For MerryAtHope ? about using AAS

[mlbuchina]

You posted this on another thread, and I read it with great interest. We are in Level 2, and I feel like I am still feeling my way in how to best use the program. I love it (she hates it), and my dd is learning how to spell well, albeit, she is having some isues. I was hoping to "pick your brain", if I may.

 

Formost, how many lessons a week do you do? Sometimes we do one lesson a week and sometimes we do two. Dd is spelling the words fine most of the time, but the review of the words I don't understand. We do go over the key cards, but not the phonograms or sound cards.

 

Do you have them write the words every day?

 

Do you have them write the dictated phrases every day? Usually, I have my dd write the words every day and then write two phrases and two sentences.

 

The spelling problems she has are compound words, (even though I think I am pronouncing the word such that you would know it was one word), and confusing "e" and "i", (even though I over pronounce their short sounds, and she repeats them back to me correctly). I have gone back and reviewed all the phonogram cards, and she says them back to me with all the sounds correctly, so I am thinking this is a dialect issue? (Alabama. We so love to make every letter in the word its own syllable.:lol:)

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I hope that it is just operator error and this can be fixed.

 

Thank you so much for any thoughts or advice!

 

 

quote:

"Are you trying to review cards that are *mastered* every day, or only the cards that are in the review tab? If you have a ton of cards in the review tab, you may be moving too quickly & may need to just take a couple of days to clear out your review tabs. Here's what we do:

 

After a lesson, the word cards go into the review tab (there's 10 of them). I review 3-5 per day, just to break those up so they aren't just memorizing a pattern. So we take 2-3 or so days to get through those. But otherwise, anything that is behind a review tab longer-term, trying to be learned--usually there's only a couple of those type of cards. We only spend 2-5 minutes on review cards, and then 10-15 doing part of the lesson.

 

I actually keep all of my review cards behind one tab. I do separate them out once they are mastered, but I find it's easier for me to just grab the group of cards behind one review tab, go through them, and then go to the lesson.

 

Usually once a week I choose some mastered cards to review from one of the sections--I just rotate through them so I hit all of the mastered cards once a month or so. I do that because my kids need ongoing mastered review.

 

However, if I think something was mastered & then it's not, I just pull it back into review for the next day, and try to keep it there a bit longer. Again, if we get a lot of cards there, we just take a few days off lessons to clear out the review tab. I do a shorter day then--usually 10 minutes, so it seems like a "break" to them too.

 

You're right that there's more dictation as you go on. Level 2 has 6 phrases, 6 sentences each lesson, and Level 3 has 12 sentences each lesson--so they get progressively longer.

 

Merry :-)"

[mlbuchina]

:lurk5:

[MerryAtHope]

Hi Michele!

 

Let's see if I can help. :001_smile:

 

 

 

Formost, how many lessons a week do you do? Sometimes we do one lesson a week and sometimes we do two. Dd is spelling the words fine most of the time, but the review of the words I don't understand. We do go over the key cards, but not the phonograms or sound cards.

 

I don't focus on how many lessons a week. I teach my 7th grader for 20 minutes, and my 5th grader for 15 minutes. (The oldest has more time because I'd like to finish with spelling by the end of 8th grade or thereabouts, so we work on it longer.). Literally, I set the timer & stop when it goes off!

 

We start with the review cards. Any cards that are in their review stack, we review--that's words, sounds, phonograms, or key cards. We spend 2-5 minutes on review. I allow my kids to choose whether they want to spell orally or write words on a whiteboard or on paper for the review. If they get the word incorrect, I have them write it and circle or underline the letters that they struggled with. That card stays in review.

 

Sound cards--I say the sounds, they write them.

 

Phonogram cards--I show them the phonogram, they say the sound.

 

Key cards--I read the rule with the blank, they fill in the blank orally.

 

Any cards they know easily can move on to mastered. (Well, we have some special needs going on here that require us to do extra review, so for us they don't move to mastered until they've gotten the cards correct 3 weeks in a row--I can post more on my revised review system if anyone is interested. As written though, if a child knows a card easily, without guessing etc..., it can be moved to mastered. If they get it wrong later, pull the card out of mastered & back to review).

 

After about 2-5 minutes spent on review cards, we do the lesson. I just pick up wherever we left off the previous day, and go until the timer goes off. In Level 2, lessons took 2-3 days for my oldest, 3-5 for my youngest. Level 3 was 3-4 days for my oldest, level 4 has been 4-6 days.

 

After we do the review, here's what we do (generally) each day:

 

Day 1 might be reading the word bank, doing the review lesson portion and teaching a new concept. (For my youngest, we might spend 2 days on this). Day 2 might be going over the 10 main words and some of the dictation sentences. (In level 2 we mixed it up as you do--a few phrases & a few sentences. By level 3, they are all sentences). Day 3 do the reinforcement words and the rest of the dictation. If there are a lot, maybe do this day 4 as well (for my youngest, it might take a day or two longer than for my oldest).

 

I tend to put the word cards in the review stack after we finish the entire lesson.

 

Do you have them write the words every day?

 

No. If she likes the tiles, her first exposure with the words should be making them in tiles. Then she can write them that day or the next. If she doesn't really like the tiles, then just have her write the words on a white board or on paper. She doesn't need to write them after that, unless you notice that she does better with the review cards if she writes them. Or, if a word is troublesome you can work on it more. Mainly though, once my kids have written the list of words once, we move on.

 

Do you have them write the dictated phrases every day? Usually, I have my dd write the words every day and then write two phrases and two sentences.

 

Do you mean writing the dictations more than one time each? No. But I do divide it up so that they don't do all of the dictations in one day. Usually we do them over 2-3 days. If there are lots of reinforcement words, I alternate--a column of words, some dictation, another column, etc...

 

All of the main list of 10 words, and some of the reinforcement words are in the dictations, so there's not a need to keep doing the main list daily. Also, the words continue to come up in future dictations, so there's ongoing review that way. If she misses a word in a future dictation, you can pull that word and any applicable sound, phonogram & key cards back into review.

 

I like to keep a stack of blank cards in the back of my decks. I only look a minute or two for a mastered card, and if I don't come up with it, I simply make a new card. I also use them for reinforcement words my kids miss. Here's a template that Marie Rippel posted on the AAS message board.

 

The spelling problems she has are compound words, (even though I think I am pronouncing the word such that you would know it was one word), and confusing "e" and "i", (even though I over pronounce their short sounds, and she repeats them back to me correctly). I have gone back and reviewed all the phonogram cards, and she says them back to me with all the sounds correctly, so I am thinking this is a dialect issue? (Alabama. We so love to make every letter in the word its own syllable.:lol:)

 

So, do you mean in the dictations she'll miss a compound word? What I do when that happens is say, "There is a compound word, can you find which words should be a compound word?" and then see if they can fix it. If they can, great. If not, I pull that word back into the review box.

 

Short E & I--yes, dialect can play a big part! Here's a video Marie made on the pin/pen confusion. You might try slowing down how you say it just a bit so that the vowel sound is clearer. Let her know that sometimes when we say a word quickly, the vowel sound gets muffled or changed a bit, so we have to pay extra careful attention to how we say the word. Drag out the pronunciation just a bit to help her hear it. You may need to really enunciate them, and have her practice “pronouncing for spelling,” in order for her to get them. Another idea is to have her watch your mouth as you make them, and to watch herself in the mirror. The mouth should be open taller when she says the short E sound than when she says the short I sound.

 

Chatterbee discussions that may be helpful to refer to:

http://www.thechatterbee.com/group/allaboutspellinglevel1/forum/topics/question-about-enin-confusion

 

http://www.thechatterbee.com/group/allaboutspellinglevel2/forum/topics/e-and-i-sounds

 

http://www.thechatterbee.com/group/allaboutspellinglevel2/forum/topics/help-with-step-4

 

 

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I hope that it is just operator error and this can be fixed.

 

Thank you so much for any thoughts or advice!

 

 

 

 

I hope this was helpful, let me know if you have other questions!

 

Merry :-)

Edited January 25, 2010 by MerryAtHope

[MerryAtHope]

Michele,

 

I just noticed that your dd is only 6. I think that writing the 10 words daily plus dictations daily is an awful lot of writing for her. I'd either slow it down & let the lessons take longer, or just have her make the words with tiles & write 1 each of phrases/sentences in a day. If she gets the material easily, you could even choose to not do all of the dictations. If she needs the review though, I'd just let it stretch out longer. For one as young as she is, I'd probably keep lessons to 10-15 minutes at the most. Keep it light & fun. At that age, she could even do dictations with tiles if she wanted to--as long as she won't run out of tiles, LOL! Usually it works with the phrases to do them in tiles. Maybe it's all the writing that she's not liking? Seriously, with her being only 6, she's already ahead of the game by being in level 2. Things start to pick up a bit in Level 3, so I wouldn't feel any pressure to get through this quickly. By the end of Level 6, kids are spelling at a high school level.

 

Merry :-)

Edited January 25, 2010 by MerryAtHope

[mlbuchina]

This is just what I needed! I can't tell you how helpful this information is. I knew that I must be trying to fit way too much in, and my poor baby was ending up on overload.

 

 

I just noticed that your dd is only 6. I think that writing the 10 words daily plus dictations daily is an awful lot of writing for her.

 

I was thinking this was possible. She tells me she doesn't like spelling, and when I ask her what she doesn't like about it, her answer is WRITING. I just didn't know how to pare it down. She really is very smart, and I forget that she is only 6!

 

By the end of Level 6, kids are spelling at a high school level.

 

 

I didn't know that. Oh, that makes me feel so much better! I thought they went with grade level, sort of. When she went through Level 1 so fast, I wasn't really sure what "grade" level each one was supposed to match with. I will get the timer out and set it to 10 to 15 minutes and leave it at that. I hope that will help her learn to love spelling again. She does like using the whiteboard, so we will use that a lot more.

 

Merry, thank you again for all this info. I cannot tell you how much this means to me. You are truely an answer to prayer!:D

[MerryAtHope]

You are very welcome, I'm glad to help any time.

 

You might be interested in this--in the FAQ's on the AAS site, there is a question that talks about AAS and grade levels. That might help you see how the scope of AAS works. And then here is a short one just saying that it goes up to high school level.

 

I hope spelling goes better for your dd! Merry :-)