AVKO is a non-profit, 501(C)3 membership organization that focuses on the development and production of materials and especially techniques to teach reading and spelling, handwriting (manuscript and cursive), and keyboarding. AVKO is dedicated to the teaching everyone how to read and spell, regardless of their mild to moderate learning disabilities, dyslexia, poverty, or opportunity. (from AVKO’s website, the About Us page)
Sometimes product reviews aren’t always pleasant. Here goes.
My initial reaction to the AVKO site was a bit mixed. The website is very scattered and it’s easy to get lost in all the mess. After I was able to log in to the member area I had trouble figuring out what was for members only and what was for ‘free’ on their public site. It all looked the same. So what exactly was I getting?
As a member (subscriptions start at $25.00/year) you receive several ebooks including:
- Starting at Square One
- The Reading Teacher’s List of over 5,500 Basic Spelling Words
- The Patterns of English Spelling Plus Word Families in Sentence Context
- To Teach a Dyslexic
- The Teaching of Reading & Spelling
You also receive mp3 downloads of these workshops:
- I Think My Child Might Be Dyslexic – Does It Matter?
- Spelling – Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative
- The Mechanics of English Spelling
- Phonics – The Most Misunderstood Approach to Reading
- Create Your Own Spelling Program that Really Works
- You Don’t Need A Master’s Degree to Teach Your Kids – Just a Degree of Caring
Other documents and benefits include:
- Sequential Spelling Response Book template
- If It Is to Be It Is Up to Me to Do It worksheets
- lots of handouts, worksheets, games and flashcards
- Pretests and placement tests
- Access to Answer Keys
- There is also a section called Reading for Comprehension***
Now… while the curriculum material seems useful and plentiful, I cannot recommend this membership or any of this company’s products. After spending considerable time in the ***Reading for Comprehension section, any shred of respect for this organization went completely out the window. A product is only as good as its company and a company is only as good as its integrity. A company who would make available such garbage to children has very little integrity. Many of the stories, quips and jokes in this section are hardly appropriate for adults let alone children.
Some examples? Fish exclaiming “Dam!” in a pun. Or how about the coincidences between JFK and Lincoln that end in “A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland. A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe.” There was a comment from AVKO at the bottom of that particular document. Here’s the quote. “Comment from AVKO: Perhaps you might want to consider talking to your children about coincidences and how the mathematics of probability predict a certain number of coincidences to always occur, especially if you look for them.” Seriously? The only concern here is about teaching probability? These are only a couple examples of the trash called Reading for Comprehension. Never mind the “bar” jokes, cows being artificially inseminated, religious humor and stupid humor sections. If you have an email account and you’ve received one of the thousands of FWDs people like to send, it’s probably in this section! Hardly reading material, let alone reading material for children.
Final thoughts… if you’re okay with such material or willing to weed through the mess or ignore this section completely, then you may find the membership useful. If you use Sequential Spelling already in your homeschool, the curriculum materials will definitely be worth the membership cost. I personally will not recommend it or use it with my children.
well, you told as you feel about it and thanks for pointing that out…I didn't get into that section, as I simply already knew of some of it and avoided it. Perhaps Don will clean that up or eliminate it from their line-up…I see no reason for it all. Honesty is always a good thing!