AVKO help please!

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

I viewed the spelling portion at school and this is what I experienced: The educational assistant read a sentence using the word then repeated the word. The kids wrote the word down. The educational assistant wrote the word down in black on a white board and spelled it out for the kids to see if they got the word correct. -I thought the program was to sound out the words and if not each letter the family,and put the word on the white board in different colors to show patterns. Or is that only for the beginning of the program they are up to day 14 .Thanks for your input.

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/14/2003 - 2:50 AM

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What they’re doing at school is okay. It’s helpful to write the word parts in different colors, but that can actually get rather complicated if you don’t have a good grasp of morphology (and even if you do). Ideally the children would be saying the sounds as they write them — a la “mapping” in Reading Reflex — but that’s not actually part of Sequential Spelling.

The format you are seeing is pretty common in classroom settings, I think, and seems to work.

Nancy

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/14/2003 - 12:33 PM

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Hi, I use AVKO with my son and I write the part he gets correct in black and the part he gets wrong in another color.That seems to work for him. Jan

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/14/2003 - 4:08 PM

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What has me most worried is the kids are looking back to see the words from previous day or at the teacher’s list. The instructor made a comment when my child reached for the pencil box. “No you don’t! You are not going to cheat like yesterday.” My child told her she just wanted a pencil. I asked my child if she cheated then and she said yes.But it seems this shouldn’t be the attitude. I thought this program would bring less stress without the weekly bring it home and memorize for the test routine. It doesn’t look like it is very effective with the way it is applied..

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/14/2003 - 5:53 PM

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SS won’t be effective if the children can see the previous day’s words or the teacher’s list. I would talk to the teacher (or assistant) about that. It would be very simple to change the setup so this doesn’t happen, I would think!

Nancy

Submitted by des on Fri, 11/14/2003 - 6:57 PM

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Yeah but I would take the “problem” totally out of the moral thing, because imo they don’t really think of it as cheating in the usual sense. I certainly don’t like the idea of the kids thinking of themselves as little cheaters if at all possible. I think of this as a “book management” and “purpose” issue. The book management part, is where you place the book and where it is in relationship to the students.

I was giving this kid the Barton screening and it became clear he was trying to look at the answers, and I said “well if you do look at them and can do this I might think that you can really do what I am asking you to do. Then I might skip some steps in teaching you and you won’t really learn how to read.” It totally nipped the problem in the bud and he has never tried to do it again. I also work to maintain the book in such a way that it is less likely. But if the kid knows why they are doing this it makes it easier to stop this sort of behavior.

I think kids should know that cheating is wrong, it is just that I don’t think this type of behavior feels to the kid as if they are cheating. I don’t think there is any gain like grades or something. But it just hurts them.

just my 2¢

—des

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