AVKO Did Not Really Work for Us

Posted by Lorren on December 14, 2009

I was given a year-long membership to AVKO in exchange for writing a review. AVKO is a non-profit research foundation that is focused on helping children, especially those with dislexia or other reading difficulties, learn to read. The basic membership is $25. Although it may work for some families, it did not work well for mine.

AVKO makes the popular Sequential Spelling books. Although I have not had the opportunity to try Sequential Spelling, after finally finding a great spelling product that does work well (All About Spelling, which I have previously reviewed), I think I will stick with what I know works. Others that are fans of Sequential Spelling may find AVKO membership useful in order to get a discount on their products. If you plan on buying the entire series of books, the cost of membership would be worth the discount.

Members get several different e-Books upon joining: To Teach a Dyslexic, The Reading Teacher’s List of Over 5,500 Spelling Words, The Patterns of English Spelling Volumes 1-10, The Teaching of Reading and Spelling, and The Teaching of Reading and Spelling: Starting at Square One. An audio CD also comes with membership.

On the main membership page, there is a list of several files, supposedly to be for reading comprehension. Some of them are cute, others are not necessarily appropriate for kids. There is bar humor, one joke called “grounds for divorce”, and another file called “top 8 morons”. These are Word files which sometimes cause my computer to freeze up, at least temporarily, while it causes the Word program to open. I personally don’t find divorce to be appropriate for jokes for my seven-year-old, and I don’t want her using the word moron either. Many of these files can be found in other locations on the internet for free. I’d rather have my daughter stick to quality (or at least kid-friendly) reading for now. With so many good books and passages to read, perhaps AVKO should have been more picky about what to put on their page.

While AVKO membership may be worthwhile so some people, particularly if their child has reading difficulties or they want a discount on Sequential Spelling, with so many outstanding products out there competing for the curriculum budget, I think that it would be a pass for many. AVKO does have a freebies section that may be worth checking out.