avko spelling should I be worrying?

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

I have the past 3 avko tests that my child had done at school. She did not bring the words home to study so this is by herself. She received 40%,44%, and 52%. The common errors were not doubling the last letter when adding ed,ing and er endings, and not putting in the k before the n in knit and not putting the l before the o in fold she actually put it in front of the o,and same letter sounds confusion. Should I be trying to get the instructor to use a different approach or give it some more time? I do plan on having our tutor do spelling again as the tutor says the words more clearly and visually shows the phonems by underlining. Let me know what you think-

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 01/07/2004 - 1:45 AM

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I have not found that scores on the tests correlate at all with actual improvements in everyday spelling. My recommendation is to ignore the tests. I have seen children make very poor scores on the tests, and yet their spelling in their written work has clearly improved. All of the patterns, such as doubling a letter, are repeated cyclically throughout the program. A child who doesn’t get it and retain it the first time around may have it click the next time it is encountered, or the time after.

Nancy

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 01/12/2004 - 2:36 PM

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Try calling Don McCabe @ 1-866-AVKO-612 or E mailing him. He developed the program and is great to speak to .This program has helped my son very much!! Jan

Submitted by Sue on Mon, 01/12/2004 - 8:21 PM

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If she’s not practicing them, then it’s highly likely any program will not work. First get her to bring those puppies home to practice — http://www.resourceroom.net/readspell/index.asp has links to some ways to practice spelling. Sounds like she’s getting the sounds, for the most part… but not learning it all the way.

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 01/13/2004 - 4:51 PM

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Actually, Sequential Spelling is standalone. Practice outside of the lessons is not part of the program, and somewhat defeats the intent.

From what I have seen, carryover into writing is automatic. It’s just that some children need to go through more of the pattern spirals built into the program before this happens.

Nancy

Submitted by marycas on Wed, 01/14/2004 - 8:11 PM

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I am homeschooling this year and just began Sequential Spelling(after xmas break). I admit I have been a little disappointed and am glad to hear Nancy speak highly of it.

The author makes a huge deal of how almost every child will spell ‘beginning’(after the first 5/6 lessons)correctly because of the prep work that got them there. Well, mine managed to blow it anyway.

I am trying to get him to self correct more. ‘Hmmm….looks like most these words had a ‘up’-don’t you think its odd that this one has an ‘op’?
I still show him the correct way on the whiteboard but I find he just doesnt make those connections. Its part of his LD in my opinion. I dont care if hes just written 100 words with ‘oo’; it just doesnt occur to him that 101 will probably have an ‘oo’ as well

Crossing fingers for both of us

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 01/15/2004 - 6:03 AM

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I do like these words alot better than the simple words we were getting. They are bringing the words home now. She has a test on Friday on them. There are alot of words- to many to study, but we are doing the best we can.We usually try to visually show the words. What we do is in the word love we double underline the vowel “o” to show that it makes a different sound than it should and underline other phoenems so she can visually remember the words.I haven’t gone over the spelling rules but my outside tutor said she can go over them with her just in case she is still not getting it. We will see how it goes.Another thing that has me worried about this program is how long it takes. It seemed it took most of the hour to get the three kids to get down to work to write down the words and they only had about 15 minutes to read from a book and this is considered their reading program.

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