Advice for Apples and Pears books

[Sarah0000]

I have an 8yo ADHD boy and a 5yo boy. Both kids were early readers and so probably learned to read by sight and phonics simultaneously. I've taught them phonics and they can sound out unfamiliar words by syllable, but that was mostly after they learned to read and mostly for the purpose of spelling while writing.

Ok, the 8yo was a late talker and doesn't pronounce all his sounds correctly. He often spells the way he talks. For instance, he'll write "sis" instead of "this." He will usually go back and fix such things; he always will if it's for school and is directed to review and edit. He also sometimes can't hear the second sound in blends, I think again because his pronunciation isn't great. On the other hand his spelling is pretty good for words like "unfortunately." So what do I do regarding spelling?

I'm considering Apples and Pears because it looks like it really forces the student to listen for each sound in words. Much of Book A looks much too easy, but perhaps he needs to start there? And if so, any reason I shouldn't combine my 8yo and 5yo? My 5yo seems to be a good speller for his age but he would probably find the program fun and two birds with one stone and all that.

Or might my 8yo be ok in Book B? It looks like Book B still has the lessons forcing the student to fill in the missing sound which is what I think will help him most. He has completed the second year of Dictation Day by Day, which I did have to sometimes help him sound out words, and is currently doing Spelling Workout C with no issues. 

What do more experienced folks think?

[EssTreeB]

I am not more experienced, but I am almost finished Apples and Pears A with my twin 8 year olds (just finished second grade), and it's been the only thing that's worked for spelling. I plan to continue with B. I like the repetition, dictation, writing, and the flow of the lessons. It's open and go for me. We started with A because my kids are great readers, but terrible spellers. And I have seen steady improvement. There is an Apples and Pears placement test that I used: https://www.soundfoundations.co.uk/en_US/learning-to-spell/

I am of the mindset that I start at a level where they feel success for a bit first before it becomes challenging. Hence, level A. 

Personally, I think it's way too much writing for a 5 year old. Level A ramps up pretty quickly and if your 5 year old is not a strong writer, it will get overwhelming. My 8 year olds don't love writing, but this program helped them build writing stamina and confidence. I won't attempt with my 5 year old. He is an advanced reader, but he is not interested in writing anything yet. So, I guess it depends on your kid, just like everything else 🙂 Best of luck!

 

 

[Rosie_0801]

I agree there's too much writing for a younger kid or dysgraphic kid. My dd couldn't do an entire lesson in one day, and I had her fingerspell most of the words to reduce the burden of writing.

[Clemsondana]

This is outside of the original question, but is he working with a speech therapist?  One of mine has apraxia of speech and the difficulty with blends that you are describing sounds similar.  They were shocked that kiddo didn't have problems with reading or writing, but I think it was helped by the fact that we did phonics even though kid was picking up reading faster than we were doing the phonics.  It was funny because part of why I worked on the phonics was because it helped me to find the specific speech sounds that were problems, but I think that working through lists of rhyming words helped kiddo learn to spell them even if 1/2 were said incorrectly.  I've found in my tutoring that kids who have non-standard pronunciation, whether through speech difficulty or dialect differences (for instance, saying 'dis' for 'this') tend to not recognize the words when they encounter them, so sort of the reverse of what you're dealing with.  Anyway, you may already be working on the speech, but for us apraxia treatment has been a long haul so if it's something that you might end up doing you might need to get started as soon as you can.  Apraxia kids often struggle with writing, so if this is something that you're dealing with then writing struggles may be part of it.  

[Tanaqui]

Apples and Pears is a good program. I credit it with the fact that my dyslexic kiddo can spell well enough for spellcheck to catch the errors and for other people to generally understand what she means.

And it's certainly easy to implement! 10 - 15 minutes a day, everything scripted. You can honestly say "This won't take very long, let's suck it up and do it", secure in the knowledge that it's over fast.

But it's not really what I call a super fun curriculum, and there's a lot of repetition. That's what the dyslexic kid needs. It's maybe a little heavy on the repetition for a 5 year old who is not known to have any learning disabilities. I wouldn't combine your kids for this unless both kids really want to.

I said both kids because there's another concern here - sometimes, a child who has trouble in one area finds it upsetting or frustrating to take the same course at the same time with a younger sibling who doesn't have problems. I think of Marie Curie here - when she was three, her older sister was having trouble learning to read, and so her parents required her to study every day during vacation and read aloud to them at night. And to make it less tedious she decided to "teach" her baby sister - but she wasn't happy when young Manya one day came in during Reading Aloud Time and took the book from her hands and fluently read what the older girl had been stumbling over!