Our All About Spelling Routine

I have talked a lot on this blog about All About Spelling and how it's multi sensory approach and letter manipulatives are what enabled my son to finally be able to start reading.  I think it is the best Spelling program out there especially for those just learning to read and spell and children who have different kinds of reading difficulties.

All About Spelling has a Teacher's Guide that tells you how to step by step how to teach the words in each step.  But, it doesn't really talk much about how long you should spend on a step, or what to do each day you are working on a step.  Every child is different, but I thought I would talk about the All About Spelling routine that has worked the best for us.

We have 2 white boards.  One is very large and is attached to the wall over our school room table.  On it we put all of the letter tiles as we learn them.  This board really just holds all the letters and occasionally I will use it to write on to demonstrate a concept.

Then we have a small white board.  On this board we have one set of letters across the top.  Additional letters that we may need we pull down from the large board.  This board is too small to hold all of the letters but it is much easier to write on and put away.

We spend around 15- 20 minutes a day working on Spelling.  We do school 4 days a week and usually take a week to complete each step.

Day 1: I follow the teaching instructions in the manual.  Then we look over and read the words for the week. Next I dictate a couple of sentences for Alex to write on his board.

Day 2:  I read each word on the list and Alex builds them with the tiles on the board.  Then I dictate several sentences for him to write.

Day 3:  I read each word and he writes them with his marker on the white board.  Then I dictate sentences for him to write.  If there are any words in particular he is struggling with, I put them into my Spelling City app on iPad for some additional practice.

Day 4:  I used to try and have him spell the words out loud to me, but trying to remember all the letters and which order they are supposed to go in without being able to write them down made him struggle.  So instead for his "spelling test" he writes them again on the board.  Then I dictate a few sentences for him to write.

After we complete our Spelling lesson, Alex reads aloud to me for 15 minutes.  All About Reading Level 3 is set to release later in the year so we couldn't wait for those readers.  Instead, I let him choose some Kevel 2 and Level 3 readers from the Sonlight reading list.  I was excited yesterday that in the pages he was reading there were 3 or 4 of the words we are working on this week.  He is quite pleased with his books and that he can read them!

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