All about spelling questions.

[Txmom26]

I will be teaching All about spelling level 4 in a classroom setting this fall. I have never personally used All About Spelling with my own kids. But I have been homeschoolng for over 16 years and have experience teaching my own kids and at many local homechool co-ops over the years.  Does anyone with All about Spelling experience have any hints or tips for classroom use? Someone told me I don't need the tiles but can use a white board. 

[PeterPan]

Do you have an interactive whiteboard or digital projector or something? You could find a tile app and load in all the words and have them ready to go ahead of time. You could make larger tiles to use on the board. Personally, when I did AAS1-6 with my dd (after VT, as review), I found the tiles fidgety. I really like the virtual tiles we use in the Barton app.

 

If you make tiles to use on your whiteboard, use good magnets and make them a bit thicker, like maybe letters on foam or plastic tiles something, so they're easier to move around. Thin tiles take more effort to get on/off.

 

I like manips for everything with my ds, so I guess that's a bias against the whiteboard only option. :)

 

I really like the Spelling Power Activity Cards deck I just got. It's not too pricy. The activities would be awesome with 4th graders. AAS has a little bit like that, but you don't have differentiated instruction. Like if you had the Wise Guide from SWR, you'd have more challenging dictation sentences for more capable students. You could write your own.

 

Guess I just wasn't really a fan of AAS. (A school setting should have more tools, differentiated instruction, more modalities, etc.) Try to jazz it up. You could enter the word lists for the year into Quizlet and let them do the games on a computer station.

[3 ladybugs]

I don't think you need the tiles (though we are not on level 4 so maybe it is different at the higher levels). I would make sure that all children had a white board or something that they can easily erase and write on though. Paper can work in a pinch but it can be tricky to erase multiple times on paper. We are on level 2 and lately I have just been using a blackboard and having my son manipulate on that. It is working. 

 

What is the Barton app? I looked for it in Apple App store and couldn't find it. 

[MerryAtHope]

I will be teaching All about spelling level 4 in a classroom setting this fall. I have never personally used All About Spelling with my own kids. But I have been homeschoolng for over 16 years and have experience teaching my own kids and at many local homechool co-ops over the years.  Does anyone with All about Spelling experience have any hints or tips for classroom use? Someone told me I don't need the tiles but can use a white board. 

 

If you email AALP, you can get a document about using AAS in the classroom--you might find that helpful. You might also like this article for classroom teachers.

 

You can use a white board instead of letter tiles if you like. Use underlining or different colors to show when two or more letters are working together as one phonogram.

 

Does your school have levels 1-3 (and have the students been through those levels before they come to your classroom)? I think it would be helpful for you to be able to look through those and familiarize yourself with the concepts that have already been taught. It would be hard to just jump into level 4 otherwise, because AAS is a mastery-based curriculum. It assumes the students have mastered the previously taught phonograms, syllable rules, key concepts, and so on. I would plan on reviewing for the first week or two of class (going through the Phonogram, sound, and key cards and the first step of level 4 to review things like syllable rules).