ASS for a normal speller

[homeschoolmom4]

Hi everyone,

I want to do AAS for my struggling daughter (11), but I would like to also do it for my 10 year old. My 10 year old is an okay speller. Does this seem to be a program for only struggling children or all children?

Thanks,

Amy

Edited June 26, 2009 by homeschoolmom4

[Ginevra]

Oh, my! Please edit your acronym! All About Spelling! *tee hee*:D

[Lovedtodeath]

She can't now because you replied!:lol:

[Hillary in KS]

I'm digging the misspelled subject line in a thread about spelling. Whoops! :)

[Mesa]

I was like huh? What in the world.....

[mlbuchina]

I believe it is a great program for all children. I am using it with my dd6, for 1st grade spelling. You would probably not need to start with level 1, but I don't know exactly where your dc are in spelling. I believe it would be great for both your dc!

[lisabees]

:lol::lol:

 

I actually want to know the answer too...

[homeschoolmom4]

I am so so sorry. I have had little sleep and I didn't even catch that. I feel awful!!!!!! Please tell me how to change it. If I wasn't so tired I might be laughing but right now I am horrified. :confused:

[Lovedtodeath]

 

I am so so sorry. I have had little sleep and I didn't even catch that. I feel awful!!!!!! Please tell me how to change it. If I wasn't so tired I might be laughing but right now I am horrified. :confused:

:grouphug: You can't change it. You could have before you got your first reply. We are all getting a kick out of it. You made someone happy today.;)

[LoveBaby]

Don't be horrified, mama...truly with an acronym like AAS...and the letters being so close together on the keyboard, it was bound to happen sooner or later!

 

Besides...it's been the best laugh I've had all day!

 

I think the program would work great for both of your children. It has seemed to be very helpful for struggling spellers and a great reinforcement for those that have an easier time spelling.

 

:grouphug:

 

Hope you get a good night's rest, mama!

[siloam]

Amy,

 

You don't know how many times I have typed that out and caught it at the last moment. I just know that one of these days I won't catch it...

 

Yes AAS works great for normal spellers too, while it does use words on the easy side the principle works with much more challenging words. My oldest is a natural speller, spelling at a 7th grade level and she is in level 2 right now. She just moves more quickly than the others.

 

Heather

[Satori]

Hehe, thanks for the giggle! Both late last night and this morning. :)

 

We just started using AAS, and I'm psyched about it.

[Mommy22alyns]

:lol: OMG... my laugh for the day!

[Mama Lynx]

I am so so sorry. I have had little sleep and I didn't even catch that. I feel awful!!!!!! Please tell me how to change it. If I wasn't so tired I might be laughing but right now I am horrified. :confused:

 

You are NOT the first person to have made that mistake, on this board. :grouphug:

[MerryAtHope]

Hi everyone,

I want to do AAS for my struggling daughter (11), but I would like to also do it for my 10 year old. My 10 year old is an okay speller. Does this seem to be a program for only struggling children or all children?

Thanks,

Amy

 

I think it could benefit your 10 yo, and you can just go through it more quickly with a student who knows more.

 

All About Spelling is specifically designed to help these groups of kids:

- Kids who need remedial spelling help, whether they are behind or struggle to keep up in spelling

- Those who never learned the spelling rules

- New beginning spellers, to prevent spelling problems

For your 10 yo, your main goal as you go through would be to fill in any gaps--so if the words are easy, you can have your child spell just a few and move on until you hit something that is a new concept. Then you can spend more time on those things that are new.

If you felt your 10 yo was a natural speller who really doesn't have to work at spelling at all, then I'd say that AAS might not have a level out yet that would meet your child's needs. But for an "okay" speller, I'd bet there might be some new things here & there. (BTW, AAS is due out with Level 5 by the end of July. And if it makes you feel any better, I just typed AS and corrected myself!)

Merry :-)

Merry :-)

[Annie Laurie]

I read the title as AAS and didn't even catch the misspelling until it was pointed out in the reply. No big deal, don't worry. :grouphug:

[Lovedtodeath]

As to the OP: I would not buy AAS for a normal speller. If you already have it for another child I see nothing wrong with using it for them.

[tarana]

Hi everyone,

I want to do AAS for my struggling daughter (11), but I would like to also do it for my 10 year old. My 10 year old is an okay speller. Does this seem to be a program for only struggling children or all children?

Thanks,

Amy

I initially started with my 7 yr old who is a terrible speller. While we were working her twin who is way ahead on spelling also wanted to participate. Even though she knew how to spell she was not familiar with the rule or we would stumble on a intresting rule. Ex: English words don't end with an "i" & exceptions are I & Hi.

 

We are now on Level-2. When I am teaching a rule I make both the girls sit together. On the spelling practice I separate them out, since we mostly do the exercises orally. Also it helps her sister not being around for my bad speller to confide the areas where she has a problem.

 

Maybe if one of mine was't struggling I would not have investigated for help. But now that I am using it, I wonder why the school does not use it. Definetly it will help both your children. struggling or otherwise!

[kanagnostos]

I consider my son a "normal speller," and we use AAS. It has really helped him understand why words are spelled the way they are. The program we used before AAS was a program that just sort of introduced lists of words and didn't really cover the spelling rules in depth. Ds does go through the steps fairly quickly, though.

[emmsmama]

I initially started with my 7 yr old who is a terrible speller. While we were working her twin who is way ahead on spelling also wanted to participate. Even though she knew how to spell she was not familiar with the rule or we would stumble on a intresting rule. Ex: English words don't end with an "i" & exceptions are I & Hi.

 

 

What about ski, stimuli, villi? I know there are exceptions to rules, but that rule is one I've never heard before and seems like an odd one, or maybe there aren't many exceptions and I was just able to think of a few easily :)

 

I'm strongly considering AAS for my ds (6.5) for reading and spelling and may bring my daughter through it too. She's 10 and spells fairly well, but still makes silly mistakes (like forgetting to double a consonant to keep the vowel short). The things I'm wondering though are:

 

a) I've explained to her why to double the consonant and she understands the difference btwn. hope to hoping and hop to hopping or tape to taping and tap to tapping, but she still makes the errors, so would explaining the rules in AAS help at all if she seems to tune them out anyway when it comes to writing? She'll often spell things right on spelling lists the very first time, but then in her writing she spells them wrong :001_huh:

 

b) She seems to be more the type that tries to look at a word to see if it "looks" right, which is a great skill to have, to be able to see that a word looks wrong and try to fix it, but she still misses words that I think should be obvious to her that they look wrong. Would all the focus on rules muck things up because she already seems paranoid about making mistakes and then if she feels she has to run through a list of rules in her head for each word she spells she might just flip out.

[tarana]

The book does mention about Ski (Norwegian orgin). stimuli & villi are both Latin origin.

 

I discovered my duaghter has issues with spelling a year ago. We did Kumon - reading for a year. It did not help one bit. The school was no help either.

Yes before starting I was worried that she would get more confused. AAS has 1 year return policy, so I thought let me give it a try this summer and if does't work, well you can always return it back.

We do only one lesson per day. The review & review reinforces the rules. Now that we are in Level-2, I have days when I only review the previous lessons. So long she spells correctly I don't stress on the rules. Now & then when she sees a word ex:"grass" she tries to explain why the s is doubled.

I also maintain a list that she mispells the 1st time & once every 2-3 days I go thro' it.

[Lovedtodeath]

I initially started with my 7 yr old who is a terrible speller. While we were working her twin who is way ahead on spelling also wanted to participate. Even though she knew how to spell she was not familiar with the rule or we would stumble on a intresting rule. Ex: English words don't end with an "i" & exceptions are I & Hi.

 

What about ski, stimuli, villi? I know there are exceptions to rules, but that rule is one I've never heard before and seems like an odd one, or maybe there aren't many exceptions and I was just able to think of a few easily :)

 

I'm strongly considering AAS for my ds (6.5) for reading and spelling and may bring my daughter through it too. She's 10 and spells fairly well, but still makes silly mistakes (like forgetting to double a consonant to keep the vowel short). The things I'm wondering though are:

 

a) I've explained to her why to double the consonant and she understands the difference btwn. hope to hoping and hop to hopping or tape to taping and tap to tapping, but she still makes the errors, so would explaining the rules in AAS help at all if she seems to tune them out anyway when it comes to writing? She'll often spell things right on spelling lists the very first time, but then in her writing she spells them wrong :001_huh:

 

b) She seems to be more the type that tries to look at a word to see if it "looks" right, which is a great skill to have, to be able to see that a word looks wrong and try to fix it, but she still misses words that I think should be obvious to her that they look wrong. Would all the focus on rules muck things up because she already seems paranoid about making mistakes and then if she feels she has to run through a list of rules in her head for each word she spells she might just flip out.

It sounds like you might want to check out Apples and Pears. apples & pears spelling question... This thread gives a good comparison of the two.

Edited June 28, 2009 by Lovedtodeath

[emmsmama]

Tarana, thanks for explaining the final "i" in ski, villi, and stimuli (I figured villi and stimuli were from Latin or Greek as a lot of medical words are).

 

Thanks for the link. I read through the other thread about A&P and that may be a good fit as well. I like the multisensory approach of AAS though. Is there a website where I can see samples of all the A&P books. I remember a thread linking to it a while back (not the Sound Foundations page, it was another website).

[Lovedtodeath]

I bought the AAS tiles and added them to HTTS. ;)

[emmsmama]

I bought the AAS tiles and added them to HTTS. ;)

 

Yeah, I guess that would be an easy solution to go with if I go with A&P but still want the AAS tiles lol.

[MerryAtHope]

 

a) I've explained to her why to double the consonant and she understands the difference btwn. hope to hoping and hop to hopping or tape to taping and tap to tapping, but she still makes the errors, so would explaining the rules in AAS help at all if she seems to tune them out anyway when it comes to writing? She'll often spell things right on spelling lists the very first time, but then in her writing she spells them wrong :001_huh:

 

Two thoughts:

 

1, One way AAS might help with this is that it incorporates more than spelling lists. It also uses dictation and lots of review, plus lots of syllable work where they practice dividing syllables etc...

 

And when you get up to this point, it also has them do the "Writing Station" where they write sentences for some of the words. You dictate the word, the student is to say the root, then write the root, then add the suffix, then use the words in sentences. So there's a lot more thinking through the words. And lots of work with suffixes too!

 

2, You may have more of an editing problem than a spelling problem. Can your daughter go back later that day or on another day, look at her work and find spelling or other mechanics errors to correct? Sometimes it's hard to think about spelling at the same time as coming up with ideas and deciding how to put them into sentences--there's a lot of steps involved there. So breaking out the editing portion for another time can really help. I like to use the COPS acronym--capitalization, organization, puncutation, spelling--as a reminder for my kids of what to look for when they edit.

 

b) She seems to be more the type that tries to look at a word to see if it "looks" right, which is a great skill to have, to be able to see that a word looks wrong and try to fix it, but she still misses words that I think should be obvious to her that they look wrong. Would all the focus on rules muck things up because she already seems paranoid about making mistakes and then if she feels she has to run through a list of rules in her head for each word she spells she might just flip out.

 

I don't think so because AAS focuses on both auditory and visual strategies. If you try to think about how to spell the word "great" for example, and you are not sure which spelling to use--well, the auditory part is knowing it's not a double e, or knowing it's not just a by itself (a by itself could only be a long a at the end of a syllable). You have to know which letters can stand for which sounds. The visual part is looking at it and knowing that "grate" means the thing you put over your fire, "grait" doesn't look right at all, "great" is the one I want. AAS uses visual strategies for spellings that are not purely auditory by providing a word bank for the kids to read through, by using the phonogram tiles, and by separating confusing sound combos by many lessons so that a child is solid on one before adding in another. Also the most common ways to spell a sound are taught first, and the less common ones are taught later.

 

HTH! Merry :-)

[emmsmama]

Thanks for the inpu Merry :) Dd doesn't go back and fix stuff in the editing phase, so I don't know what the issue is. I do think breaking things down to root words and suffixes will be very helpful and I'm glad AAS does that if we go with the program.

 

Sometimes her spelling baffles me because she will spell words properly that I think would be difficult to spell, but then simple words are spelled wrong (ex. the other day she spelled "off" - ie. turn the light off as "of" - ie. Queen of Egypt). Where/were and while/wile sometimes happen as well as some other funky spellings of words where a silent "h" is there when it shouldn't be or not there when it should be.

 

I'm thinking next school year I'm going to do copywork and dictation with her (I REALLY should have done that this year as I think the attention to detail would have helped her immensely) and pair it with either A&Ps or AAS to focus on spelling rules and see if the combo works out well. Sometimes her errors are just speed/sloppy errors and sometimes they seem to be confusion-of-rules based. Even things like changing the "y" to "i" and adding the suffix sometimes gets forgotten and we've covered that quite a bit, so I'm lost as to what the foundational issue is that's causing problems.

[SwimmyKids]

This mistake is so funny I can't pay attention to the question asked. I keep chortling. I'm so immature.

 

I guess ASS for a poor speller would be "but."

[Tree House Academy]

LOL I love the mistake. It was a good giggle for me. :)

[mommix3]

I agree that the program would work for both of them... We are using it for my first grader and also for my struggling 4th grader. They both LOVE it.

[emmsmama]

This mistake is so funny I can't pay attention to the question asked. I keep chortling. I'm so immature.

 

I guess ASS for a poor speller would be "but."

 

:rofl:

[MerryAtHope]

Thanks for the inpu Merry :) Dd doesn't go back and fix stuff in the editing phase, so I don't know what the issue is.

 

 

Really, it could be just inexperience in putting things all together, especially if she knows the word in isolation. I set aside a specific time for my kids to edit. I praise for any errors they find, and then for any they know how to correct.

 

If they don't find errors that I think they should know, then I put a pencil "X" next to the line the error is in--one for each error if there is more than one. Then I have them look for it again. Usually now they can find it. But if they still can't find it, then I tell them which word it is, or what mark is missing, something like that. My goal is to give them as little info as possible to get them to identify the error & figure out how to fix it. If they just can't, then I tell them.

 

HTH, Merry :-)

[MerryAtHope]

I guess ASS for a poor speller would be "but."

 

:lol: that was good!