New Teaching Aid Freebies on AVKO.org

Posted by Brian McCabe, Brian@AVKO.org

AVKO is proud to share with you a few new teaching aid freebies for the teaching of reading and spelling, or for your reference in the classroom, homeschool, or resource/reference room.

Newest Freebies:

• The Complete I Before E Rule - with Explanations (PDF on Scribd.com)
• A Short Listing of Words That Tend to Defy Phonic Analysis (PDF on Scribd.com)
• A Listing of Basic Words That Tend to Defy Phonic Analysis (PDF on Scribd.com)
• Miscellaneous Word Families with Silent Letters (PDF on Scribd.com)

Preview "A Listing of Basic Words That Tend to Defy Phonic Analysis" below:

A Listing of Basic Words Which Tend to Defy Phonic Analysis

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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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Follow-up from Josiah (Featured student in To Teach a Dyslexic Video)

We recently heard from Josiah about his latest academic success. Josiah worked with Don McCabe at the AVKO reading clinic in Birch Run for a few weeks and was featured in the AVKO video "To Teach a Dyslexic." We are so proud of him! Here's his e-mail to Don.

Hello Mr. McCabe. This is Josiah Holland. I hope this E-mail finds you well, and I hope you still use this E-mail address. I would like to tell you that I have graduated from Harding University with a Bachelor’s Degree in General Studies. Also I would like to thank you for teaching me some of the basic reading and writing skills needed to complete my education; without them I probably would not have even been able to get into college. Hopefully we can stay in touch.

Sincerely Josiah

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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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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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The Benefits and Features of Sequential Spelling

AVKO's Sequential Spelling program is very effective and is very simple to use. No preparation required on the part of the homeschooling parent or teacher. The student doesn't have to do any copywork or busywork in order to get the benefits of the program -- but these may be used to reinforce or review the words or the lessons.

This new graphic shows how the word families presented in Sequential Spelling build both vertically and horizontally. See how there are teachable moments embedded in the lessons -- contractions, tricky words, possessives, names, etc. See the cross-referencing to The Patterns of English Spelling (available for free with membership as an e-book) and important rules or spelling notes in the footnotes.

Learn more about Sequential Spelling | AVKO and SpellingCity | New Sequential Spelling DVD

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Last Chance for the Book of the Month Special

Today is the last day to get your copy of Starting at Square One at a drastically reduced price. The special ends at midnight tonight (the special has been extended to end at midnight of May 1st!). If you need a language arts curriculum for your kindergartner or first grader (K-1), ESL, or older student who needs help with phonemic awareness and/or word attack skills, this is the book for you. As the alphabet is taught, your student will learn reading, spelling, handwriting, and keyboarding. The book uses completely decodable words as the letters of the alphabet are taught.

Learn more about the Book of the Month special and Starting at Square One

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Teaching Spelling Patterns vs. Spelling Rules

We're frequently asked about the teaching of spelling rules and how a spelling program can be effective without teaching spelling rules. Here's my answer: English spelling has definite patterns, but these are not easily encapsulated nor understood by simplistic and abstract spelling rules.

If you want a program that has zero preparation work on your part (but can still be customized, as necessary, to meet the needs of all of your children) and is very quick and painless, definitely go with AVKO. In our experience, it's not about efficacy per se that really separates out the various Orton-Gillingham-based programs -- all of the O-G methods are effective, especially for dyslexics. What does separate out the programs is the ease for the parents to teach it, and the students' levels of frustration. When the complicated rules for spelling are taught, it becomes more of a hassle most of the time. The rules are very abstract, have multiple exceptions, and are not easy to remember. But, most importantly, when rules are taught, and the child tries to apply what he has learned and gets to an exception, he gets even more frustrated than if he had misspelled it after never having studied a supposed-rule to begin with.

In some languages, it makes sense to teach rules. In English, it makes sense to teach patterns. Being an amalgamation of so many different languages and retaining so much of their original phonics, it becomes very difficult to teach rules that cut across the entire spectrum. So, we don't.

However, we do have materials available on teaching the spelling patterns that are common (and uncommonly taught) in English. I would recommend that you see our page on Sequential Spelling (ss.avko.org) -- on there, there is a link to how to customize your Sequential Spelling program. This will be of great interest to you, I'm sure. http://avko.org/Essays/customizing_ss.html

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The 11 Types of Tricky Words

TYPES OF TRICKY WORDS:

There are a lot of reasons why people misspell words. It's therefore important to recognize the different sources of difficulty so that they may be addressed. AVKO's materials work to alleviate the different reasons why your children and students misspell words; perhaps you even find yourself having some of these problems.

See also: The Teaching of Reading and Spelling: A Continuum from Kindergarten through College (available for free as an e-book with AVKO membership) and The Tricky Words, our popular book that confronts the most entrenched errors relating to these common problems.

1. Homonyms, such as: be, bee, Bea, B.
2. Dialect dependent homonyms, such as: ant, aunt. (In dialects in which aunt rhymes with haunt, aunt, and ant technically aren't homonyms.
3. Heteronyms, such as lead and lead.
4. Typography dependent homographs such as resume and résumé.
5. Similarity of configuration words such as: solder, soldier, solider.
6. Similarity (even identity) of letters in words whose only significant difference is in the transpositions such as in: expect and except.
7. Look-alike letters: n/u n/r n/c e/a being the only difference as in: change and charge; superstitions and superstitious; and ancient, accent, and accident.
8. Words of almost identical meanings but whose pronunciation is ACCENT-DEPENDENT upon the part of speech as in: RECord & reCORD.
9. Words that have two or more acceptable spellings such as: Channukah, Hanukah.
10. Malaprop-prone words such as to circumcise instead of circumscribe.
11. Words easily distinguishable in their base form that can cause problems in other forms such as hop and hope can be misspelled in the -ed and -ing forms.

We are sure you may find a different number of categories into which you may wish to place these words.

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The Rumors Are True...Sequential Spelling on DVD is Coming Soon!

You may have heard the whisperings about a digitized version of Sequential Spelling that would allow a student to learn the AVKO way with minimal help from a teacher...well, it's true.  In May, AVKO will be releasing the DVD version of Sequential Spelling 1, with the rest of the levels to follow eventually.  Intrigued?  Ask for more details.

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Help Spread the Word About AVKO

Help spread the word about AVKO's services. Tell your friends, family, teachers, students, and community members about the services and resources that we provide, including our free and low-cost materials for language arts and keyboarding. We have added some more literature to the website to help others share what they love about AVKO.

- Overview of AVKO Services (PDF)
- Sequential Spelling tri-fold Brochure (PDF)
- Flyer to Help Create an Adult Literacy Course (PDF)
- Flyer to Recruit Volunteers for AVKO (PDF)
- A form letter to send to potential AVKO retailers (DOC)
- A form letter to send to libraries informing them of the resources we can provide them to better serve their community (DOC)
- A form letter to send to companies who might be interested in donating time, donations in-kind, or advertising to AVKO (DOC)
- A form letter to send to other non-profit organizations who might be interested in partnering with AVKO, establishing a referral network, and pooling our respective resources (DOC)

Become a volunteer for AVKO yourself!

Get involved in your community -- here are some ways to help out your community.

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AVKO Pamphlets Available for Only $1.00!

AVKO is making the Great Idea Reprint Series pamphlets available once again for the low price of only $1.00!  These pamphlets are an incredible value to homeschoolers, educators in the school system, and community organizers looking to create a literacy program in their community.  Learn how to evaluate a spelling program, evaluate a child's ability to spell the five different types of English words, teach the English spelling rules, take notes, and much, much more!  See the Clearance page of the AVKO website to place your order today.  Shipping for these pamphlets is only $0.59 each or FREE shipping for current AVKO members.  

Great Idea Reprint Series individual pamphlets - $1.00 ($1.00)
These pamphlets provide information on a very specific topic. To order one or more of these pamphlets, enter the title(s) into the comments field below.

• A Common Sense Approach to Controlled Word Lists
• The New AVKO Pre- and Post- Diagnostic Spelling Test on 100 of the Most Common Phonograms in the English Language (includes the Student's and Teacher's Edition)
• A Sentence Dictation Test That Covers Over 300 of the Most Commonly Used Words
• An L.D. Screening Device That Can Be Given to Entire Schools
• Sample Word Family Puzzles that Special Education Students Can Create
• English Spelling: The Simple, the Fancy, the Insane, the Tricky, and the Scrunched Up
• Survey Tests for Types 1-5 Words: The Simple, the Fancy, the Insane, the Tricky, and the Scrunched Up
• Suggested Order for Diagnosis and Remediation of the Simple Patterns
• Suggested Order for Diagnosis and Remediation of the Fancy Patterns
• Suggested Order for Diagnosis and Remediation of the Insane Patterns
• Suggested Order for Diagnosis and Remediation of the Tricky Patterns
• Suggested Order for Diagnosis and Remediation of the Scrunched Up Patterns
• The Case of the Invisible Y or Why is there a Y in You and not in union, Eunice, and huge?
• How to Develop Your Own Sequential Spelling Tests
• How to Evaluate Your Present Spelling System
• An Index of Phonic Patterns by Vowel Types
• The Three Different Words Spelled H-A-V-E
• The Three "TOOZE": too, two, and to
• The SQ3R Reading Formula Really Works
• A Listing of Phonic Patterns for Older Students
• Underlining or Highlighting: Cueing the Computer Brain
• The Proper Editing of Notes: The Key to Successful Learning
• Building a Better Vocabulary the Lazy Man's Way
• Statues and Sanctuaries, or A Practical Use of Miscue Analysis: Building Egos/ Self-Esteem
• Learning about the Learning-to-Read Process by Teaching Yourself to Read and Write Upside Down
• Comprehension/Schema Theory: A Practical Application
• Reading Improvement through SITDOWN: Student Individualized Teacher-Directed with Students Correcting their OWN.
• Taking the sting out of Testing When Giving Word Recognition Tests to Special Education Students

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On Dyslexia Testing

Do you think that your child has dyslexia? Do you know that your child has dyslexia but you feel that you need a doctor's professional, medical assessment? Indeed, there is a lot of attention given to testing for dyslexia -- commercials, posters in schools, and pressure from friends. However, most of the testing out there is unnecessary, incredibly expensive, and utterly unhelpful. The child sits through a battery of tests, the parents dish out money they probably don't have, and they have confirmation of what they knew from the beginning: their child has a problem with reading and/or spelling.

Of course, it must be stated that there are some benefits of having the "official diagnosis" of "dyslexia" that must be stated. If the child is in a school system, especially during high school or college, with teachers who are not immediately amenable to making accommodations (such as increased testing time, having a test read to them, etc.), the diagnosis can tie the hands of the school under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Additionally, there are some psychological benefits of having a diagnosed label -- the child and parents may be able to place less blame on themselves for the child's inability to read and spell like other kids and instead "blame" it on the dyslexia. Whereas the label shouldn't be used as a "crutch," this can alleviate some anxiety and allow the parents and child to feel better about the problems and move forward with finding solutions.

What does AVKO say about dyslexia? AVKO believes that dyslexia is a rather catch-all diagnosis that ultimately is used to deflect the blame for a child's reading and spelling problems away from the teachers and educational institution and instead place it on the student. With proper teaching techniques, such as multi-sensory methods like Orton-Gillingham (on which AVKO's methods are largely based), students can overcome the "problems" associated with dyslexia.

For more information on dyslexia, including scientific and medical definitions translated into plain English, please see our "What is Dyslexia?" section of the website.

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The Influence of French on English

Both English spelling and pronunciation are heavily influenced by the French. Many of the spellings and pronunciations that English learners call "crazy" are due to this French influence on the English language. However, people are a bit too quick to say that English has little to no regularity in its phonetic patterns. It's just that the regularity for the phonetic patterns for "big" words are not taught in our school systems. When one only has the phonics of "small" words to work with, it is impossible to read words like crucial, impartial, unique, or flambe. These words all follow regular patterns. See The Patterns of English Spelling for more information on word families, including a complete listing of words in the English language by word family.

For more information on the different languages from which English gets its "fancy" words, see the chart on the AVKO article "Read by Grade 3, Say What?".

For a condensed history of English's formation, see the article "How French Has Influenced English" on About.com. Another helpful resource on their site is a list of French Words and Expressions in English. These expressions and words are used often in English and many of them should be known by heart as they will be encountered often.

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A Silly Factoid by Don McCabe

There's a funny "g" in king but not in kink.

Why is it we always say and hear that funny "g" or "ng" digraph in Bang, ding, king, flung, sling, Ming, ping, ring, sting, sing, and wing? But when we add the /k/ sound to spell these words, we drop that g when we change bang to bank, ding to dink, king to kink, flung to flunk, ping to pink, ring to rink, sting to stink, etc. Note carefully that we don't just add the /k/ to ban to get BAN'k. We say bang'k when we read bank. In the words that have a base of more than one syllable, the nk digraph (which should be a k after the ng digraph) becomes the nc digraph as in Lincoln, uncle, carbuncle, but not ankle.

In ordinary speech the sound "ing" in the word sing is enunciated, but when it comes to the word singing, only the first ing is always enunciated. Most of the time it's pronounced "singin'. The suffix ing is pronounced in speech as "in" more often than not.

Strange. You hear the ng digraph but can't see the g in the word drink. You can always see the ng in the suffix ing but you usually only heard the /in/ when it's spoken as drinkin'.

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