AVKO Sequential Spelling for a teenager?

and getting great results.

One thing I noticed a little late is that my daughter was mindlessly copying patterns from one word to the next on the day’s lesson. (I know it was mindless, because the next day she would miss exactly the same change in pattern that she had missed the day before, and the day before that.) Someone suggested I have her cover up the previous words, and that has *really* helped effectiveness. I give her a pad of 2 or 3 post-it notes that she moves down as she finishes a word.

Mary

I’m also using the program with an 11 year old and finding it very helpful. One of the tips I’ve learned is to deliver the words at a very rapid pace. It seems to be helping with getting the spelling to more of an automatic level. We also do two lessons at a time, and that works fine.

How long does it take you to do a lesson? We do one in under 10 minutes, and I am wondering if that fits your rapid delivery mode. We go pretty fast as long as dd is getting the words right. When one is wrong, sometimes she can fix it herself just by knowing there’s a mistake. If not, sometimes I can give her a hint (“one letter is missing”, or “one letter is wrong”) and that’s enough. Otherwise, I write the word on a white board using blue marker for all the parts she got right, and red for the area she missed (usually a vowel combination).

We’re around lesson #76 in the first book now. We just do one lesson a day because time is so tight here.

We started out by doing Megawords also (one worksheet a day, which took 20 minutes). I think it helped with word analysis skills too, but we had to drop it because of the time crunch. I’m thinking Sequential Spelling is a more effective use of time.

Mary

We do one lesson in just under 5 minutes—given that my son is getting most of them right. If he can’t correct the word with a little hint, I usually write each part and say, “this is the base…this is the beginning…this is the ending.” He has always responded really well to knowing about the Greek and Latin roots of words, so on occasion, I’ll pull out my resources on that and say something such as, “spec means to see, and that’s the root.” Most often, though, we just zip through the words very quickly. We’re just about where you are, and we started right after school began in September. I do the lessons with him just as he finishes breakfast. I’m so glad you clued me into this resource. It’s a winner…I finally know how to spell recommend now, too. I was always mixed up on the two Cs or two Ms question. No more!

how much children with similar problems can differ. My dd does not only not appreciate Greek and Latin roots, she really didn’t *get* roots until we got into Sequential Spelling. I am so glad it does prefixes and suffixes! Explaining simply did not do the trick for her.

There’s no way we could get a lesson done in under 5 minutes. It may be because of dd’s dysgraphia. It takes her quite awhile to print each word. (Even though she knows cursive, she prefers to print.)

Mary