Megawords after Apples & Pears?

[diaperjoys]

Our son is finishing the last book of Apples and Pears. He's 12, and we've had some issues with focus, dyslexia type symptoms, and vision. Learning to read was very hard, but we got there! Apples & Pears, as well as the Dancing Bears programs were incredible for him, and he wouldn't be where he is today without them.

 

I thought A&P would be our last spelling program, but now I'm not so sure. This last book is harder for him. And I'm seeing lots of misspelling crop up in his other written work now. Lots. Seemed like he was doing so much better at the end of last year than he is now.

 

Where to go from here? Any suggestions?

[sbgrace]

I went to Spelling Power, trying to use the same techniques we learned in Apples and Pears. We've kind of stalled out because I just put other things as priority over spelling. MegaWords may be a better option, I don't know. But I can say that he had a lot of room for further development post Apples and Pears. Apples and Pears was great, but it didn't take us far enough in other words. 

[Lori D.]

Our son is finishing the last book of Apples and Pears. He's 12, and we've had some issues with focus, dyslexia type symptoms, and vision. Learning to read was very hard, but we got there! Apples & Pears, as well as the Dancing Bears programs were incredible for him, and he wouldn't be where he is today without them.

 

I thought A&P would be our last spelling program, but now I'm not so sure. This last book is harder for him.

 

Not familiar with either of these programs, as Apples & Pears and Dancing Bears were not available to us when we were homeschooling DS#2 who has mild LDs (probably "Stealth Dyslexia") in Spelling, Writing, and Math. He was a bit of a delayed reader -- age 8 when it "clicked" and he became "fluent", rather than laboriously decoding/reading each and every word. He did not even begin to "click" with Spelling until about age 12.

 

Starting about age 12-13, we did Megawords, and went all the way through into 12th grade (we did all of books 1-7, and got partway into book 8). I do think Megawords helped. Megawords teaches syllabication (breaking longer words into smaller "bites" for spelling attack), and vowel patterns/syllable patterns. I also think switching to typing helped improve his spelling within his writing.

 

Megawords is an 8-book series geared for grades 4-12. he words that are used in the program, esp. in books 3-8, are great vocabulary words for middle school and high school students, so there would be no baby-ishness about using Megawords into high school, as it can be your combined Spelling/Vocabulary work. Even working at a relaxed pace with Megawords, you WILL complete more than 1 book in a school year. Depending on the book, it would take us about 2/3 to 3/4 of a school year (24-28 weeks) to get through a book.

 

Side note: When your DS reads, does he sometimes "guess" at longer multi-syllable words? i.e.: Does he say a word that starts with the same letter or several letters and makes a stab at it based on context, rather than taking a tiny mental pause to sound out the word?

 

That is something DS did due to the Stealth Dyslexia. For a person with dyslexia, the letters are jumbling and jumping around, so longer words can be very tiring to have to slow down and focus on bite-by-bite and build up the word sequentially (a weak skill for those dealing with dyslexia). Megawords helped DS practice sounding out by syllable, but the other thing that helped reduce the "guessing" out of laziness/tiredness was to strengthen the sounding out skill by out-loud buddy reading ("your read a page, I read a page"), which I did with DS#2 all the way through 12th grade. We did quite a bit of our Literature studies that way. I think that the out loud reading helped with the Stealth Dyslexia, which in turn helped a bit with the spelling, in making it a bit more natural for DS#2 to tackle longer words by "bites".

 

 

... And I'm seeing lots of misspelling crop up in his other written work now. Lots. Seemed like he was doing so much better at the end of last year than he is now...

 

Is your DS doing more/longer writing this year? If so, then his focus may be all on the writing, and he doesn't have much left for spelling while also writing.

 

Correct spelling *while writing* is very difficult for younger students (and middle school/high school students with LDs), as it requires juggling three separate tasks; Spelling; thinking of what to Write; and the physical act of Writing. Each is processed in a separate part of the brain, and the average student doesn't start coordinating all three tasks simultaneously until about age 10-12.

 

Students with LDs in the LA areas will develop that skill later. And some people never are able to do all three things simultaneously, and need to find work-arounds. Two helps we found that were very helpful for DS#2:

 

1. Type the Writing. And while writing, make use of Spell Check and the red underlining of misspelled words to draw attention to the misspelling. Spell Check worked as a safety net of catching those misspellings while DS#2 simultaneously thought of what to write and typed it up. Over time (several years), Spell Check also helped improve his writing, because he could see he was misspelling things AS he was writing, and it helped him start being able to juggle that third ball of correct spelling *while* writing more frequently.

 

2. After initial writing (rough draft writing), take a break away from the writing to mentally shift gears from the writing mode and go into proof-editing mode to catch misspellings -- just focus the proof-editing on spelling errors. (And if the student has typed the writing and you use Spell Check, it makes it a lot easier to find the misspellings.) In other words, just make it automatic that the Writing process IS going to require two steps -- write down thoughts stage, then correcting spelling stage.

 

 

Where to go from here? Any suggestions?

 

Don't know what would work best for your student, but things that worked for our DS#2:

 

- I had him learn touch typing (keyboarding) along about 6th grade so that he could switch to typing all of his writing

- in addition to Megawords, I made an individualized spelling based on vowel sounds/patterns for DS#2 from The ABCs and All Their Tricks

- we did both Megawords and the individualized spelling for several years -- I think DS#2 was about 15 when we dropped down to just doing Megawords

- we practiced the Megawords and individualized spelling with several techniques to help his weak auditory-sequential processing (spelling is VERY sequential, and DS#2 is extremely visual-spatial which is a random processing strength, not a sequential processing strength) -- for a detailed explanation of what techniques for practice we used, see my post #13 in this past thread ("At what point to you just throw in the towel on Spelling")

- we used Megawords and practiced Spelling up through 12th grade

 

Other Spelling Program Ideas:

 

Not familiar with All About Spelling, but I understand that it is a multi-sensory teaching program, and honestly, that's what I was doing with DS (in that link above) with all of the spelling techniques we used for practice -- attempting to introduce words through his strong in-take (visual and sometimes hands-on), and strengthen his weak sequential processing (auditory spelling; dictation spelling; break-it-in-to-bites Megawords). So that might be something to look into as well. I know some people have done AAS with older struggling spellers -- I don't think they start at level 1, but not sure how they have done it.

 

From your signature, I see you have 5 DC and sometimes more, so I totally get that you might not have a lot of time for one-on-one with DS for spelling. Phonetic Zoo might also be an option, as it strengthens weak auditory-sequential skills through out-loud spelling through listening on headphones. See: "My ongoing review on Phonetic Zoo - older child/independent spelling program" as one thread on it. We used the out-loud spelling practice idea from Phonetic Zoo. You might also find Andrew Pudewa's talk on "Spelling and the Brain" (FREE 70-minute talk on YouTube) to be helpful.

 

And of course, Sequential Spelling was designed for those with dyslexia. (We used the idea of building bigger words from smaller words from that program.)

 

Past threads on older struggling spellers:

"World's Worst Speller"

"Struggling speller: double up?"

 

 

One last thought: I know you're probably at a stage of not having time or wanting to have to spend a lot of time with an older student on Spelling, but I do think it was worth the time investment for us. In posts #5 and #6 of the thread: "Struggling speller: double up?", posters Peter Pan and NASDAQ had similar experiences. However, only you can determine how best to schedule your homeschooling/real-life time for your family and with your unique life circumstances, so YMMV. :)

 

BEST of luck in finding what works best for DS! Warmest regards, Lori D.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Lori D.

[diaperjoys]

Lori - that was super helpful, thank you so much! Yes, several things you describe sound like my son. Very much so - I hadn't thought about that developing later, but it makes sense. It took three years to learn to read well....it'll probably take time for him to be developmentally ready for those spelling skills. I'm going to keep Megawords at the top of my list for spelling curricula next year.

 

Thanks again!