AAS and SW?

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  • January 22, 2016 at 8:46 pm
    Michelle
    Participant

    This is a spin off of another thread I started about reading. I felt since it led to new questions I would start another. I feel my eight year old daughter is struggling with reading. Some days I suspect issues. Other days, I think she is fine and is just not progressing the way “I” expect. This is new thoughts:
    I’ve been thinking about this a bit. Dyslexia testing is entirely too expensive to consider. One of her “symptoms” is poor spelling, BUT we haven’t focused a lot on spelling. We planned on starting SW next year, grade 3. Should she be spelling well even though I haven’t formally taught spelling?

    I really feel like a program like All About Spelling may help her develop phonological awareness. That’s where she struggles with new words. I really, really want to use SW and ULW next year. Since she struggles with reading, I wonder if using both would be too much or just what she needs. Lessons are short for both and two different teaching methods.

    January 22, 2016 at 9:02 pm
    Michelle
    Participant

    I can’t figure out how to edit the post! Typing on my phone isn’t always the best idea! 😉 Excuse my grammatical issues. 🙂

    January 23, 2016 at 1:27 am
    Regan
    Participant

    Hi Michelle,

    I’m not sure if you are using All About Reading for Phonics, but they recommend starting with All About Spelling after 1 year of Phonics is completed.  I realized you said she is 8 years old and you sometimes feel she may be struggling!  I have a child that just turned 8 a week ago and is considered a 2nd grader.  He started AAS this year.  I also have 2 other children doing AAR and one of them (my daughter) has Autism so it has been much slower.  I won’t add a formal Spelling program for her at this time.  With all of that said, I plan on using Spelling Wisdom and Using Language Well next year!   Don’t get me wrong, I think AAS is a great curriculum.   However, I am not a slave to any curriculum and I don’t use it as it is written.  I briefly go over the sound reflected in the spelling words for that week (there are 10 per lesson).   Then I ask him to spell each one of the spelling words to me.  The ones he doesn’t know, we review and when he is ready, I dictate them to him.  There also additional words we go over orally and dictation with most lessons and that’s it.  The way I use AAS is very similar to how Sonya recommends using Spelling Wisdom.   They are two different curriculums with different approaches, but we can use the information however we choose and so we do 🙂   I would recommend taking some words out of the books she is reading and have her look at them.  Then have her spell the words and get a feel for where she is.   I would also like to add an interesting side note about my daughter (6 years old) who has autism and is progressing much more slowly in reading.  I use All About Reading with her, because that is what we already had.  However, I am using it more like the Delightful Reading program is used.  We work in word families.  We don’t go through the lessons as they are written.  We open up the story and take words and word families found in the story and work on those words.  We spell them with tiles, write them on a dry erase board and locate them in the story.  After we have covered all of the words in that story, she reads the story and enjoys her success.  So, just to encourage you, if your daughter is a struggling reader, you may have to use what you have differently.  I cannot speak specifically to dyslexia.  Hopefully other moms will give feedback that will be helpful.  Best to you!

    January 23, 2016 at 7:49 am
    psreitmom
    Participant

    I posted on your other thread. I just wanted to say that I am not familiar with SW, but I don’t know if I would use both. That seems like a lot. If you suspect dyslexia, I would look into AAS. If you want a little more for spelling, just have your child do copywork. It is said by many with degrees in language and writing, the best way to learn to spell is by reading and writing. Dictation would fit in that category. We are using Spelling You See, which also includes chunking. This is working well with my daughter who is a very poor speller, which is typical of dyslexics. Here they get to see that -ea vowel chunk is used for long -e instead of just -e, like in the word ‘speak’. If you are focusing on the reading issues, I would be careful not to overdo the spelling.

    January 23, 2016 at 11:10 am
    Michelle
    Participant

    Thank you, Regan. Those are great ideas on using the curriculum as tools. (It also helps me in thinking about to use with my next two up and coming readers.) We haven’t used AAR. She used Teach Your Child To Read and we’ve used a bit of Reading Lessons Through Literature. She learned all 75 phonograms. Logistically, RLTL wasn’t wworking for our school day so we dropped it. We still use what phonograms we learned she comes to a new word to decode.

    Having her read from More Busy Times is not bad. She’s comfortable there and enjoys the stories. She recently read the entire Frog and Toad collection on her own and some aloud to me.

     

    I believe we’ll finish AAS 1 and see where to go from there.

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