339homeschool
- Reviewed on Saturday, March 21, 2009
- Grades Used: 2nd and 4th
- Dates used: 2008-2009
I have a fourth grader who has been homeschooling since 2nd grade and is an amazing reader, but struggles with spelling. This basically means that she has mastered the decoding part of phonics enabling her to read, but wasn't taught enough in-depth phonics to encode or use the phonics to spell. It has been a challenge to find a program to remediate spelling but not necessarily with the purpose of teaching reading.
My other daughter is in second grade and was diagnosed with dyslexia mid-second grade. She is reading at a 1st grade level. She has been working with a reading specialist for eight months. I sit in the lessons and reinforce them at home. The reading specialist is certified in Orton-Gillingham, Wilson and Linda-Mood Bell and uses a combination of the methods. None of these excellent programs is all that accessible to homeschoolers, either due to price, amount of time to train or lesson plan organization.
I use or have used many different curriculum to reinforce the reading specialists lessons including Phonics Road, Phonics Zoo, Explode the Code, Primary Phonics and All About Spelling and several others quickly discarded.
Here is my feedback on All About Spelling:
Pros: It is really well organized in a step-by-step fashion introducing the phonographs in a very systematic way. This is important in dyslexia. It uses letter tiles and cards in a multisensory way, although it doesn't mention the Wilson system "tapping" of sounds out on fingers. I mention this because none of the multisensory home methods I tried worked for my second grader struggling with dyslexia. It wasn't until the reading specialist introduced finger tapping that it began to click. I also purchased the magnetic tiles from Wilson which I highly recommend because they come in a magnetic "book" that keep the tiles neatly in place between uses.
The reading specialist usually follows a routine:
Decoding
1. Review previously learned phonographs on flash cards
2. Introduce new concept. Such as sh says /sh/.
3. Use new concept by manipulating tiles or highlighting the new skill on a list of words, or play bingo or go fish
Encoding
4. Then she has her spell words using the new concept including nonsense words. In addition, she will have her recall five ways to spell ... long a, or short e etc.
5. Then she dictates sentences using words with the new concept.
Reading
6. Then she spends time reading. This is targeting decoding, fluency and comprehension.
Cons: There are several things I don't like about All-About-Spelling. The first is that it doesn't have you start with a review of previously learned sounds. At least it doesn't stress how very important this is especially with dyslexia. This is something I do, but only because I know from the reading teacher how important it is in dyslexia. There is research that the cards are most effective read a specific way and the cards are not set up to work that way. Reading the letter name first, a word associated with the letter next and finally the sound is more effective than a different sequence. For example a apple /a/.
My biggest problem with All-About-Spelling is that the lessons are too brief. My fourth grader kept saying we didn't cover concepts I was reviewing with her and she was making mistakes with concepts we'd covered. The lists of words are just too basic. The program doesn't spend enough time playing with words enough for it to really sink in and become understood.
Wison has lists of words, non-sense words and dictation passages that are organized into different levels and cover hundreds of words. If I were not working with a reading teacher I think I would follow All About's sequence of lessons, but use Wilson materials especially the rules notebook, workbooks for decoding and the dictation book for encoding. But then again I feel it would be missing the games and the reading and the....
Well I guess all in all , I think a really excellent reading/phonics/spelling program has yet to be written. Hope this helps, especially for anyone with children struggling with spelling issues and dyslexia.
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nukeswife
- Reviewed on Wednesday, March 11, 2009
- Grades Used: 1, 4
- Dates used: 2007-present
We started this program in 2007 and then set it aside because I thought "This is too easy" . I later realized that just because it seems easy doesn't me it's fluff and doesn't work. This program is amazing. I have been trying to help my oldest son learn to spell. We have tried may different workbook programs as well as Spelling Power and nothing clicked for him. He would get all the words right with the workbook programs, but this didn't transfer over to his other work, such as writing or grammar. Now he's blown through level 1 and ready to start level 2, sure level 1 was easy for him, but he said now some spelling words make more sense because he knows the "Rule" behind it. The biggest change has been my daughter, she's 7 and has mid Nov. birthday, she has been desperatly wanting to read but it's been slow going for her. We tried other phonics programs such as HOP, WP LA, and SL LA but nothing was working for her. I even bought WRTR and although I love the theory behind it I found the book hard to figure out what to do to actually teach it. I figured "why not try AAS with her" and I signed up for the AAS forums to ask questions called "The Chatterbee" (https://marierippel.infusionsoft.com/go/chatter/fawkesacademy/) I found some very encouraging advice and my dd is doing well with the program. She's now made it to step 12 which is half way through the first level and has her spelling is astounding us, but the best part is her reading is improving dramatically, she doesn't cry about trying to read decodable readers anymore and says "I know this, the bee taught me" She calls it "the Bee" because the first level includes a progress chart with a Bee on it and the numbers of the steps are in "honeycomb" shaped spaces. So each step we complete she puts a bee sticker on.
I can't say enough great things about this program and the woman that created it. Marie is wonderful about answering questions and sends those answers quickly. I just wish I had found this sooner. It was the key that helped me unlock this area of Language arts for my kids.
Kel
UPDATE: We've now moved on to another curriculum for my older son and my dd's new LA program includes spelling but AAS has laid a nice solid foundation and I contiue to recommend it. It's a wonderful program that is very thorough, fun and easy to implement.
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RobMikeMom
- Reviewed on Wednesday, May 14, 2008
- Grades Used: 3rd-4th
- Dates used: 2007-2008
I am happy to share my experience with All About Spelling (http://www.all-about-spelling.com)! First of all, it is the easiest to use program I have ever seen for the Orton-Gillingham phonograms/methods (also used by Romalda Spalding in her The Writing Road to Reading), which is, in my researched opinion, the absolutely best and only way spelling – and reading – should be taught! It takes both the parent and child step-by-step through the entire program. We have finished Level 3 and will be starting Level 4 as soon as it is released at the end of the summer. There are to be a total of 6 levels, each one released about every 6 months. My boys (9 year old twins) love the fact that there isn't a lot of writing involved in the program - they love using the tiles a lot more. I love the learning the phonograms and rules right along with them! (And I have always been good at spelling “naturally”!) It gives me a great way to help them when they are writing and ask to spell a word. I ask them "what is the rule that says..." and then they remember the rule and figure out how to spell the word! It's great! I feel like I have tools now to help them with spelling in and out of the lesson! I am also seeing that my son that doesn’t spell well is learning to recognize when words don’t look right and kind of “know” that they aren’t spelled right. According to Ruth Beechick, this is the single most important factor in spelling – not the ability to spell every word right, though that is nice, too.
Since my boys were already reading by the time we started this program (they were 8 years, 8 months old), we went through Level 1 pretty quickly. The program comes with everything you need. However, expect to be cutting out a lot of flash cards when you first get your packet! A paper cutter really helps with this. Also, everything in this program is NON-CONSUMABLE, so you can use this program for every student in your family and can re-sell it when everyone is done.
Each lesson has these steps:
1. At the beginning of each lesson, you review orally the Phonogram Cards that are still in the Review section of the index card file box (she even provides the tabbed cards to separate each section of cards into Review, Mastered, and Future - you provide the 3X5 index card file box.)
2. Then you review the Sound Cards where you say that sounds and the student writes the phonogram for that sound - a good place to teach and practice handwriting! (We actually do these verbally as the boys are working on their fine motor skills in a separate exercise and are advanced enough that they already know their letters. Sometimes we use a white board for this. We may go back to writing them when we start cursive training.)
3. Then you review any Key Cards, which have the "rules" for spelling. These are done orally.
4. The New Teaching section introduces the new phonograms and practices using new spelling rules with the words for lesson. This is where you use the tiles. Everything is done with the tiles until the child can read and spell all of the words in that lesson. Once the child has mastered the lesson with the tiles, they then write the words on paper and practice them with dictation of phrases (all levels) and sentences (starting in Level 2.) We use a sewn-bound spelling notebook (like recommended by Spalding.) We started writing our spelling words in lists at the beginning of the notebook, and then started in the back of the notebook writing our phrases and sentences, using the pages in “backwards order.” I even have my own notebook that I write with them. The boys FINALLY realized that their notebook is their own, personal, spelling dictionary! :)
Each lesson may easily take a week or more to master or it may be mastered in 2 days, depending on the child and the lesson itself. You go at the child’s pace, never moving on until the child is completely comfortable with the material in the current lesson.
I have been asked by many if this program can be used for teaching reading, as well. After reading many other sources on teaching reading with structured phonics (Romalda Spalding’s "The Writing Road to Reading", Rudolf Flesch’s "Why Johnny Can’t Read and What You Can Do About It" and many other sources on Don Potter’s web site – www.donpotter.net), I would say yes. I would also recommend reading Flesch’s book before you start just to give you a good background on teaching a child to read with phonics versus whole-word methods.
For teaching a young child to read, I would follow the program as-is, perhaps not focusing so much on the spelling rules and writing portions of the lessons. I would think that you could just move from step to step once the child understands the phonograms of the lesson and learns how to apply them to the words of that step for reading. So you could move faster through the program since you would not be staying on a lesson until the child could spell the words, only until they can read the words fluently and without hesitation. I would use the dictation sentences for reading practice, maybe typing them out on paper in a larger font for a young child. The only thing that wouldn't be included would be books for them to use for practicing their new skills. But you could easily get something like the Bob Books or other DECODABLE readers (not LEVELED readers) to start with, and then branch out as interest and skills increase (use your library extensively for this!) Then, when they are ready to start to learn spelling, you would just go back to your previous levels and cover the spelling rules more intensely and have them practice spelling the words of each lesson.
On the other hand, following Flesch, Spalding, and others, you WOULD expect a child as young as 5 or 6 to learn to read, SPELL, AND WRITE all of the words, just like the program is designed. This would give them the strongest foundation they can get. It would allow them to read just about any book they are interested in without having to resort to “dumbed-down” books, and they would have the best chance possible to become good spellers, unlike most children taught in “brick-and-mortar” schools by other methods.
Marie Rippel is always there to help answer many questions as well. I really pestered her early on when I was trying to decide whether to use The Writing Road to Reading, The Phonics Road to Spelling and Reading, or All About Spelling. She was SO helpful answering all of my questions and not getting frustrated with me pestering her, that between that and her ONE YEAR MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE, I figured I didn’t have anything to lose! The web site also has some games that can be used to practice the phonograms – File Folder Games and Phonogram Bingo.
I hope this gives you a better idea of the program and how it works. I find it super-simple to use, everything is scripted out, but not in a cluttered fashion. It's just "open the book and start the lesson" easy! And like I said, you can't beat her return policy! Marie can be reached through her web site at http://www.all-about-spelling.com if you have any questions for her.
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