I cannot believe that just six weeks ago we were halfway through All-About-Spelling Level 2 and now we’re finishing it! It took us about six months, and that is including a long, extended spring break we took. In the end we were really on a roll! Satori seems to pick up certain things fast, and writing/spelling is one of those things. I hope we take AAS Level 3 much slower, I’m certainly planning on it. I just love this program. Every now and then I peek in on other popular spelling programs and I’m so happy we are using AAS.
Here’s what our 2′x3′ whiteboard looks like after Level 2. We’ve got 2 sets of the alphabet (3 for 3 and s), Consonant Teams (ch, sh, th, ng, nk, ck, wh) and Vowel Teams (ee, ou, ow, oi, oy, au, aw), Sound of /er/ (er), and ar and or. Satori knows how to divide syllables that are open, closed, v-c-silent-e, vowel team and r-controlled. So does Daddy. Satori taught Daddy how to divide syllables. (He partakes in our lessons if we do them on the weekends, and spelling is one we love to do with him.)
We don’t always use the white board in spelling, like the lessons say to do for the 10 main words in each lesson. Satori just loves to write in her spelling book, or even spell orally. But I always try to introduce the new concepts with tiles. It’s just another method of keeping new concepts in her head (multi-sensory).
Here’s her spelling page from a few lessons back when we learned soft sound of ‘c’ words. For these oral dictations, I start with the 10 main lesson words, then progress to any “More Words” that apply to the rule(s) we’re learning. If she has no problem with that, and she wants to do more, then we progress to writing short phrases such as “a cube of ice”. Finally, we work up to full sentences.
The below lesson was when we learned that the silent-e has other functions aside from making vowels long. Can’t leave the word “have” without the silent-e, even though the a is short! English words don’t end in a “v” and we need that “e” there to prop the “v” up. 
Here’s the last sentences in Level 2. For these dictations, I read the sentence in a normal tone just once. She repeats it and then spells it as a complete sentence. When we do it this way, she’s pretty good at writing them as proper sentences starting with a capital letter and ending with an end mark. I love how the phrases and sentences not only cover the lesson learned that week, but also previous lessons as review.
Just in case you’re curious, here’s a sample Sentence dictation from Level 3. It looks like they drop the word phrases and include more sentences. The sentences exactly cover the words covered in the lesson, in Levels 1 and 2 they’d sometimes miss a few words. This sample here we should be hitting sometime in the fall of 2010.
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