Apples and Pears Spelling Questions

[training5]

For those who use this program, what does a typical lesson look like 'in real life'? I have looked at the books online but I am still a tad confused about how to use it. Your thoughts would be most appreciated.
Is it available anywhere for less than the UK site has it for?

[Michelle T]

The books are pretty similar. I break each "lesson" into two days, because otherwise it is too much writing for my dysgraphic/dyslexic son.

The first step of each lesson is a sentence, the same one is used for around four lessons. The child copies the sentence, filling in the blanks. There are more blanks each day, the last day, the child writes the whole sentence from dictation.

Then there are words to copy. In book A, these are first traced, then copied. Then they are written from dictation.

Then there is an exercise that deals with prefixes/suffixes

Then a fill-in-the-blanks words.

Another section dealing with parts of words.

Dictation of the same words used in part four.

A "spelling test", just words given by dictation.

Sentences that are dictated.

Some sort of puzzle or game, we skip those.

I'm writing this from memory, but it should be pretty accurate. As I said, books A and B are similar, but not exactly the same.

Every ten lessons or so, there is a test, and a lesson of only sentence dictation.

The program relies on copywork and dictation. There is quite a bit of repetition of words. There is not explicit definition of spelling rules or terms, which are hard for most dyslexic kids to memorize anyway.

It is the only program that has worked for DS.

They have a US distributor now, not sure about the price.
Michelle T