AVKO Website Membership (TOS Review)

AVKO Educational Research Foundation
Individual Website Membership: $25/year

Benefits of Membership: Discounts on AVKO printed materials; Hundreds of dollars worth of FREE e-books (PDF), including The Patterns of English Spelling (All 10 Volumes) with Word Families in Sentence Context; Access to the Member Only section; AVKO Newsletter with freebies, discounts, resources, and promotions; Access to Don McCabe's most popular workshop recordings in MP3 format; Supplemental Curriculum Materials and more.

Some publishers are better recognized by the name of their best-selling books than they are by their company name. Not everyone recognizes Key Curriculum Press, but most homeschoolers have heard of Miquon Math. In the same way, you've probably heard of Sequential Spelling, even if you didn't pay a lot of attention to the people behind it.

Well, now you know: it's published by AVKO, which stands for Audio, Visual, Kinesthetic and Oral, and which has been around since 1974.

"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."

If you're interested in the word families approach to reading and spelling, and want to know more of the theory behind it; if you have a child with learning difficulties, or want to tutor an older learner; if you're looking for the equivalent of a whole seminar on these topics, plus worksheets and all kinds of extras; then the price of a year's AVKO membership will probably cost you less than the equivalent in printed teachers' guides and workbooks. You don't have to be using Sequential Spelling to benefit from their downloadable resources and other members-only deals.

I will warn you, though, that the downloadable books are rather weighty. How about The Teaching of Reading: a Continuum from Kindergarten Through College. A Supplementary Textbook for College Education Majors with Practical Classroom Diagnostic Tests and Answers to the Phonics vs. Whole Language Controversy, and Especially for College Reading Instructors Willing to Try New Approaches to Old Problems, and for the Training of Adult Literacy Volunteer Tutors and Parents Who Want to Homeschool Their Children? That's just the title page. The book is 364 pages long. Did Mama Squirrel manage to read more than a bit of it? Honestly, no; we have just started using another spelling program, and taking a quick look at AVKO's materials was about as much as this squirrel could handle.

Final Take: This wasn't something that really met a need for us. However, in the interest of passing on something that may benefit another parent, tutor or teacher, we can recommend that those looking for some serious language help should consider AVKO. Have a look at their freebies page if you'd like to get a sense of where they're coming from, or just want to print out some fun stuff like The Whole Language School of Golf.

For other reviews of AVKO membership, see the TOS Review Page.

Dewey's Disclaimer: This website membership was received free for purposes of review. No other payment was made. The opinions expressed in this review are our own.