,

I have AVKO spelling and was going to use it with my 10 year old son this summer. I have never heard of using lists in two parts of the book. Does it matter where? Do you think this is more effective than doing two lists in a row?

Beth

I took a sneak peek at the rough draft of my son’s research paper. Here’s a classic dyslexic sentence boosted in humor by spellcheck. I just thought I’d share. He’ll clean it up with editing…at least he’s writing.

The Andy’s Mountains use to connect to the Appellation Mountains a long time ago.

It’s just a way to speed up getting through a book.

I do think it’s more effective than doing two lists in a row. When you do two lists in a row, you cut the days of daily review in half. When you do two lists from separate areas of the book, you are giving the child additional patterns to work on, rather than an immediate review of the patterns he just finished.

It doesn’t really matter where you start for the second sequence of lists. If I recall correctly, the first book spends 5 lessons in a row on a group of patterns, whereas the second book spends 4 lessons in a row on a group. You would just want to be sure to start at the beginning of a group of patterns. Because of the way the books are laid out, this means starting with the leftmost lesson when the book is lying open. Probably the easiest approach is to do lessons #1 and 91 on the first day, #2 and 92 on the second, etc. This assumes that the lessons in the second half of the book aren’t too hard for your child. If they are too hard, then just look for a second sequence of lessons closer to the beginning.

Nancy

I haven’t done anything much on the spelling issue. I was so pleased that she could learn how to read that I haven’t spent much time on spelling. She makes A’s & B’s on tests, but no recall and in a paragraph - forget it. Maybe I, too, should look into one of these spelling tutorials. It’s just with so much on the “stove” spelling got put on the back burner.

Thanks. We tried the program two years ago and it was too hard. I am hoping that he can handle it now. We’ve been doing Louisa Moats scholastic spelling series this past year. It has improved his spelling (he used to spell only a few words correctly) but he is doing the second grade series and he is in fourth grade. What do you think the reading level necessary for this series is? His sight vocabulary is grade level but still is behind on decoding new words.

Beth

I, too have a 5th grade son who has the true inability to spell. My advise to you would be to not get too uptight about it. It is only spelling. Is he a good kid? Does he try hard? Is he sucessful in other area of his life? Will it really matter 50 years from now? NO. Technology is now and the future. It spells for you. My advise would be to relax on this issue and let it be.

For us, the spelling problem was a marker of not understanding phonemes, blends and other parts of language. My son’s tutor has explcitly taught a whole bunch of rules around combinations (eg. the coca coke rule) and breaks the words into sound syllables. After years of rarely getting a word right, he now (grade 4) gets most of them right. He only gets words wrong (or, as the tutor taught him..the word wrong is just wrong!!) if they are written and processing gets in the way. Orally, it’s 100% now. I agree that spelling is not that important now, but in his case it was a marker of a deeper problem.