I used RLTL the last half of last school year to teach spelling to my 10&8 yo kids. I liked it, they liked it. We plan to continue this year and am adding in ELTL. I found it pretty easy to use.
Heres how we used it:
With my 10 yo, I sat down and went over all the phonograms on the first day. He could already read all the sounds that all 75 phonograms make. After that, we reviewed ten phonograms each day (there was no need for us to review the single letters, and there are 50 multi letter phonograms so we covered them all each week. I printed a free chart available from the author).
Basically each day was review ten phonograms, and then dictate ten words to him phonogram by phonogram, tell him how to mark each word, and briefly discuss any spelling rules that applied to the word. After a short time I could see things clicking and he started to really see how and why words were spelled a certain way. I began having him see if he could mark the word and tell me the rules that applied first, then I’d fill in anything he missed. It became a game to see if he could get them all. The spelling rules never seemed overwhelming because we only talked about 1 or 2 at a time and they were never obscure, they always applied to a word he was trying to spell.
Last year we did one list a day, five days a week. Because he was older and half the words he could spell already. Even spelling the words he already knew how to spell was beneficial because of the markings. He completed all of book 2 and half of book 3. Next year I plan to only do RLTL twice a week. Unless I find as we do dictation in ELTL that he’s ready to just analyze words in context of his dictation. I tried that first before starting RLTL with him last year, and he was not ready for dictation.
I used RLTL very similarly with my 8yo, only slower. She’s my late reader.
