Finally finished All About Spelling 7!

[Kuovonne]

DD finally finished All About Spelling!

DD started in the middle of AAS1 in first grade, and she just finished AAS7, halfway through 7th grade. I can’t say that she used the complete series, as she didn’t do the first half of AAS1. However, she has spelled every single spelling word and written every single dictation sentence in books 2-7.

Our spelling time isn’t over, though. I’ll continue to have DD review words, and I’ll add words that she misspells in other writing to her spelling review list.

I’ve tracked her spelling words using the spaced repetition software Anki. Here are some statistics. There are almost 1500 spelling words in her deck. This number doesn’t match the AAS list because I didn’t add most of the AAS1 words, and I added a few other words that weren’t in AAS but gave her trouble.

The longest interval is for the word “clock.” She first learned “clock” six years ago, and she’s spelled it 7 times, correctly every time. It isn’t scheduled to appear for 10 years. We won’t be doing spelling that long!

The shortest interval is for “pickle.” She first learned it almost exactly two years ago. She has reviewed in 148 times, and gotten it wrong 39 times (usually “pickel”), most recently today. She’ll see it again tomorrow.

She has reviewed spelling words for 58% of the calendar days. I’m surprised that percent isn’t higher, as we work on spelling every school day, plus during the summer. (She got weekends, holidays, vacations, summer camps, etc. off from spelling.) For all those days, we spent only 90 hours on review words across all the years. That’s less than 5 minutes per day on average. (Anki doesn’t track the time spent on initial teaching of the words, so total time spent on spelling is more.)

[umsami]

Wow! What a sense of accomplishment.  If it were me, I'd through a party. :)  Maybe get those Cheese-Its that look like Scrabble tiles and a cake. :)

[Janeway]

On 11/2/2018 at 7:14 PM, Kuovonne said:

DD finally finished All About Spelling!

DD started in the middle of AAS1 in first grade, and she just finished AAS7, halfway through 7th grade. I can’t say that she used the complete series, as she didn’t do the first half of AAS1. However, she has spelled every single spelling word and written every single dictation sentence in books 2-7.

Our spelling time isn’t over, though. I’ll continue to have DD review words, and I’ll add words that she misspells in other writing to her spelling review list.

I’ve tracked her spelling words using the spaced repetition software Anki. Here are some statistics. There are almost 1500 spelling words in her deck. This number doesn’t match the AAS list because I didn’t add most of the AAS1 words, and I added a few other words that weren’t in AAS but gave her trouble.

The longest interval is for the word “clock.” She first learned “clock” six years ago, and she’s spelled it 7 times, correctly every time. It isn’t scheduled to appear for 10 years. We won’t be doing spelling that long!

The shortest interval is for “pickle.” She first learned it almost exactly two years ago. She has reviewed in 148 times, and gotten it wrong 39 times (usually “pickel”), most recently today. She’ll see it again tomorrow.

She has reviewed spelling words for 58% of the calendar days. I’m surprised that percent isn’t higher, as we work on spelling every school day, plus during the summer. (She got weekends, holidays, vacations, summer camps, etc. off from spelling.) For all those days, we spent only 90 hours on review words across all the years. That’s less than 5 minutes per day on average. (Anki doesn’t track the time spent on initial teaching of the words, so total time spent on spelling is more.)

I am thinking I should know this already but, what is Anki? And I assume you recommend AAS? Congratulations on all the hard work!!!!

Edited November 4, 2018 by Janeway

[MerryAtHope]

Congratulations! That's a great accomplishment! (And if you haven't seen it, here's what happens after All About Spelling 7!)

[Lori D.]

Congratulations!

re: calendar words
You can build in review by having her full name and either the day of the week or the calendar date in the top right corner of her math page each day.

re: spelling now that you're done with AAS
In addition to keeping "fresh" by practicing words that she misspells in her own writing, you might consider combining spelling and vocabulary. Maybe do a roots-based program. Or even more simple, is what we did back in my 9th grade public school English class: each week we had to accumulate 10 new vocabulary words from our reading (or in browsing the dictionary), and by the end of the week we had to know the definition for each of the 10 words, be able to use each of the words correctly in a sentence, and know how to correctly spell each word.

[Kuovonne]

On 11/3/2018 at 7:23 PM, Janeway said:

I am thinking I should know this already but, what is Anki? And I assume you recommend AAS? Congratulations on all the hard work!!!!

 

Anki is spaced repetition software for flashcards. Instead of using physical cards for spelling words, I use electronic flashcards. Using Anki makes it easy to manage all of DD’s spelling review words. https://apps.ankiweb.net/

As far as recommending AAS, it worked well for my one DD who used it. It would have been overkill for my other DD who is a natural speller. I also highly adapted AAS to suit my family. I don’t think that any one spelling program works for everyone.

[Kuovonne]

On 11/3/2018 at 9:41 PM, MerryAtHope said:

Congratulations! That's a great accomplishment! (And if you haven't seen it, here's what happens after All About Spelling 7!)

 

Thank you. It felt like a major accomplishment to me.

I already have a plan for after AAS. DD will continue to practice her review words every day, and I will continue to add new words to her deck as she misspells them in other writing. I do not plan on following the AAS plan, so technically DD hasn’t finished AAS7 as she will never do the very last lesson.

[Kuovonne]

On 11/3/2018 at 10:44 PM, Lori D. said:

Congratulations!

re: calendar words
You can build in review by having her full name and either the day of the week or the calendar date in the top right corner of her math page each day.

Ha ha. That’s funny. I’ve been fighting DD for 7 years to get her to properly head her paper with her name and the date. There is absolutely no way that she will ever write her full name, the day of the week, or the complete calendar date on schoolwork until she goes to a real school. The best I can get her to do its to scrawl something that vaguely looks like the digits for the month and day somewhere on the paper.

On the other hand, all of the days of the week and the months of the year are in her spelling review deck. They will all eventually come due. As for her name ... it is short enough that she knows how to spell it without review.

On 11/3/2018 at 10:44 PM, Lori D. said:

re: spelling now that you're done with AAS
In addition to keeping "fresh" by practicing words that she misspells in her own writing, you might consider combining spelling and vocabulary. Maybe do a roots-based program. Or even more simple, is what we did back in my 9th grade public school English class: each week we had to accumulate 10 new vocabulary words from our reading (or in browsing the dictionary), and by the end of the week we had to know the definition for each of the 10 words, be able to use each of the words correctly in a sentence, and know how to correctly spell each word.

 

 

It sounds like you had a method of acquiring vocabulary that worked well for you. I do not think that method will work for this particular DD. I already have her doing a different vocabulary workbook. Sorry for being so negative.

Edited November 5, 2018 by Kuovonne

[MerryAtHope]

1 hour ago, Kuovonne said:

 

Thank you. It felt like a major accomplishment to me.

I already have a plan for after AAS. DD will continue to practice her review words every day, and I will continue to add new words to her deck as she misspells them in other writing. I do not plan on following the AAS plan, so technically DD hasn’t finished AAS7 as she will never do the very last lesson.

 

Oh I wouldn't consider it "not finished" because of that! It IS a major accomplishment and definitely to be celebrated--and you ARE continuing on with learning new words in a way that works for you and your dd (your plan really isn't far off, actually!) 

[Lori D.]

1 hour ago, Kuovonne said:

Ha ha. That’s funny. I’ve been fighting DD for 7 years to get her to properly head her paper with her name and the date. There is absolutely no way that she will ever write her full name, the day of the week, or the complete calendar date on schoolwork until she goes to a real school. The best I can get her to do its to scrawl something that vaguely looks like the digits for the month and day somewhere on the paper.

On the other hand, all of the days of the week and the months of the year are in her spelling review deck. They will all eventually come due. As for her name ... it is short enough that she knows how to spell it without review.

 

It sounds like you had a method of acquiring vocabulary that worked well for you. I do not think that method will work for this particular DD. I already have her doing a different vocabulary workbook. Sorry for being so negative.

 

LOL -- I didn't take any of that personally. Just throwing out some ideas in case they were a fit. Since they're not, just discard, and no hard feelings.