spelling programs

I do Sequential Spelling with my dd every summer. Its too much to ask her to do it on top of her regular school work during the school year. We’ve been doing it for a couple of years now. Her spelling is better but may never be great so using a word prediction program continues to be necessary. I do have to say, however, that between the two her spelling has improved more than I would have expected and so has her reading.

Beth,
You can reasonably do each Rewards lesson in 20 minutes or so until you hit lesson 13 or thereabouts. At this point, the lessons become longer and I would advise breaking them in two. Taking weekends off, you could finish this in six weeks in a pretty unpainful fashion. BTW—Rewards is a great program and very easy for a parent to do.

I don’t think an extra 10 minutes of SS a day would be too much. You might think of moving on to the adults only version. I think the other program you are thinking of is Spelling Through Morphographs. I moved heaven and earth to get this because they do not sell to parents. I had to get my niece, who is a teacher, order it for me and ship it all the way across the country.

Now that I have STM, I am not using it and haven’t even tried to. It is way more teacher intensive than SS and very scripted like Rewards. I am not sure you’d want two heavily scripted programs at the same time.

That said, I have heard a lot f praise for STM and some parents do a book or two of SS and then move on to STM, which also, BTW is extremely expensive. The approaches are quite different. SS trains visual memory for how words are spelled, while STM does a lot of overteaching of the morphemes that make up words.

So, as with everything, it depends. If you think your ds’s spelling reflects weak visual memory rather than lack of understanding of word parts and how to put them together, SS would appear the better choice. And of course, if it’s the other way around, you’d choose STM. (Although you should know that Rewards is based heavily on breaking words into parts for reading purposes.)

For me, I just couldn’t fathom doing a spelling series that has me showing dd how to spell light and crash on a whiteboard (first lesson in STM). I’d immediately lose her to eyerolling that wouldn’t stop—she is not that bad a speller. The SS daily spelling test would be much less likely to induce that reaction. BUT when I did try SS a few years ago, she couldn’t bear having me see her spell a word wrong and I had to give it up. We might be over that now, and I am reconsidering doing the adult SS. (Will have to reorder though as I sent my copy to Victoria).

HTH

The first dozen lessons or so lessons in Rewards require about 40 minutes each, in my experience. (The very first lesson is the shortest. They add on an exercise per lesson for awhile until you are up to full speed.) Starting with lesson #13, when the repeated readings begin, I break each lesson into two sessions to keep them 30 to 40 minutes long.

If you can keep a Sequential Spelling lesson down to 15 minutes or less, it would not be too much to add on.

STM lessons take a lot longer than SS lessons. STM was developed as a program for middle schoolers, but it is used at the high school level and even in some colleges as a remedial spelling program. I would wait a couple of years before tackling that one. SS sounds much more appropriate for this year.

I would stick to the six-book series of SS too. The “Adults Only” version goes much faster than the six-book series, with much less repetition, and the word lists are longer.

Nancy

Thanks for all the feedback.

My son really needs easy success so it seems to me, given descriptions here, that SS would be better. Really, he could use help in both visual memory and parts of speech so the idea of following SS with STM might be good. I don’t want to go too fast (he has had years of spelling at school but relatively little retention) so I am inclined to not move to the adult SS. Besides, he isn’t anything like a poor adult speller. His spelling is more like on a 3rd to 4th grade level.

One more question—should I start in the middle of SS level 1, which is where we left off two years ago, or go back to the beginning? I don’t think it would annoy him to spell things he can spell, assuming he can, so that isn’t an issue. Or is there enough repetition in the lessons that it is unnecessary and would be a better use of time to move on?

Beth

I would give him a spot test from the lessons you’ve already done and see where he is at. If he does well with that, it should be fine to start where you left off. If not, then you will know he needs to start over. I typically use the harder words from the early lessons to gauge how far to start back. A little repetition isn’t going to hurt. :)

Hi, Beth,

It is good to hear from you! Which level of REWARDS are you talking about, intermediate or the original version? If you email me, I’ll give you the pre-test list from Intermediate. If he passes that, you’ll know to try the more difficult original REWARDS. If he doesn’t, then you’ll know he needs to start with Intermediate. I think it is VERY important that kids be placed in the correct level. The words in the original REWARDS are very challenging and more appropriate for kids with advanced vocabulary or high school level.

I have another spelling program to suggest. It is written by an expert in instructional design and is similar in philosophy to Spelling Mastery, yet it is remedial and focuses on high frequency words. There is a placement test, so you can see if he fits in the program. I have just received it and have not started it yet, but I would try it over Sequential Spelling. Go down to Spelling and you’ll see the link for the placement test. It is possible he is past this level, but if not, he needs it!

http://www.oci-sems.com/bookstore/prod_teacher_resource.htm

I would add that I don’t think that doing any spelling program for a summer would have much effect. I think it needs to be done continually all year.

I need to do REWARDS Intermediate with Anna as well. Harder multi-syllable words cause real problems for these kids.

Janis

Janis,

Why do you like this spelling program over SS? How long does each lesson take? I will give him the placement test but since the criteria is master, I am sure he will end up placing near the beginning of the program.

I know a summer won’t make much difference which is why I haven’t done much with spellng lately. As I said, he became resistant to doing two spelling programs and I decided he had a point. He will not be doing spelling in school starting in 7th grade (next year) so I was thinking he would be less resistant to doing something at home. But still he gets quite a bit of homework so it is important that the program not take very long—less than 15 minutes a day. That is one of the attractions of SS.

I had assumed that he would place in the original rewards program but now that you mention it, I have seen lots of discussion on these boards about how difficult it is. A pretest would obviously be a good idea. l

Will fish up your email and contact you about the pretest.

Beth

Beth,

In thinking about this some more, REWARDS has spelling built in, so I don’t think I’d do another spelling program while doing REWARDS. It should help with spelling. I just emailed you the Intermediate pre-test.

And… if you can get a jump on it, I”d somehow sneak in that old-fashioned “I be fore E, Except After C” rule … if he still misspells believe, start with that and the handful of words in that family, and then learn the handful of “c” words.
(However, this is where what works for me does NOT work for my students… I had a kiddo who could recite teh rule and the exceptions, but still *spelled* those critters wrong.)

Sue,

I had to laugh. My sixth grade son had the i before e except after c rule in his last spelling list. All would be well and good except that they included all the exceptions too. The end result was that there were fewer words following the rule than not.

I am not sure he gained much from this.

I have had the same experience with English with him. So much time gets spent on exceptions that kids don’t always get the general case. In the end, it all seems rather random (at least to my son who isn’t great at patterns anyway!)

Beth

Beth,

I would start at the beginning of Sequential Spelling and see how he does. Book #1 works on patterns for 10 lessons in a row. You could give him lesson #1 and, if he gets them all right, give him lesson #10. Continue that way in increments of 10 (#11 and #20, etc.) until you hit a lesson where he gets two or three wrong and stop skipping then.

Starting in book #2, patterns are repeated for only 5 lessons before they change.

Nancy

Nancy,

Thanks for the information on the structure of SS. I think I will try what you suggest, which will let me know what he has retained. Two observations that I have about him:

1. He still has not adequately internalized patterns which SS would help with

2. He still misses some very common but irregular words that impact his writing. For example, really—he spells it rilly. I think a program like what Janis suggests might help more here.

My inclination is to get him the first book or maybe two of SS and then switch to something else. His brain doesn’t discern patterns as well as it should and perhaps SS would help with that as well as spelling.

I am hoping to do spelling with him for the next two years with the goal of getting him into the normal range in that time.

Beth