For those familiar with AVKO spelling

I would just keep going, as all of the patterns get recycled. However, you might want to call or email the author. I have heard he is good about answering questions.

Nancy

Thanks for answering. I actually wasn’t aware that all the patterns are recycled. He is having the most difficult time with things like doubling constanants before adding endings. I don’t think he sees any pattern at all. He has learned things like “per” and “mit”—the latter he kept writing “met” until one day I suddenly got it through his head. I think I have finally got him to realize that the “er” sound requires a vowel.

So for him, we have made real progress.

I will also try to contact the author.

Beth

Here’s a presentation/practice idea for the doubling rule:
[url]http://www.resourceroom.net/Spelling/doubling.html[/url]

In my experience it takes a whole lot of practice, always reviewing and having the student tell me *why,* for it to stick. THese guys have a lot to unlearn.

Here’s a presentation/practice idea for the doubling rule:
[url]http://www.resourceroom.net/Spelling/doubling.html[/url]

In my experience it takes a whole lot of practice, always reviewing and having the student tell me *why,* for it to stick. THese guys have a lot to unlearn.

Thanks Sue! I never even knew what the rules were—somehow I manage to do it correctly, at least most of the time. Helps me make better sense of the patterns for him.

Beth

Beth,
We’ve had a similar experience with AVKO. For a couple of days my son will seem to get the pattern and then when I think he has, he’ll completely forget it! When this happens I just repeat the lesson again the next day. For us the lessons spread over a longer time frame. I don’t know if that’s good, but I think my son needs the extra practice. And yet, I don’t know if this helps in the long run. I do try to make it very multi-sensory too (air writing, visualizing letter sequence, etc…).

Unfortunately, we had a couple of vacations back to back and I dread starting up AVKO all over thinking he has probably forgot the whole thing (Besides traveling I let him take a vacation from WORK!!! Scarey!!!! :-o)

A couple times I have repeated the patterns but in general I have just kept on trudging. I do think he is getting better….and Sue’s site helped me. I never realized all the things I never knew!!! I just did it correctly which, of course, doesn’t help you when you are teaching.

I showed him hop, and hope and had him read them. And then I made them hopping and hoping…and showed him that if you didn’t double the p, for hop it would become hoping. That seemed to make sense to him.

I also skip a few of the wierd words…like allot. Not really in a 10 year old vocabulary and heck if I know why it doesn’t double the final consonant!!!I I don’t think he will get built…there is only one word like that and everytime he spells it bilt. Oh, well. A spell checker will pick it up at least.

He hated AVKO at first…he was crying almost every time we did it. He hated getting so many wrong and said he was stupid. Now, although he still doesn’t like it, he doesn’t hate it as much. I think that is because he is starting to get most of them right the first time through. We’re on about day 40 now. I plan to keep it up when school starts too…and that he will hate. It looks like to me that it takes about a year to get the major patterns down. I can’t imagine we will ever get through the whole program!

Beth

Hi Beth,
I too am having problems with Avko spelling—I got this program because it was suggested as being effective on this web site. I’m really disappointed. My son also cries and feels bad when he gets so many wrong.(He is 8 almost 9) We are only on about day 20, and have had to go back and review many pages. We’ve been at it all summer except when he begged me to give him a break for vacation. Lately, he seems to do OK when we are doing the lesson, but cannot apply it to any writing situations. It isn’t sticking in his memory. I think I read somewhere here you need to do it for 60 days before you see improvements. Also, I’ve looked ahead and I haven’t seen any repetion of the spelling patterns. Am I missing something? Let’s chat more about this.

Kell,

I tried this program 2 years ago and I don’t think my son could read well enough to use it. It really requires the ability to read multi-syllable words which my son didn’t have when he was 8. We didn’t stick it out as long as you have. So, it may be that he really is too young for it. My son is now 10.

We’re actually doing better now with it. He actually gets most of the words right now the first time through. If your son can read multisyllable words, I would stick with it. If he can’t I would use something else. We used Scholastic’s series written by Louisa Moats last year. He was doing the second grade book in fourth grade—it too helped.

Beth

Beth,
Is your son able to apply what he has learned from AVKO to writing projects. My son cannot do this. That’s what is concerning me. Besides working with me, he’s been going to and ED. Therapist twice a week all summer. He still can’t write a simple paragraph without lots of spelling errors. He also forgets to capitalize and punctuate. I think he’s very frustrated because he’s got great, complicated ideas for stories, but his writing ability just can’t keep up with his intellect. We may be trying some vision therapy next. I know Linda F. seems to have had great luck with this.

Also, did you ever contact the folks at AVKO about whether or not to go back and repeat lessons if there were lots of mistakes?

Kell,

Beth is right. 8yo may be too young for Avko. The children I see are 10yo and older when they start it. Lessons in the first book typically take less than 10 minutes to complete one-on-one, even with corrections. If it is taking you longer than that, the lessons are probably too difficult for your son.

Also, I would expect a child to get more than half of the words right on the first day of a set of patterns. If a child is missing more than that, this would be another signal that it is too difficult.

You may want to set aside the program for a year or two and then try again, especially if your son is feels unsuccessful at it. Sequential Spelling is really set up to help a child feel successful with it from the beginning.

Additionally, you may want to call or email the author yourself to see what he recommends. He must be familiar with children of all ages who have used this program (especially since it has been out for a few years), and may be able to give you some clues about when it is appropriate to start.

You didn’t indicate your son’s reading level. I don’t recommend Sequential Spelling unless a child is reading fluently on an ending 3rd grade level minimum, and prefer a fluent beginning 4th grade level.

Nancy

Kell,

My son is 10 and reads at a fluent beginning fourth grade level. I never did email the author—things started to turn around for us before I did. My son always got more than half right and now gets most of them right on the first try.

I don’t know how well it will transfer to writing because, honestly, I haven’t had him writing this summer. I do see him more aware of patterns, and frankly, that is more than half my goal. My son still doesn’t perceive patterns easily in words, which plagues his reading as well as his spelling.

My son does not capitalize or use punctuation easily. His spelling is poor. He is to the point though that he can go back and fix the lack of capitalization and punctuation. When he was 8, one of his IEP goals was to write a paragraph. He couldn’t do it. We did Interactive Metronome over the summer. In the fall, he surprised us all by writing a coherent paragraph. For my son, output problems (handwriting) were a big part of the problem. The physical act of writing wore him out. Mechanics, as I said, are still poor, but he now can express his ideas.

For many kids with writing issues, trying to do all the things involved in writing well at the same time is problematic. I have tried to teach my son to go back and read what he has written afterwards and fix what he can. It has helped. He will never be a good speller but my goal is to get him so he can use spell check!

Beth

I would recommend you try to email the author of the program directly. I actually emailed him and asked him to come here on this board to answer your questions directly but he politely said he didn’t feel it would be right and that if he were to answer those questions on line he thinks it would against the policy of the forum as it would seem to be very self-serving. Dan McCabe has always answered all my email whenever I had questions promptly and professioanlly. I’d try to call or email him as he knows the program inside out. Just a suggestion in case you didn’t know that he actually answers the email.

Hope this helps.

Don McCabe, Research Director
AVKO Dyslexia Research Foundation
3084 W. Willard Road
Clio, MI 48420
Phone Toll Free: (866) AVKO 612 FAX: (810) 686-1101
www.avko.org and www.spelling.org

Hi !
Thank-you so much for replying everyone. This is exactly the kind of concrete advice that I have been looking for!

I actually e-mailed Don McCabe before I bought the program. I explained the situation to him and asked if this program would be appropriate for my 8 year old. (Actually, he will be 9 shortly). Mr. Mcabe did write back to me (which in and of itself was impressive!) and said that he thought this program would be fine for an 8 year old.

My son has always gotten more than 1/2 of the spelling words right. He got the first few lessons right, then on day 4 me missed 2, then for the next 10 lessons missed 2-4. On the worst days he’s missed 9 or so. For the last couple of lessons he’s either missed none or only 1-2. When I’ve gone back to review he’s gotten the mispelled words right. ( except for “beginning” which still stumps him!) .

I think the problem is, is that I don’t know what an 8yr old in 2nd grade is supposed to know. His teachers seem to be worried about him, but frankly, I don’t remember having to write paragraphs in 2nd grade!

Beth, it’s interesting that you mention your son is not able to see the patterns in spelling. I’ve noticed this with my son since kindergarten. In K, the teacher was having the kids make patterns with little colored bears, or dinosaurs, and my son had trouble doing anything but a simple AB pattern. This is now much better for him. I’m wondering if he isn’t developing at a different rate. I sometimes see this issue in the way he reads too. However, when he was tested in January, he was in 2nd grade (2.5) and was reading at a 3.2 grade level. The funny thing is, is that while he can’t see the little patterns, he is very adept at grasping big, deep, meaningful concepts.

I’ve wanted to try this spelling program with him because, at least it’s teaching him word families in a systematic way. At school, they don’t seem to give kids explicit spelling instruction. And I believe this would help him.

Thanks Michelle and Nancy for suggesting that I e-mail Don McCabe, I’m gonna do that this weekend.

One more thing. Do you guys know why they don’t have a forum for just writing issues? I never know where the right place to post questions about this is.

One interesting thing about patterns is even if a kid is “gifted” in the area of pattern recognition, they still can have difficulty with word pattern recognition (letter/sound recognition). My son could (and seemed compelled to) create amazing patterns out of just about anything beginning in toddlerhood (visually AND auditorally). But reading has been a whole different ball game!!!!

The specific problem once letter sound recognition has been taught, is to facilitate automatic orthographic pattern recognition. That’s where my son gets “hung up.” (Everything for him points back to Rapid Naming Deficit!) And as far as I know, the way to help this is to repeat and go over these word patterns over and over and over and over…..

Laura,
I gave the CTOPP test to my students last year and discovered, as I
already had suspected, that they needed to improve their memory.

You might want to check out these websites:

www.icando.org

www.visionbuilder.no

www.advancedbrain.com

I will begin using vision builder and brain builder with my students
hoping to improve their memory skills during this coming school year,
which will start for me in about 2 wks. I’m very excited about the
prospect of these 2 programs helping them.

BE

Very interesting posts. Laura what does Rapid Naming test. Is that how fast they can recognize a letter? My son scored at the 75th percentile for rapid Digit Naming on the C-TOPP. Is that good or bad? His weakest area on the C-TOPP was in Memory for Digits. He only scored in the 25% on this one. I was wondering if I can somehow increase the scores in this area. I don’t know how to do this.

Be- How does “vision builder” help with memory skills, I bought this program early this summer, and had absolutely no clue about how to use it. It does not come with instructions. I didn’t know where to begin, or which settings to use or anything. Are you familiar with this program. Any suggestions? Which parts of it are for memory?

Kelll,
In Sept. my school usually gives the teachers some school
money to spend on their classrooms.

I will be buying Vision Builder and Brain Builder this year.
In fact, I already have it approved by my principal.

So, I have not yet ordered it. I went to their website and read
about it - downloading from Vision Builder, so I could see a sample
of how it works.

My students all learn differently, so I try many different programs
so that learning will easier and faster for them. If one program doesn’t
work, I try something else. These 2 programs looked very promising
to me.

I’ll let you know how they work.
BE

Hi BE,
All I can say is, is that I would think twice before spending the money on vision builder. It comes with no guidance whatsoever, and really seems to be a tool used by optometrists for vision therapy. I really saw nothing in it that would be valuable for increasing memory issues. It seems to work on things like visual tracking. Just my thoughts. Kelly

I haven’t had a need to use Vision Builder yet, but I did download the program and try it out. Some of the information on how to use it came off the individual screens at http://www.visionbuilder.no . Can’t remember exactly now, but I think there was also information in the download about how to use the program.

I think you use the Comprehension screen first to determine reading speed. The reader has to get at least two-thirds of the comprehension questions right to have a valid reading speed. Then you move on to the the other exercises, setting them to a slightly faster reading speed than the one initially achieved on Comprehension. Comprehension acts as a benchmark for testing achievement and setting goals.

Theoretically, Vision Builder should help develop short-term memory. Since words have meaning and context, however, it is difficult to tell how much reading improvement would be due to short-term memory and how much would be due to increased speed and automaticity in processing text (which is not necessarily the same thing). In other words, the ability to remember random numbers (no meaning or context) might not improve with use of this program. Hard to tell without test data……

The difficulty I have found with BrainBuilder is that it is so narrowly focused that (1) it becomes extremely boring and tedious to do after the novelty wears off, and (2) skills may not transfer into other areas.

Broadly-based cognitive training programs such as Audiblox and PACE are much more likely to improve short-term memory and attention skills because they attack these skills using a wide variety of exercises. This helps to keep interest and attention levels up and also helps promote transfer of skills into everyday life (because the skills are presented in a variety of contexts). We *all* learn more in 10 minutes if we are really paying attention rather than just trying to kill time, so keeping interest levels high is important. Repetition without attention doesn’t achieve much of anything, and that is a big danger I see in using software with children. If they don’t like the software, their attention levels will not be high.

Audiblox actually has a program for classroom use. I haven’t looked lately, but I think the cost of the materials and training would be much more than BB and VB software, unfortunately.

Nancy

Thanks for the info. Nancy!!

Beth from FL,
I sent you a private message regarding AVKO spelling. Did you receive it?

I have taught AVKO spelling for a year and a half. My students
love it! They went from 10 spelling words a week to 20 a week - making
90’s and 100’s. Self-esteem went through the roof!

I would certainly recommend this spelling program to anyone.
I ended the year on lesson 48. Lots of repetition is the key.

BE

BE,

No, I never received it. We are on lesson 42 and I am sure I wouldn’t see the kind of results you are talking about with your class. When you say lots of repetition do you mean that you did the same lessons several times?

Beth

Beth,
The first week of the program I gave my students 10 words.
Every day we studied the same 10 words. (My spelling classes are 15 min.
each - sometimes 30 min. if I can schedule it!)

On Friday, they have a spelling test over those 10 words.

The next week I give them those 10 words plus 5 more. Then that
week they take a test over 10 words/out of those 15 studied.

I am after “quality” - not “quanity”. I want them to retain those
words, and periodically I will go back and review words we have
studied and give them on a test.

Repetition is definitely the key.

This is the way I teach suffixes.
1) I say “spin”
2)They write “spin” on their paper.
3) They check it with what I have written on the chalkboard, and
correct as needed.
4. Then I say “spinning”
5. I write “spin”, skip a space, then write “ing” and then I put
in the extra “n” in the space that I skipped. (spin n ing)
6. Then they copy it off of the chalkboard.

7. I don’t teach rules - at least not at first. So far they have been
doing well with this concept.

This is not the best or only way to teach SS. It is just the way one
teacher teaches it. When I teach, I develop my own system to help
my students.

Hope this helps.
BE

Thanks. I have followed the one lesson a day format. I see my son getting better but I would not say it is mastery

Beth

I use vision builder with my son and it was given to us by the optometrist.

I thought it was pretty self explanatory. There is a part that flashes random letters or random words and the child must remember those letters and pick them out of a list.
Audiblox has a similar exercise with words.

I thought it did help my son process and remember what he saw quickly. It definitely improved visual short term memory and visual processing speed which I think is a component of working memory.

I like vision builder because it is all timed on the computer so the child has very concrete feedback and they can work to improve their time.

I don’t really think it meets all the tracking needs. A child with that type of problem would need other exercises.

I emailed the developer of the program and found his response reassuring so I thought I’d share it with you.

He told me to just keep doing it, not to worry about him not getting them all right, and not to go back and start over (which I was toying with). He told me if I was worried about him getting them right that I could repeat the same list four hours later.

On the doubling consonants he said “Doubling the n or any other consonant is a common problem. But not to worry.
It has only been 40 days has it not?”

He also said the orthographic memory will come more quickly if we do the program seven days a week. I had told him that he didn’t spell beginning correctly when we did the first part of the program. In response he said, “Once he catches on completely to the concept of patterns he will know how to spell beginning even if he doesn’t know it today and even if you don’t go back to the beginning to work on the inning sound.”
To me that was the most reassuring part!!

He also recommended using WORD FAMILIES IN SENTENCE CONTEXT in conjunction with Sequential Spelling. He said that this is another method of reinforcing the concepts and one that isn’t too terribly painful. At the bottom of the pages in Sequential Spelling are page references to THE PATTERNS OF ENGLISH SPELLING. These page references are exactly the same for Word Families in Sentence Context.

Beth