Starting at Square One

The AVKO Philosophy: The How

Starting at Square One – for Kindergarten and 1st Graders

The only curriculum ever devised to teach reading, spelling, handwriting and keyboarding AS the students are learning the alphabet NOT after! This 313 page book is filled with lesson plans for teaching a Kindergartener/1st graders the letters, the sounds they make, how to print the letter(s) that represents the sound(s), beginning keyboard lessons, and reading using only DECODABLE words.

The alphabet is not introduced going from A to Z. McCabe introduces the letters intelligently according to common sense by the first few a child might know by rote and then the next few are the most common letters used. So it goes A, B, C, D, then R, S, T. With just these first seven letters student can begin to learn words and sentence parts, like /a cab/, or /a dad/ or /a car/, /a card/, /a bad cab/, /a bad car/ as well as names like Barb, Barbara, Cara, Brad, Bart and words like add, brat, arc, crab, radar, cars, sad, bass, scads, crass and lots more. This text can also be used for an older student who has some gaps in letter-sound recognition, such as the sound made by x , qu, digraphs or certain consonant blends. AVKO suggests you make yourself familiar with the entire book before starting to teach.

When done with this book, they should be reading at a beginning second grade level, the student is now ready for Sequential Spelling 1.

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