Bind Your Own Books at Home

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@AVKO.org

Whether you are scrapbooking, self-publishing your child's best-selling work of fiction, doing arts and crafts, or creating a portfolio of writings, there are many reasons why you may want to bind your own book at home. AVKO recommends daily writing; creating a book that contains all of these writings, in chronological order, can easily show the progress that your student has made in writing over the course of a lifetime.

BindingBooksBeautifully.com has ready-to-go packages for you to use to make your own books at home.

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Become an Institutional Member Today

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@avko.org

AVKO has recently revamped Institutional Membership, increasing the resources offered as well as the discount. Everyone can become an Institutional Member, not just schools, non-profits, tutoring centers, etc. and can reap the benefits.

The newest e-books are available for free download with Institutional Membership, including the Word Family Supplements 1-7 (that correspond to each of the levels of Sequential Spelling) and the Spelling Remediation Test Kit (which has 17 pre-tests, diagnostic tests, and prescriptive tests for remediation and evaluation of spelling and reading level). Additionally, Institutional Members have read-only access to all of the other AVKO materials (excluding Sequential Spelling and Engaging Language Kits). They can read and use the entire books of the other AVKO supplemental and reference materials from the internet, but cannot download or print them.

Benefits of AVKO Institutional Membership

Institutional Membership is open to individuals as well as tutoring centers, schools, learning centers, homeschool resource centers, etc.

• Access to all of the benefits of AVKO's Individual Membership (see below)
• 25% discount off all materials ordered
• Read-only access to ALL AVKO curriculum materials (except for Sequential Spelling and Engaging Language Kits)
• Access to AVKO's newest e-books:
  • Word Family Supplements 1-7 for Sequential Spelling
  • Spelling Remediation Test Kit

If you are currently an individual member, you may upgrade your membership to an Institutional Membership for only $50 from now until the end of August. E-mail info@avko.org or call AVKO at 810.686.9283 or toll-free at 1-866-285-6612 to do this.

Learn more about membership here

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New AVKO Resource: Sequential Spelling Word Family Supplement E-books

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@avko.org

AVKO is proud to announce that we have launched a new e-book resource series called Sequential Spelling Word Family Supplements. These invaluable e-books correspond to each of the Sequential Spelling levels and contain the pages from The Patterns of English Spelling: Combined with Word Families in Sentence Context for ALL of the major word families presented. This means that you can quickly turn to see all of the other words in a particular word family being tested, as well as have a bank of contextual sentences for the most common words. These can be used for dictation exercises, vocabulary building, choral reading, reading practice, handwriting practice, keyboarding practice, and more! These e-books are available for $7.50 apiece on Scribd.com

AVKO's Sequential Spelling 7 Word Family Supplement

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New AVKO Resource for Testing Spelling and Reading Levels

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@avko.org

AVKO has introduced a new e-book resource: a collection of diagnostic, prescriptive, and pre-tests for spelling and reading. This collection of 17 tests written by Don McCabe will allow you to quickly determine which spelling patterns your students need to learn, where they should be placed in Sequential Spelling (or another spelling program), and how to best remediate their spelling. This collection will also give you all of the information you need to quickly create your own spelling program. These tests can also be used for ESL instruction, special education, creating an IEP, and many other things!

This is available for purchase from AVKO for only $5.00 from the Scribd website. You can see all of AVKO's documents on Scribd here.

Spelling Remediation Test Kit

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Engaging Language Kit by Brian McCabe Sample on Scribd

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@AVKO.org

Learn more about AVKO's Engaging Language Kits by Brian McCabe. Check out this sample of the various language arts activities that your students will have fun -- and learn -- with below.

381 Sample

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Brain Rules

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@avko.org

Brain Rules, a new book, extolls the essence of what AVKO's philosophy is all about with psychological and biological research evidence.

AVKO recommends that you check out this wonderful and readable book about how we think, how we best learn, and what doesn't work in our present educational and professional systems for our own brains.

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Kindle in the Classroom

By Gloria Goldsmith

AVKO's materials are available on Kindle.

I have read several articles in the last few weeks about the use of Kindle for general classroom learning and how they may well change our educational establishments, both in public schools and schools of higher learning.

The possibilities for Colleges and Universities to adopt the use of Kindles initially are greater since technology usage is higher among college students and they are always looking for an inexpensive way to snag the required texts for classes. The cost for a textbook versus a Kindle download is about 25 to 32% cheaper for the student and the savings to the environment means less paper used and printing required, so less energy used. That seems positive.

Some school districts have already been calculating the savings in textbooks that is possible. Schools are waiting with bated breath for the price of the Kindle to lower enough (dramatically) that it would make the acquisition of a few thousand feasible for their school district.

Some of the newest models, Kindle DX, and Kindle 2 have been criticized as less classroom friendly, which seems odd (heads up, manufacturer), since school district purchases would be a boon to the bottom line sales numbers of this newer device and could be the very trend that could make them inexpensive enough to become a mundane back-to-school expenditure.

What are your thoughts of this newest trend?

Here are a couple of articles voicing some other opinions.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/06/15/crowell

There are several articles at this website, http://www.edukindle.com/category/the-kindle-in-the-classroom/

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Using Spelling to Teach Reading

We just received this great testimonial for Sequential Spelling that emphasizes an important benefit of the series: its ability to teach reading ability (decoding) through the "backdoor" of spelling. Because of the patterned approach, which is emphasized by the use of color to break the words down into their constituent patterns, students will start to spontaneously do this themselves when they attempt to decode new words. They will see the patterns in words they aren't even learning through the course of the spelling program. This is truly powerful! And, this is all without having to drill on phonics, nonsense words, or choral readings.

This is the second AVKO Sequential Spelling book I've bought. We're just finishing the first one, and I have to say, I'm really impressed. My son has dyslexia and has a terrible time reading. Before we starting the Spelling One book, he could barely read at all. After finishing the first book, his reading has improved dramatically. I was truly amazed. I didn't get the spelling book to help with his reading, but instead because I liked the way it taught spelling. And he is learning to spell and doing great at it, BUT, the book also helped him with reading. - Sue M.

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New, Lower Prices for AVKO's E-books

We have decided to lower the prices on our e-books to accommodate the tightened pursestrings of our members. Now, no individual e-book is more than $24.95 -- and they always have free shipping and handling. Check out our updated Materials Catalog for more information.

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New AVKO Materials: Engaging Language Kits!

AVKO is proud to announce that we have have introduced a new line of supplemental curriculum materials for language arts: Engaging Language Kits (by Brian McCabe).  Each of these seven kits corresponds to one of the levels of Sequential Spelling to reinforce the word families learned in that level.  Each kit has over 125 pages of activities for your students:

• Creative writing prompts
• Word games using the word families of the Sequential Spelling level
• Anagrams
• Word Searches
• Scrambled Words
• Missing Word Families
• Speech to Spelling Translation
• Dictation exercises
• Story writing
• Readings for Comprehension
• Helpful Appendix Items for Even More Activities and Prompts

Though these activities correspond to each of the levels of Sequential Spelling, one needn't be teaching Sequential Spelling to use these exercises with students.  They will complement any language arts curriculum or just for fun!  They ascend in level of difficulty with each volume (level of abstract thought, word families presented, etc.).

Each Engaging Language Kit costs only $12.95 and comes in a 3-ring binder for easy access to the worksheets.   Use the e-coupon code "blog" to receive a 10% discount on your order.  

Buy the Engaging Language Kit 1 now: 

or visit AVKO.org to purchase the other levels.

Resources for All Your Spelling Needs

Resources for All Your Spelling Needs

Pre-Packaged; Teacher Involved	Pre-Packaged; Limited Teacher Involvement	Specific Problem Areas	Completely Customized; Teacher Involved
Sequential Spelling 1-7 Learn more aboutSequential Spelling.	Individualized Spelling word lists on SpellingCity.com Use the lists as they are. The lists are ascend in level of difficulty. Access the lists now	The Tricky Words Learn More	Individualized Spelling word lists on SpellingCity.com Use the lists as diagnostic tests, teaching only the word families that need to be taught. Learn how to create your program
Sequential Spelling for Adults	Become an AVKO member to access supplemental materials, including readings for comprehension, worksheets, and the versatile book, Word Families in Sentence Context	The I Before E Set	Become an AVKO member to access the spelling and reference materials necessary to create your own Sequential Spelling-like tests, includingThe Patterns of English Spelling.
If it is to be, it is up to me to do it	Sequential Spelling on DVD	Speech to Spelling	Individualized Spelling

Other Resources:

• Customize Sequential Spelling
• Supplement Sequential Spelling with spelling rules
• Using Color in Sequential Spelling
• About Sequential Spelling Word Lists
• Articles and Essays about Spelling
• Spelling Research

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AVKO's Book of the Month for May

Each month, AVKO selects one of its materials to feature and discounts it by at least10%. Members receive even more discounts. This month, the special is on the Advanced Student Speller Pack, Sequential Spelling volumes 5-7.

Another month, another new special. This month, we are highlighting the advanced levels of Sequential Spelling, Volumes 5, 6, and 7. If you have an advanced speller or if you just want to stockpile your Sequential Spelling books until you are ready for them, take advantage of this offer from AVKO!

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AVKO Recommends These Books

AVKO recommends these books to supplement your educational, homeschooling, and grammar experience. Let us know if you recommend any other books. We will be adding to this list continually.

Check out the list of AVKO-Recommended Books

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