by Cindy Kee

Most user-friendly program I have seen

All About Spelling is the most user-friendly program I have ever seen that is based on the Orton Gillingham method of teaching spelling and the phonograms. The Orton Gillingham approach—also used by Romalda Spalding in her The Writing Road to Reading—is, in my researched opinion, the absolute best and only way that spelling and reading should be taught! All About Spelling takes both the parent and child step-by-step through all six levels of the program.

Since my nine-year-old twin boys were already reading by the time we started the All About Spelling program, we were able to complete Level One pretty quickly. They have since finished Level Two and are anxiously awaiting Level Three. Being hands-on learners, they especially love the interactive aspects of the program, like using the letter tiles to spell words instead of boring old pencil and paper! And though I have always been naturally good at spelling, I still love learning the phonograms and spelling rules right along with my boys.

All About Spelling has given me the tools I need to help my kids with spelling both in and outside of the classroom. For example, the rules, which are presented on Key Cards, give me a great way to help them when they ask how to spell a word. I simply ask, "what is the rule that says..." and they remember the rule and are able to figure out for themselves how to spell the word. I also see that my son who struggles with spelling is learning to recognize words that don’t look right and seems to “know” that they are spelled incorrectly. According to Ruth Beechick, this ability to recognize a misspelled word is the single most important factor in learning spelling—not the ability to spell every word correctly (though that’s nice, too!).

Each level of the program comes with a Student Material Packet. All materials are non-consumable, so you can use the program for every student in your family. Each step-by-step lesson includes the following sections:

1. A Review section at the beginning of each lesson provides time to go over any flashcards that are still in the Review section of the Spelling Review Box. An oral review of the Phonogram Cards is followed by a review of the Sound Cards, in which you say the sounds and the student writes the phonogram for that sound—a good opportunity to teach and practice handwriting, too! Then you review the spelling rules on the Key Cards and the spelling words on the Word Cards.
   
   Included in the materials are tabbed dividers to separate each set of flashcards into Review, Mastered, and Future Lessons sections in the Spelling Review Box. You just need to provide the 3x5 index card file box. The website also offers File Folder Games and Phonogram Bingo that can be used to practice the phonograms.

2. The New Teaching section introduces new phonograms, spelling rules, and spelling words, and provides hands-on activities to practice new concepts and words using the letter tiles. In fact, everything is done with the tiles until the child can read and spell all of the words in that lesson.

3. The Reinforcement section offers various activities that allow the students to use their new knowledge. Once the child has mastered the lesson concepts using the tiles, he then writes the words on paper and practices them through dictated phrases and sentences.

For the reinforcement activities, we use sewn-bound spelling notebooks. We started writing our spelling words in lists at the beginning of the notebook and wrote our phrases and sentences in the back of the notebook, using the pages in “backwards order.” I even have my own notebook that I write in along with my sons. The boys FINALLY realized that their notebooks are their own, personal spelling dictionary!

Depending on the child and the lesson itself, each lesson may easily take a week or more to master or it may be mastered in two days or less. You go at the child’s pace and move forward only once the child is completely comfortable with the material in the current lesson.

A note on teaching reading with All About Spelling

I have been asked by many people if All About Spelling can also be used for teaching reading. After reviewing many other sources on teaching reading with structured phonics—Romalda Spalding’s The Writing Road to Reading, Rudolf Flesch’s Why Johnny Can’t Read and What You Can Do About It, and many other sources—I would say yes. For a good background on teaching a child to read with phonics versus whole-word methods, I would recommend reading Flesch’s book before you begin the program.

For teaching a young child to read, I would follow the All About Spelling program as is, but perhaps with less focus on the spelling rules and writing portions of the lessons. I would think that you could just move from step to step once the child understands the phonograms of the lesson and learns how to apply them to the words of that step for reading. Doing so, you could potentially move faster through the program since you would remain on a lesson only until the child can read the words fluently and without hesitation, rather than until the child could actually spell the words. The dictation sentences could be used for reading practice, perhaps typing them out on paper in a larger font for a young child. The only missing element would be books for students to use to practice their new skills, but you could easily get something like the Bob Books or other DECODABLE readers (not LEVELED readers) to start with, and then branch out as interest and skills increase—just use your library extensively! Then, when the students are ready to start learning to spell, you could just go back to the previous levels and cover the spelling rules more intently and have them practice the spelling words in each lesson.

On the other hand, if you follow the methods of Flesch, Spalding, and others, you WOULD expect a child as young as five or six to learn to read, spell, and write all of the words as they are laid out in All About Spelling. Following the program just as it is designed would give your students the strongest foundation for reading, writing, and spelling, would allow them to read just about any book that interests them without having to resort to “dumbed-down” books, and would give them the best chance possible to become good spellers—unlike most children taught by other methods in brick-and-mortar schools.

What’s more, Marie Rippel is always available to answer any questions. I really pestered her early on when I was trying to decide between The Writing Road to Reading, The Phonics Road to Spelling and Reading, and All About Spelling. She was so helpful in answering all of my questions and not getting frustrated with my pestering that between that and the ONE YEAR MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE, I figured I didn’t have anything to lose!

I hope this gives you a better idea of the All About Spelling program and how it works. I find it super-simple to use because every lesson is scripted with a clean, uncluttered layout. It's just "open the book and start the lesson" easy!