I bought Spelling Power to use with my 7 year old this year. While I love the program, it doesn't seem to be working for us. I think the spelling rules are too complex for my son right now. I have been following it like it says and I'll think he's doing well. Then, we have a review test and it's right back to where we began as if we have done nothing. I don't know what to do! I can't really afford to be spending a lot right now on new curriculum but he really needs help with spelling. I would really appreciate any advice.
Oh, I wish I knew what to tell you! But all I can say is this....read! read! read! I find that to be of such help with spelling! At age seven, I would probably be making my own lists of simple words to learn phonetically, then memorize. I find there are too many "rules" because the english language is so fickle, lol. The rules can be learned at a later time when they've had a lot of exposure. Just my 2 cents!
www.superteacherworksheets.com has lists and some worksheets. I use these lists and copy into www.spellingcity.com (both of these can be used freely - spelling city does have a subscription, BUT you can add your lists, print worksheets, play games and such for free). I was using Spelling Power with my son last year, and he did well with it, but he really didn't like it. I stopped doing spelling with my oldest b/c our evaluator told us that she didn't really need it anymore. And my youngest is TOO young for Spelling Power - I believe even they recommend waiting until 3rd grade - I think 7 is too young for the program and may be why he's having trouble? Just a thought. My two younger kids actually love the combo that we do with Spelling City and Super Teacher Worksheets. And they do well on the weekly tests. HTH!
Yes, 7 is too young for the program. I tried to start it with my (just turned) 7 year old this year and it was 'crickets'. We are doing McRuffy Phonics and it has spelling in it. We'll just use that til she's reading better and then restart Spelling Power.
Rod and Staff Spelling is good and it is inexpensive. It teaches according to rules/patterns rather than a list of words. I use it for both my boys. The 2nd and 3rd grade level books don't take much time. The workload increases quite a bit when you hit the 4th grade book. I'm also using Webster's Speller (can get free online) and am giving my kids 25 word tests a couple times a week and adding mispelled words to a spelling list to study. When they reach 10 misspelled words I'll go over some of the spelling rules related to their errors and have them practice their list on spelling city (also free). Once they have those words mastered we will move on to more 25 word tests to build another spelling word list.
I prefer Sequential Spelling because it teaches words in a family by building on a root. If you can spell "well", then why not spell "spell", "tell", and "bell", or "spelling", "spelled", and "misspelled"? It's working great for us. If you buy SS by itself, it can be expensive. The trick is that you don't need the DVD's, writing response sheets, etc. You only need the books, which you can get for about $10 each, and they last a full year. You can also get a 1 year membership to AVKO for around $30 to download hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of stuff free. Their main ebook has well over 1000 pages in it. It's definitely more comprehensive than anything I've ever seen.
Spelling power works surpisingly well for my 6 yr old, but not so great with my 8 yr old....Spelling power is kind of boring, actually, so that could be a reason. It's just not registering because of lack of interest maybe. I try to encourage them to read a lot, because that really is a great spelling skills booster. Also, I have my 8 yr old read from a newspaper every day, so there is some familiarity with words not normally seen by someone his age.
Spelling Power states it's best to start in 3rd grade. If you use a phonics program you may be getting spelling already. My 6 yr old uses explode the code and she has spelling words each week as part of her workbook.
We also use Sequential Spelling. Using level 1 with a 6 and 8 year old right now and it's going very well.
I'm currently using Sequential Spelling with four kids ages 12 and 14 (two of each), and although it's too soon to tell whether it's improving their spelling much (not one of them can spell their way out of a wet paper bag!), my 6yo dgs who decides now and then he wants to write some words too is picking things up here and there. DGS is using CLE's Learning to Read right now, which includes spelling sounds-into-words, but he's very proud to participate with the Big Kids by giving me the sounds of the words in SS. I think by the time he gets to be up in grade school (first grade right now), he'll be a good speller -- boy, I hope so, because his dad never was and his mom isn't either.
I would recommend a program called Spell to Read and Write. Their web address is http://www.bhibooks.net/swr.html. It's a phonics-based multi sensory approach approach based on the Orton-Gillingham and Spalding approaches which have been around for ever. We used it with our children and had great success. Comprehensive. Curt
