Another curriculum question - spelling using word families

[zebrabelly]

My daughter is almost 8 and still cannot spell worth beans. She's an amazing reader, though, and can read through chapter books well above her grade level in a few hours. I think she never needed to learn the phonics in reading which makes spelling slightly more difficult for her. We started with a simple spelling workbook, but that did NOTHING for her. So we dropped it and tried using Sequential Spelling by AVKO and it really made a BIG difference, BUT it's 25 words a day and it's pure torture for her. Does anyone know of something similar to Sequential Spelling, but less intensive?

Thanks!

[MissRubyandKen]

I haven't used either Spelling program, so grain of salt and all, but I've read that Spelling Power is similar. I am considering using Sequential Spelling next year myself. Can I ask, is there a way to just use some of the words each day, instead of the full 25? Maybe just focus on either the easier words or the more challenging words, depending on the child? If you start with the easier words you could revisit each rule later with the more challenging words, sort of cycle through them twice, if desired. Just my ideas having not seen the actual program myself.

[zebrabelly]

You can look at the first few lessons of sequential spelling online. FYI.

They way it's designed, each day's lesson builds on the previous lesson. We have broken the lessons up into a week-long lesson instead of one lesson a week, but that's not really working as well because we don't get back to the words for a full week. I am considering breaking up the lessons in such a way that we do the first five words one week - that way, we get the repetitive benefits - and the next five words the next week, etc.

But I want to look at other currciulums b/c I feel like this was designed in one way and I am not sure it's as beneficial if I use it differently. Therefore, there may be another curriculum that might work better than if we tweak this one. Does that make sense?

b

[zebrabelly]

Oh, and thanks for the suggestion, I'll go look into that one.

[AAK]

How about "All about Spelling". It is different, more rule based than Sequential Spelling, but I've heard great things about it.

We are currently trying out spelling power, and the list are long. Granted, they don't care if you finish the list. You are only supposed to spend x minutes a day on them. You review missed words daily and then continue where you left off down the list. It seems to be going well for my oldest dd, but I will not use it for my younger one. For her, I hope that "All about Spelling" works well. I won't be trying that until next year though. She needs to get a bit better at reading before I jump into spelling "for real".

Amy

[yllek]

I am using AAS for my ds5, but I also plan to supplement with Words Their Way when we start getting into more of the phonics/spelling rules.

The approach, in a very brief nutshell, is basically just this: the student is presented with a bunch of preselected words that she supposed to sort, revealing a phonics, spelling or vocabulary pattern or rule. They are also supposed to find exceptions or variations. I like this approach because the rule is discussed, but the students have to figure it out for themselves first. There are games and other activities too, but the key feature of this program is the sort.

So for example, a child would be presented with a bunch of small cards on which the following words appear:
bun, fuss, luck, lump, trust, plum, crust, June, cute, rule, tube, tune, huge, cube, blue, glue, clue, due, true, truth. They need to read each card and figure out which words should be grouped together and why. They would write this out in their word study notebooks. Each pattern group is usually studied for a week.

The next week they would sort this group:
rude, crude, flute, mule, fume, chute, dune, use, fruit, suit, juice, bruise, cruise, new, chew, drew, new, stew, few, dew, brew, fuel, build.
See, they would learn additional long-u phonogram patterns.

One word of warning: the book is not open-and-go. It is a text meant for classroom teachers, so there is quite a bit of theory presented. There are lots of activities for each learning stage, but really the lesson plans are up to the teachers.

I just thought I would throw this out as another option. It's really a very different way to study phonics, one that is more discovery-based, but it is also quite systematic as well.

[AAK]

Originally Posted by yllek

I am using AAS for my ds5, but I also plan to supplement with Words Their Way when we start getting into more of the phonics/spelling rules.

The approach, in a very brief nutshell, is basically just this: the student is presented with a bunch of preselected words that she supposed to sort, revealing a phonics, spelling or vocabulary pattern or rule. They are also supposed to find exceptions or variations. I like this approach because the rule is discussed, but the students have to figure it out for themselves first. There are games and other activities too, but the key feature of this program is the sort.

So for example, a child would be presented with a bunch of small cards on which the following words appear:
bun, fuss, luck, lump, trust, plum, crust, June, cute, rule, tube, tune, huge, cube, blue, glue, clue, due, true, truth. They need to read each card and figure out which words should be grouped together and why. They would write this out in their word study notebooks. Each pattern group is usually studied for a week.

The next week they would sort this group:
rude, crude, flute, mule, fume, chute, dune, use, fruit, suit, juice, bruise, cruise, new, chew, drew, new, stew, few, dew, brew, fuel, build.
See, they would learn additional long-u phonogram patterns.

One word of warning: the book is not open-and-go. It is a text meant for classroom teachers, so there is quite a bit of theory presented. There are lots of activities for each learning stage, but really the lesson plans are up to the teachers.

I just thought I would throw this out as another option. It's really a very different way to study phonics, one that is more discovery-based, but it is also quite systematic as well.

Thanks! I really didn't know much about how the program worked.

amy