AAS at what age/reading level?

[Twilight Woods]

When can you start using AAS? Do you have to be at a certain readaing level? I want to start both DD on this spelling program.

[boscopup]

I tried it at 4/beginning to sound out words, but then put it away for a bit. I'll pull it back out at 5 probably. I think he'll do better then, when he's reading a bit more... and able to pronounce some of the consonant blends. :tongue_smilie:

 

My oldest started it at 6, but he was already reading really well by that point.

[kandty]

I started a couple of months into first grade. We started once he was able to read words like cat, hat, bat. So, we were always a little further along in our phonics study than spelling. I guess the easy for an average child is to start sometime in first grade.

[blondeviolin]

We'll be starting when we finish her reading lessons. That way the AAS will be a review of the phonics she's learned...and I don't have to add in something else. Spelling will just REPLACE reading.

[NicA]

I started AAS a few months ago with my dd5. When we started she was actually struggling with reading. She seems to have turned the corner now with reading, and AAS has not been too hard for her at all. For her it has been great to do along side of reading and phonics, because it offers even more practice and reinforcement.

[give_me_a_latte]

We'll be starting when we finish her reading lessons. That way the AAS will be a review of the phonics she's learned...and I don't have to add in something else. Spelling will just REPLACE reading.

 

That's what we're doing too. We finished phonics a few weeks ago, and I'm letting things marinate for a few months. We'll probably start AAS in late Summer.

[waa510]

We'll be starting when we finish her reading lessons. That way the AAS will be a review of the phonics she's learned...and I don't have to add in something else. Spelling will just REPLACE reading.

 

 

:iagree: We started a few weeks after finishing OPG. It's been a great review. I still have DD read a book on her reading level for me during a separate time, and we've also continued with ETC and will do the 4 BTC books. I was worried that I wouldn't like AAS as it doesn't have specific start and stop lesson plans but we've found a way to break it up into manageable chunks and it's been working out very well.

 

I think it's a good idea to wait until the kid can read the words that they will be spelling and has learned all their phonics rules. My dd catches a lot of her mistakes by trying to read what she wrote and realizing she's missing a silent 'e' or a consonant for a blend. Also, since she's been reading for a while, and continuing to, the concept of syllables, the punctuation marks, capitalization, etc. hasn't seemed foreign since they are concepts she's seen in her copywork or encountered thru her reading.

 

I'd focus on reading and writing, and then move into spelling. I really feel like that foundation has made spelling so easy...dd would have struggled if we'd tried to do it simultaneously. JME. :001_smile:

[LynnG in Arizona]

I started about 2/3rds of the way through my daughter's kindergarten year. In phonics, she was to the point of being very comfortable with short vowel words, but was just starting long vowels.

 

This was the perfect place to start for *us*. The spelling really reinforced the phonics, and the AAS letter sounds actually clarified the learning process . . . instead of treating many words as sight words/exceptions to phonics, we were able to say, "Oh, that's right . . . "a" can also make the sound "ah", or whatever.

 

We've taken AAS at a very slow, gentle pace. I think we'll be exactly half way through level 1 when she finishes kindergarten. I'm good with that - I personally think this pace should be just about perfect. I hope to get partly or all the way through level 2 by the end of first grade then go from there. I don't see any need to rush spelling, so we won't be one of those who do five levels of AAS in one year. ;) (Not that there's something wrong with playing catch up, but my daughter is still just five . . . so taking four or five years to do the program sounds reasonable to me. :))

 

HTH.

[Twilight Woods]

Thanks everyone!

[MerryAtHope]

You can start while learning to read or hold off--either way is fine. Handwriting might be a consideration for some though you can do a lot with the tiles early on. Here's an article on readiness. Merry :-)

[FairProspects]

Handwriting might be a consideration for some though you can do a lot with the tiles early on. :-)

 

:iagree:Handwriting was the biggest issue for us. I wanted ds to be able to focus on the skill of learning spelling rather than having to think through reading (decoding) and letter stroke formation at the same time. Once he was reading fluently and writing at about a 1st grade level, we were finally successful in using it. We had started and stopped a few times before that, but were never able to get past step 10 (short vowels).

[SnMomof7]

We did half of level one when we were still doing phonics but it started to feel like TOO much phonics at once (both encoding and decoding), so we just did reading phonics for a while. BUT then I realized that her spelling wasn't really coming along....at all, so we started up again, finished level one, then took a break and finished our phonics, and now we've started level two. A bit convoluted, so I'm not sure if that helps! It really depends :). We are loving it now because it is a great phonics review - particularly when it comes to syllabification!