TOS Crew: AVKO

AVKO Educational Research Foundation is an organization that is dedicated to helping kids, both homeschooled and traditionally schooled, with all aspects of literacy; they aim to help guide parents, teachers, and researchers.  Their focus is on helping educators learn how best to teach their students how to read, write, spell, and even teach the subject of keyboarding.  They provide all kinds of free and low-cost resources to homeschoolers and teachers everywhere.  They especially aim to help those with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia.

They do offer several free resources on their website, but in order to gain a full appreciation for the wide array of what they do have to offer, a membership is a great option.  For an individual membership, it's only $25/year, and you have access to 25% discounts on printed materials, tons of free e-books, the AVKO newsletter, access to mp3 recordings of some of Don McCabe's (he's the research director for AVKO) most popular workshops, materials to supplement your curriculum, pretests and placement tests, etc.  Institutions or schools can join also.

Don McCabe, being dyslexic himself, has been able to research and implement ways to teach dyslexics, which he shares in his book, To Teach a Dyslexic, which comes free with any membership.  Other materials that are provided on the membership website include the following:

The Reading Teacher's List of Over 5,500 Basic Spelling Words 

The Patterns of English Spelling: Volumes 1-10

Sequential Spelling Word Searches

Vocabulary Illustration Worksheet

Advanced Vocabulary Flashcards

Many documents for reading comprehension

....and many, many more.

AVKO also offers many printed materials for you to buy, keeping in mind that being a member gets you a 25% discount on these.  They offer materials such as Engaging Language Kits, Sequential Spelling, Let's Write Right, etc.  Here is Part 1 of AVKO's To Teach a Dyslexic, in which Don McCabe takes a 17-year old through his first lesson at AVKO's Dyslexia Research Foundation.

For more reviews on AVKO, visit the TOS Homeschool Crew Blog.

(Disclosure: I was provided a membership, free of charge, by AVKO, in association with the TOS Homeschool Crew.)