Partnering in Public Schools

by Guest Blogger Rebecca Messmann of www.dysingaround.com
See also: Dyslexia information | On Dyslexia Testing

Both of my children are in public schools. It can be the best and the worst of situations depending on how you look at it. The worst is when it comes time to accommodate for their dyslexia.
Every state has some sort of “legal” wording in their educational requirements that deals with dyslexia as a learning disability. The accommodations that are frequently included are things like: extra time to complete assignments, having non-reading subjects read to the child, preferential seating and things like that.
Believe it or not the hard part is not getting the accommodations assigned to your child, which trust me, is hard enough. Nope, the hard part is getting teachers to actually “accommodate” your child appropriately. That is where all or your diplomacy and micro-managing comes into play.
For example, I don’t like anything read to my children right off the bat. I want them to try it first and if they get stuck to ask for help. That means that their hands could be raised several times in the course of reading one passage and that one passage could take them forever to read. It never fails that a teacher will get frustrated and just read the passage to them.
Can I fault the teacher? Yes, to some degree. It is her job to teach my child and not every child learns the same way. She should accommodate based on his needs. But at the same time this is public school we are talking about and she has about 19 other children in her class that also need her attention. Can I expect her to just focus on my child to the exclusion of the others? No.
The best in the world of public schools is to develop a partnership with your child’s teacher. Get in there; let them know you realize it is extra work to accommodate your child but emphasis the importance of it. Then develop a plan that works for everyone. Our plan includes our children bringing home work they do not get completed in class that same night. We do not assist them with that work at home but provide the time for them to finish it on their own. A few times of doing this and the child showing their work or still making mistakes builds the trust with the teacher that we are truly not helping them.
Another plan might be that you spend time in the classroom assisting your child and others that might need it. Sometimes, that extra hand in the classroom can make all the difference for the teacher.
You might also ask if the child can have a buddy that helps him with the reading so he does not have to ask the teacher each time. Be creative and not afraid to get in there and suggest some changes. The bottom line is that the teacher needs to know the accommodations, they need to know how you want those accommodations administered, they need to accommodate to give your child a fair chance at success, and they need to know that you are backing them 100%.

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Temporary Homeschooling for Swine Flu?

Because of the swine flu's "imminent pandemic," according to the CDC and WHO, you may find yourself having to prepare makeshift lesson plans for your children -- even if you were not previously homeschooling -- to comply with the "stay at home and don't spread disease" directives. Regardless of how severe this viral outbreak becomes, it is always a good idea to know about the resources that are available to supplement (or indeed, supplant) your children's current curriculum.

• AVKO's Free Resources, including articles, essays, supplemental curriculum, worksheets, games, and more.
• Sample Lesson Plan Guide for the Week
• Sequential Spelling
• Consider Time4Learning for Math and more.

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As Unemployment Rises, So Should Education

Unemployment rates keep rising. More and more manufacturing jobs are lost. Chrysler is filing for bankruptcy. Literacy and education are vital to success, but it is even more the case now. We need to become a stronger, smarter nation in order to get ourselves through these economically challenging times.

AVKO urges you to channel the frustration that you may feel with taxation, government spending, joblessness, corporate malfeasance, corporate greed, and anything else going wrong in the world today by helping your fellow man (and children) become the best readers and spellers they can be.

• Help your community by starting up a local adult literacy training course, become a tutor, or hep your own children. Learn how here. Download the free e-book with lesson plans for an adult education course.
  
• Become a volunteer for AVKO or other non-profit organizations and charities. AVKO and other non-profits need volunteers both in our physical locations but also "virtually", through the internet. Volunteer and make a difference from home!
  
• Donate to AVKO and other non-profit organizations and charities.
• Earn extra cash at home as an AVKO affiliate. Share this information with others you know who need to supplement their income and/or want to help spread the news about the great materials that AVKO has to offer.
• Let us know about the other ideas that you have and ask us how we can help you out. Do you want to set up a spelling camp? Do you want to create your own website? Do you want to become a tutor? Do you want to create a video training series? Write books or curriculum? Let us know.

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Information About the Sequential Spelling DVD Series!

You may have heard that AVKO will be launching the DVD version of its popular spelling program, Sequential Spelling. On May 21st, the first volume of Sequential Spelling will be available in a new DVD-based format. Your students will be able to learn their spelling by themselves, with minimal supervision by the teacher. Your entire class can do spelling while you step out to finish some paperwork or have a cup of coffee.


Your first chance to view these exciting DVDs will be at the Florida Parent-Educators Association's (FPEA) homeschooling convention in Orlando, Florida (May 21-24). See our page on 2009 homeschooling conventions for more information.

• Learn all about the DVD version of Sequential Spelling 1
• Watch the first 8 lessons' video clips online
• Embed these videos on your own website or blog -- spread the word

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Even More Spelling Resources For AVKO Members

AVKO is known for spelling and for the teaching of spelling and reading to those "hopeless cases" of dyslexia and learning disabilities. Well, AVKO is proud to announce that we have forged an exciting partnership with SpellingCity.com to provide even more free resources to our members and to the community at large. For the parents and teachers out there who want to be able to customize their own spelling program specifically to the needs of their children -- and aren't afraid of doing a little preparation work -- this is the program for you!

Take advantage of the research- and multi-sensory-based methods of AVKO with the multimedia and fun resources of SpellingCity.com

• Learn all about Individualized Spelling with SpellingCity.com
• Become an AVKO Member to get the greatest value of this partnership and to create your own completely customized program
• Other Free curriculum resources available from AVKO
  

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AVKO's E-books Now on Amazon Kindle

AVKO's most popular books are now available as e-books on your Amazon Kindle or iPhone.


Buy your AVKO materials, including Sequential Spelling, Individualized Spelling, The I Before E Set, The Tricky Words, and more for your Kindle or iPhone!

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The (Complete) I Before E Rule

I'm sure you learned "The" I Before E Rule when you were growing up. But, I'm sure that you also experienced some angst when it came to spelling ie/ei words because the "rule" that you learned just didn't cut the mustard, so to speak. Luckily AVKO has you covered. We have the complete I Before E rule that will show you how to handle those "exceptions" and master the rule.

So, I Before E, except after C...but what what "science" and "weight"?

The Complete I Before E Rule - With Explanations

Memorize the following poem and learn how to apply each part of the rule.	Explanations
Use i before e	Unless you have a reason not to, use ie as in thief, believe, priest, etc.
Except after c	except after c Means: use cei as in receive, deceive, ceiling, etc.
Or when sounded as "EYE" or "AY" as in Einstein and weigh.	Or when sounded as EYE or AY Means: use ei in "EYE" words such as Einstein, Eileen, Heidi, stein, Steinbrenner, etc. It also means use ei in "AY" words such as weigh, eight, vein, veil.
Neither, weird, foreign, leisure, Seize, forfeit, and height Are Exceptions spelled right	And so are: protein and caffeine forfeiture, codeine, heifer, etc. Memorize these!
But don't let the C-I-E-N words get you uptight!	Means: cien as in efficient, ancient, conscience, and sufficient etc.

Read more about the I Before E Rule on the AVKO Website

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Banned Books

Books are banned and censored for many reasons -- language, themes, anti-religious content, content seen as immoral, etc. For whatever reasons a book is banned, it's interesting to see which books make the lists of most popularly banned books. Many of these books are considered great works of art and the highest form of literature by the academic and arts community at large. Some of them are much less well-known.

In the educational setting, controversy provides a particularly useful launching off point for discussion of ethics and morality, discussions about censorship, and discussions of the themes that are contentious.

Learn more about Banned Books from the American Library Association's website devoted to them. In fact, there is a Banned Books Week in September.

View the list of most frequently banned books from 2000-2007 (PDF)

We welcome your discussion as to particular books you think don't belong on the list, books you were surprised to not see on the list, or anything else related to banned books.

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A Novel Technique for Teaching Keyboarding

AVKO firmly believes that mistakes are opportunities to learn. In fact, we use this motto in a lot of our materials. Learning keyboarding is no exception. In fact, one has to get past making mistakes while learning to type in order to build up speed and accuracy. So, we have provided you with the instructions of how to temporarily disable the backspace key (replaced with the asterisk [*] symbol) on your computer. So, every time the student pushes the backspace button, an asterisk symbol appears. This method will allow you to re-map a PC's keyboard and change any keys to what you want as well. Note that this method makes global changes -- this will affect every program on the machine until the action is reversed.

Download the PDF Instructions on how to use this free piece of software (KeyTweak) and get started today.

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Word Games for Your Students

HomeschoolWell's blog had a great post about word games that you can do with your homeschooling students that I thought I'd share with you all.

The one that really stands out to me, and something that I actually did as a student doing independent spelling in elementary school (and loved), is making your own creative definitions for words. The examples that HomeschoolWell's blog uses are as follows for these "clever redefinitions":

• warship, adoration of the navy
• judicious, Passover recipes
• kindred, fear of family reunions
• bashful, being harsh or abusive toward someone
• miniscule, the odds of minuscule being spelled correctly
• rebuffs, polished athletic shoes

AVKO has made available a template for students to use for drawing pictures to go along with the definitions for words they are trying to learn. Personalizing the information in this way makes it much more memorable -- especially for your more visual students.

See also: Readings for Comprehension (puns and more)

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Lessons from the movie "The Reader"

I recently watched the movie "The Reader" with Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet. Though this movie (rated R) is not suitable for all audiences, and may shock the sensibilities of some (due to its graphic sex scenes), it has some powerful messages about literacy amid the backdrop of the Second World War. There are also really powerful undertones of pride, shame, ignorance, and intent to commit crimes (mens rea).
Kate Winslet's character, Hanna, was a factory worker who became a Secret Service (SS) agent and was in fact one of those who would decide who died and who didn't. After the war, she carried on with her life as a worker on the trolley. She met up with the young Michael and began a love affair. He would read to her the books that he was studying in school before their trysts. Hanna disappeared and Michael carried on with his life, entering law school. On a law school field trip, they attend the war crimes trials for SS agents, of which one on trial is Hanna. Hanna gets scapegoated as the leader of the six SS agents because she was ignorant as to what was going on and wasn't really aware of the implications of her actions. In fact, we find out, she was illiterate and could possibly have written the documents and orders that they claim she did. Instead of submitting to a handwriting analysis and thereby exposing her illiteracy, she confessed falsely to all that they had accused her of. She was sentenced to life in jail.

Though everyday cases of discrimination and shame for illiteracy are admittedly less dramatic, much pain could be avoided if we all took steps to get involved, help our nation's children learn to read, and help those who have fallen through the cracks.

Get involved in the fight against illiteracy and dyslexia today!

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Free Literature E-books You Can Use As Part of Your Curriculum

Did you know that there is an entire library of free books available for your use online? Full-text, free literature books. Books whose titles you'd recognize without straining your head. As part of Google's goal of indexing all of the information in the universe, they have made public domain books available for your use. These books will supplement your language arts curriculum immensely.

Full-text literature books available on Google

You can create assignments out of these books, use them for pleasure reading as part of the curriculum, or use them for vocabulary building, choral reading, or anything else.

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Spelling Evaluations

As President Barack Obama and other Obama Administration officials are being "graded" for their performance up to this point, it's a good time to start thinking about evaluating your present spelling system. Are you unsure if your current spelling program is working the way you think it should? Are you seeing the gains you need to be seeing?

AVKO has a very simple method for evaluating your current spelling program. This is available in the literacy textbook, The Teaching of Reading & Spelling: A Continuum from Kindergarten through College. This book is available for free as a downloadable e-book with AVKO membership. However, some of the chapters are also available for free download, even without membership. This is one of them! Download Chapter 45 of The Teaching of Reading now to start your evaluation.

Are you already using Sequential Spelling? Do you want to customize the program and track progress with some more quantitative data? Use our Tracking Progress templates to do your own scientific analyses for the school board or just document your student's gains.

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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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Earn Money from Home Referring AVKO Memberships!

Help get the word out about AVKO's resources and membership -- and earn money at the same time! All you need is a PayPal account and to share the link to AVKO membership with friends, family, and cyberspace. Simply put the link to AVKO membership on your personal blog, in your e-mail signature, in an e-mail to your friends, on Facebook, or on cards you pass out to people with the e-mail address that is linked to your PayPal account.

A commission of 10% will be awarded for all referred memberships and retail materials when the customer puts your PayPal e-mail address in the "Referrer" box for during membership sign-up or in the "Comments" box for other sales.

No paperwork to fill out or tax forms for annual commissions of less than $600.00. Disbursements of commissions will occur at least every two weeks.

For promotional materials or advertising graphics, please see the Retail section of the website. Contact Brian for more information.

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Time Management for Busy People: E-mail Management

Homeschoolers and school educators are some of the most pressed people for time. We don't want to waste any precious time on rummaging through virtual stacks of e-mail messages. I want to spend a few minutes extolling Google's Gmail e-mail platform that you can use for free and dramatically increase your e-mail productivity.

• Gmail has arguably the best spam filters in the industry; you won't have to sift through your messages marked as spam and only real messages will enter your inbox.
• Gmail organizes messages with the same subject line in the same "conversation" -- which is similar to a thread in a discussion board. You can see the entire conversation history in one easily organized spot.
  
• Use POP and IMAP to condense all of your e-mail accounts into one Gmail account. Access all of your messages from anywhere -- without the security risks of downloading all your messages into an e-mail management program if you don't want to.
  
• Use the filters to pre-sort your messages. For example, I have all of my subscriptions (news headlines, social networking automated messages, Google Alerts, and business e-mails) sorted into various folders (called labels) so that my inbox isn't cluttered.
• You have gigs and gigs of storage space to keep EVERY message you send and receive. Never worry about your inbox being too full or not being able to receive large attachments.
  
• Use Google's powerful search features to find all of those messages.
  
• A chat platform is built right in -- chat with your friends on AIM, Gmail, and other platforms.
  
• Many more features -- more are added weekly. You can add optional components to customize the platform how you want it. Your suggestions are heard by the Google staff.
• Getting Started Guide for Gmail users.
  

Even if you don't use Gmail or don't want to switch, here are some general e-mail efficiency tips:

• Have a scheduled time to deal with e-mail. This may be multiple times during the day, but it shouldn't be the first thing you do. You can easily get bogged down in answering silly, small e-mails when you have more important things to do during the day.
  
• Enact a system so that you know which messages need to be followed up on -- flags (in Outlook), stars (in Gmail), or a special folder (or "label" in Gmail).
  
• If your e-mail system doesn't have a good spam filter, keep your subscriptions and subscriptions in a separate e-mail address so your good e-mail address isn't cluttered with all of the ensuing spam.
• Keep your inbox CLEAN! If you're done with an e-mail, delete it or archive it (in Gmail).
  

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Take the AVKO Challenge: The Real Extreme Makeover

Do you have a student or child who is a terrible speller? Is s/he reading at a level way below what s/he would be expected to read at? Take the AVKO Challenge -- a real extreme makeover!

Don McCabe will work with your child and you will see dramatic improvements within weeks. The truly amazing part is that Don can teach anyone to tutor their own students or children to do what he and The AVKO Educational Research Foundation have been doing for 35 years now.

View AVKO's free videos for more information on Sequential Spelling and the tutoring methods used.

You can teach yourself these same principles if you are unable to come to the AVKO Foundation's reading clinic in Birch Run, Michigan, USA. The first step is to become a member of the AVKO Foundation, a $25/year fee. This entitles you to free, downloadable e-books for your reference, tutor training, and supplemental curriculum. The most important of these books is The Teaching of Reading and Spelling: A Continuum from Kindergarten through College.

Visit the AVKO Website or Contact Us for more information.

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Request AVKO Promotional Materials for Your School, Community, or Homeschool Convention

The 2009 Spring/Summer Homeschooling Convention season is upon us. See our page on where AVKO will be represented at the various conferences, and to learn about the different conventions across the country. We would like to announce that one of our retail partners, Heppner's Legacy, will be attending various conventions around the country. Nancy Bjorkman will be speaking at many of these conventions. See Heppner's Legacy's 2009 Convention Schedule to learn more. Nancy speaks on a variety of topics including encouragement for new homeschoolers, time management, math outside the book, and your family's learning style.

If you will be attending any of the many homeschooling or educational fairs and want to share the good news about AVKO's low-cost and free materials for language arts, request our free promotional materials, including CDs, DVDs, pamphlets, business cards, etc.

If you are interested in becoming an AVKO retail partner, please contact us.

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Free Educational Worksheets

Every curriculum should include some built-in fun. This includes recess, non-educational games, non-specifically educational films, puzzles and riddles, and educational worksheets. Here, we've composed a list of a few such resources that you and your students will appreciate.

• AVKO's list of online word games - View this list of fun and popular word games online. Nearly all of them are free.
• Sequential Spelling crossword puzzles, free with AVKO membership - These crossword puzzles made out of the Sequential Spelling evaluation tests will review the word families learned throughout the series.
  
• Worksheet Works - This free resource site has worksheets for math, geography, spelling, miscellaneous topics, and even puzzles! You can customize the worksheets to suit your needs, print them out, and use them at your will.
• Check out Homeschool Well's blogpost of the same topic for some more great links. I'd recommend that you subscribe to this blog.
  

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The Dyslexic and the Dictionary

by Guest Blogger Rebecca Messmann of www.dysingaround.com
See also: Information on Dictionaries and Other Reference Materials | Instilling Curiosity to Learn New Words

Sometimes in today’s world of technology and instant gratification we forget the rewards of doing things the hard way. Until this year I think it has been at least ten years since I picked up an actual, real life dictionary. Oh, I looked words up for sure; I just used online resources instead of actually dragging out the dust covered door stop of a dictionary.

Then my oldest son entered 5^th grade and started bringing home this wonderful sheet of paper called “Mountain Language.” I have no idea if his teacher designed this herself or if it’s a standard worksheet somewhere in the halls of education, that’s another blog. Today, I want to mention just one piece of that work sheet. (See also the Worksheet Works website for dictionary word placement worksheets).

There is a question on there that says what word fits between the guide words? Two words are given: blue and broke. Then three choices are given: black, break, brush. I have simplified it a bit to show you how to do it.

The child then figures out which one goes in between the guide words and I sing a chorus of halleluiahs. Because now I have a nice easy way to introduce the dictionary to my dyslexic son! Now, I don’t have to send him blindly looking for “how to spell wonderful.” I don’t have to give him nightmares of turning page after page around the “one” words.

This is a simple activity that can introduce the dyslexic child to the dictionary in a very low stress way. The words are there, they just need to match them up with what they find in the dictionary.

I take it one step further and have him define the word he chooses. This just reinforces how I want him to use the dictionary – to find the meaning of words, to find the tenses of words, etc...

Try it and let us know what you think. Do you have any ideas and suggestions on using the dreaded dictionary with dyslexic children?

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