Starting AAS with an 8th grade student

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Permalink Reply by Debra on March 1, 2010 at 11:45am

Cheryl,

My son isn't as old as yours, and he isn't just now starting. But I wanted to encourage you in a couple things, based on my limited experience.

My oldest is in 7th grade, and way above grade level in all things except spelling and writing. He's right now in level 3 of AAS. We tried a lot of things before I found AAS, and I have no plans to change at this point. I could make a lot of the same statements you did about Spelling Power and Sequential Spelling. We also used Spelling Workout, and I know there was other stuff too.

Anyway... my advice for starting with an older child is to go over the material together with him when you get it. Help him to own the decision to give this a serious go.

What I did with my son was something like this:

Day 1: we spent a day going over the sounds to be sure he knew all the basic phonograms. He didn't know all the sounds for all the vowels, and he wasn't automatic on things like "s" saying /s/ /z/. So all the cards he knew went into the mastered section, and we spent 2-3 minutes drilling the vowels. And we put it away.

Day 2: we went over the less sure sounds from yesterday, and did step 2 on segmenting sounds. He really rolled his eyes at me over this step and started to complain that this was babyish. I reminded him that his spelling was way below grade level and he really needed to start at the beginning and work through ALL the steps so we could figure out if there was something missing or not. He agreed, and he worked with me. And he did struggle a bit with this concept, so we worked every.single.word that was given in the lesson. My big piece of advice to everyone (and especially to parents of older kids) is to not blow by this step. It seems kindergarten-ish. But I really think it was a crucial missing concept for both of my older sons (my younger ones have not struggled with this at all, probably because of hearing their brothers work through it).

Day 3: we worked through step 3, which he found super easy and step 4, which was also easy. We also did step 5 (short vowel sounds). It was a slightly longer day than I'd like, but doing multiple steps in one day was a good thing for him at this point, and he really did already know the material.

Day 4: We did steps 6 (short a words) and 7 (short i words) and stopped. We could have done more, but he can only handle so much writing at a time, and this seemed like a good spot to stop. He gave me a fair amount of attitude about the easy words.

Day 5: We did the rest of the short vowel steps (8, 9 and 10). We talked about his first week, how much better he was at segmenting, how he was already through the first 10 steps, and soon we would be getting to more complex words.

And we continued like that... from that point, mostly doing a step each day. I also make sure to read to him any of the little notes in the teacher material. Like Step 11 teaches that most of the time we use the letter s to represent the /z/ sound at the end of a word. In a little gray box, it explains to the teacher that one common exception is the word quiz, and it lists some others. Those little gray "teacher" boxes made all the difference in the world for him, because he's hearing me tell him the rule and immediately coming up with jazz and buzz... so having it be a note I read to him helped!

Altogether, it took us about 3.5 weeks to work through Level 1. And at the end of it, I was already seeing improvements in his spelling. It seemed like a lot of money to spend for him to work in it for less than a month (but I do have younger kids using it too). But this was the very first thing where he could actually apply his "spelling list" words to his everyday life.

With Level 2, I still mostly did a step a day, but I started spreading some of them out over two days. In Level 3, I'm usually spending 2 days per step. My goal is to have him through Level 4 by September, and do Levels 5 and 6 as an 8th grader. We'll see.

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl in SoCal on March 1, 2010 at 2:41pm

Debra,

Thank you so much for the detailed, and very helpful, reply!!! I very much appreciate all your help and can't wait to get started!

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Permalink Reply by Merry on March 1, 2010 at 12:58pm

Hi Cheryl,

Welcome! One difference you'll see with AAS over Spelling Power is that they give the ways to spell a sound incrementally. If there's a rule that differentiates which spelling to use, the spellings are introduced together (such as oi vs. oy). If the patterns can only be determined visually, AAS will introduce the patterns far apart (many lessons, or sometimes even in separate levels, such as ee vs. ea). They give the student a word bank to read to become more familiar with common words following that pattern, and allow the student to master one spelling pattern before the next is introduced. Once they have mastered a few ways to spell a sound, THEN AAS will put those words together and see if the student can sort them by spelling pattern. For students who need more time on different patterns, this is very helpful.

My oldest is in 7th grade, we started AAS at the end of his 5th grade year. I like Debra's ideas for helping your son to own the program. And I agree that an understanding of segmenting is very important. We did a Level 1 overview in about 2 weeks. My son needed to learn the sounds of the letters, and then I just looked through the lessons and introduced the concepts that he needed.

Level 1 teaches very important concepts, such as segmenting, the multiple sounds of the first 32 phonograms (o has 4 sounds, ch has 3, s has 2, etc…), and basic spelling rules. It is important that kids know why words are spelled the way they are — they will draw upon this knowledge for the rest of their spelling career. This information applies to more difficult words later in the series. (Sometimes older kids have memorized a spelling for a word like cat, but they don't know why it's not kat. So you are looking for what he's simply memorized vs. what he understands when you are going over these early lessons).

Marie encourages parents and teachers to “fast track” through the beginning level or two if children already know how to spell most of the words. Work VERY quickly through lessons where the child knows the words--they don't need to spell every word or do all of the dictations if it's easy. Pull out several words as examples. Make sure the child understands the concept being taught, and then move on. Whatever cards have already been mastered, move behind the Mastered divider.

Bottom line: with older children, work quickly through the areas the child already knows, and slow down in the areas that need extra attention. There is absolutely no need to spend time on things that have already been mastered. “Fast track” until the child hits concepts he or she doesn’t already know.

Here's an article on teaching older students. HTH some! Merry :-)

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl in SoCal on March 1, 2010 at 2:44pm

Thanks Merry! When we switched to MUS a few years ago I did it in much the same way (started at the beginning because their previous math left them with a horrible foundation) and it went really well so hopefully this will too :-) I can't wait until it arrives!

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl in SoCal on March 4, 2010 at 8:05pm

So far it's going well :-) Despite his being an excellent reader I've already uncovered several things he didn't have mastered. I know he knew them but am thinking that in the years since phonics he has forgotten many of the finer points because he has become so familiar with the words where they are used and doesn't think about it. Does that make sense? He knows that "excellent" spells excellent and how to say it so he doesn't recall that "c" often says "s" or why/when it does. I'll be if we'd used AAS (if it was around) from the time he finished phonics he *would* remember. I'm so happy to have found it!

Thankfully, he hasn't balked about it being babyish, which I'm sure is the result of your expert advice :-)

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Permalink Reply by Merry on March 4, 2010 at 11:26pm

Awesome! Glad it's going well so far :-).

Merry :-)

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Permalink Reply by Debra on March 6, 2010 at 12:31pm

Cheryl,

Glad to hear it is going well. :)

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl in SoCal on March 6, 2010 at 2:03pm

Thanks, me too :-) I agree with your assessment about segmenting being a crucial missing step for many older children! When I first explained it to him he looked at me with a, "You've got to be kidding me," look until he tried it the first time and struggled to do it. He caught on quickly but it definitely didn't come naturally to him.

I am amazed at how many deficits I've found so far because he's an excellent reader (college level). Funny how they can be hidden like that.

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