ACE Spelling Dictionary

This dictionary is absolutely brilliant, this is ideal for people who understand sounds and syllables but have issues with spelling.The way it works is that you have to identify the short or long vowel in a work, for example the o sound in dog or the a sound in cat.From there you look at the matrix and look what the first sound in the work for example d and in dog or n as in knight or n as in gnomeThen you use the matrix to locate the page number in the book. You go to the page and the words are listed by the amount of syllables in the word. 1 in dog, 4 in cat-as-troph-ieThen look down the list and find the work, Although this sounds convoluted I was doing this with my 7 year old dyslexic son and he picked it up in seconds. There is no chance in a regular dictionary he would have found any of the words that he found in this in seconds. It is really going to help with his confidence in creative writing.This is just such a brilliant way of organising words for those who cannot spell.

I wanted an easy-to-read Dictionary, and this was the one for me. It’s very easy to follow. I like the way it is sorted into categories. It connects lessons in to learning vowels. I love the way the subheading is in a white boxes and the paper is blue and the writing is black and bold.Recommended if like me you are not great at spelling.

This is an update of the original. It is not a dictionary that will tell you word meanings, but one purely for spelling we use these in school from Year 3 upwards (7 yr olds) who take to it readily once shwn how. Adults can teach themselves by following the instructions in the front.You find words by initial sound and first vowel sound using a simple chart in the front. This gives yoe a page number. On the page all words are listed in columns by the number of syllables in the word in alphabetical order so you don't have to search through one long list. Words which have soft and hard alternatives(c/s, g/j, c/k, ph/f) list the same word under both letters.We have only found two obscure polysyllabic word which are not in here so far - and that was a completion between my boys to catch it out!The Advanced version of this is great for older children and adults.Well worth the money for less confident spellers as well as thse with dyslexic tendencies.

I was slightly dubious about this book as I thought it would be a bit confusing for an already reluctant speller. But my son grasped it immediately and hasn't put it down since. Highly recommend!

Brilliant dictionary for children, quite ingenious and well thought through. Sounding out the first vowel and then identifying the first letter of the word is then cross referenced in the index to find the page the word can be found on. Then you count the number of syllables in the word to identify the column the word is in and hey presto there's the word. Each vowel sound is given an animal that has that corresponding sound i.e. 'ie' sound lion and so all pages with that corresponding sound has a lion at the bottom so children will know they are in the correct section. I wish I had come across this earlier but now I can help improve and develop my children's vocabulary and spelling and it won't be long before they will feel confident looking up the words themselves.

Takes a while to figure out how to work it

My son is 12 and though he is not diagnosed as dyslexic, has always had really terrible spelling. Over the years I've gone on at him to use a dictionary and he's maintained that you have to already know how it's spelt to look it up. This dictionary has changed all that. When it came I had a look at it and it looked really hard to use as it's so different from a 'normal' dictionary so I didn't have much faith in it. However I gave it to him telling him to look up a few hard words such as gnarled and gauge and he found them and spelled them correctly. Incredible. Obviously he still has to know when to look up a word but hopefully if there's any doubt he will and I ultimately his spelling should improve. Wish I'd bought something like this for him years ago.

I didn't have much faith in this when it was recommended, but the person recommending it is a qualified SEN teacher with years of experience. It works well. My 9 year old goddaughter got the hang of looking up words very quickly once we'd had a lesson on short vs long vowel sounds. If I have a niggle, it's the number of words we look up that aren't here, but we're getting over that by adding mini-post-its with the desired spellings on the relevant pages. The important thing is the principle, and the growing ability and confidence of a young speller to dissect and explore words, rather than resorting to spelling phonetically.