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Seeing Stars curriculum?


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I'm looking into this for two of my children...

 

One is 12 year old dd, who is a voracious reader and a terrible speller. We've done phonics and tons of spelling methods. She just can not 'picture' which phonograms to use in which words. She can memorize spelling rules, but doesn't apply them all when writing, or mixes up two sounds when spelling (for example, spelling black as balck, even in the same paragraph she has previously spelled it correctly in!), and never mind all those words that *could* be spelled with several phonograms and still follow the rules! I'm wondering if having some visualization methods would help her, at least with the 500 most common words. This child did vision therapy for six months at age seven because she was unable to read despite her desiring to, and me trying various methods to teach her. VT made all the difference in the world, and after six months of only VT and no instructional reading, she picked up a Magic Tree House book and read it. She's been buried in books ever since, reading for several hours every day.

 

The second is 6.5 year old dd. We have been working on phonics and reading for almost two years at this point. She is still at the sound it out, CVC words stage. She has zero retention of a word from one page to the next...heck, most times she will have to sound out the same words in every single sentence! At times she starts sounding a word out with the middle or last sound, and at times she guesses a word that could be used in place of the word on the page, (for example, she said sleep instead of reading nap), even when the letters are not at all the same. I'm doing CLE learn to read with her, but we did try Phonics Pathways prior to this. I switched because she likes predictability, I needed something that I could step away from, and I felt that the writing included with the reading would help. She is VERY wiggly. This child does 8-9 hours of gymnastics a week. She's kinesthetic. She loves tactile experiences. She has SPD, the seeking kind. She struggles with emotional regulation. She gets frustrated very quickly, and shuts down completely. I took her to a highly regarded tutor for an evaluation, and she said she is doing very well with phonics, but gets overwhelmed visually and suggested this curriculum and a way to help her learn some of the more common words quickly and more easily. I do have an appointment to have her evaluated by a COVD this week, just in case.

 

So. With all that. The program is $500. I'm more than happy to invest in this program if it will help. However, I don't want to buy it and have it not work...it's quite an investment. I also am wondering about just purchasing the teacher's manual and using the method for our own list of words...does it work like that? They sell a word list for $4, so I could buy the TM and the word list and we could make our own flash cards with index cards...the TM is about $100, which means the bulk of this program is for flash cards. I don't need anything fancy if index cards will work. If you've used this and this it would work for my girls, would it also work if I ONLY bought the TM and word list?

Thanks so much!

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I'm not familiar with the curriculum, but as a voracious reader who is still a lousy speller I can tell you that in my case the problem is a very non visual brain. I can't visualize words at all.

 

I think in words, aural words, not in images. I don't think efforts to get me to visualize words would ever have made a difference.

 

What did help was lots of writing--copywork, buth with a pen and paper and typewritten. I still make mistakes, but all of the writing made a big difference.

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I'd give both of them the Barton screening, and I think it's part C that you have to pass or else you need the Lindamood-Bell LiPS program. It teaches the student how to perceive their mouths moving as they pronounce words, so they can spell and read the words. It might be a really good fit for your wiggly 6.5 year old, as it's pretty fun and silly, and it doesn't feel like "reading." 

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