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Looking for opinions on Spelling Power
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We are currently using Spelling Wisdom, and the program is great, but honestly we started book 1 in 3rd grade and we are only halfway through in 5th. At this pace, I’ll be doing good to finish book one in 7th grade! It’s just that we can do only one passage per week. More than that is overload for my dd and she is having trouble retaining from week to week as well.
I was talking to a mom about Spelling Power and I am wondering if anyone here has used it and what your opinions are. I think dd will do better with a spelling list and I’ve heard that the way the lists are arranged works better for a struggling speller and retention improves.
Thanks for your thoughts!
At this pace, I’ll be doing good to finish book one in 7th grade!
It will be interesting to see what feedback others have, but remember that the goal is to learn spelling, not to finish the book.
But Doug, if we don’t finish the book, how will I ever mark it off of my list?
You’re absolutely right. Thanks for the reminder!
We have used Spelling Power for a few years with my two oldest (now 10 and 12). I like it. They seem to retain a fair amount. I like that it reviews missed wordsand has the 10 steps that help them learn the words. Soemtimes it gives words that don’t fit the rule they are supposed to be under. That is my kids’ main complaint. But they have been known to say spelling is their favorite subject so they must not find it too onerous.
Nebby
We use Spelling Power and have since we started homeschooling in Sept 2010. My children are 15, 12, 10, & 8 (the 8 year old doesn’t use it yet, but will most likely start in the fall). My kids seem to like it well and I love it. I love there is no prep for me and they are retaining what they are learning as near as I can tell. My older two are doing it together and we’re half way through the second to the last section and I hope they’ll finish up this school year. There is also a lot of reinforcement activities in the book and you can buy a box of cards with all sorts of reinforcement activities inside. We haven’t really explored the extra options at this juncture because I feel like what we’re doing is working and don’t want to bog them down with unnecessary work. I will say at the beginning of last school year (fall 2011), I was exploring spelling using dictation and decided to purchase the ebook Simply Spelling. Both the kids and I really disliked it. I didn’t like having to correct their passage each day (they had to copy a passage each day) and then we dictated on Friday. Everyone disliked it a lot and it only lasted for a few weeks and they were super happy to go back to Spelling Power. Hope this info helps you!
Thank you all for your opinions . I was able to peruse my friend’s copy yesterday and it seems very open and go. I found a used copy at a good price so I’m going to go for it!
How does Spelling Power work? I mean, what do the children do with the word lists? I’ve seen it in catalogs, but have never seen inside the book.
Okay, so I am sure that I never used Spelling Power to the upmost.
But, basically, it is a BIG book of spelling lists with the words broken up into phonetic families. It is multi-level and inexpensive when you consider that you can use it for several kids/grade levels. I think the most useful thing about it really is that it teaches the parent how to test the child and teach the list.
The way we did it: Pre-test, knock the ‘known’ words off the list, child writes the list out, studies the words by visualizing and saying the spelling, test at the end of the week, and carry missed words over to the next week.
It is a pretty simple system, but I wouldn’t say it is a repacement for copywork/dictation. When the kids do copywork, they are incorporating a lot more information than just the spelling of words (vocabularly, grammar, syntax, style, thought,etc…).
But, if you want a spelling LIST book than Spelling Power is a good way to go, IMHO.
How many words are in each weekly list?
How much writing is required of the students? From what I could tell of the online sample they write each word on Monday, again on Tuesday, write one sentence per word on Wednesday, write each word for a test on Thursday, then again for another test on Friday. Plus it seems they are re-writing their growing dictionary regularly. Is that accurate? It seems like quite a bit of writing.
Do any of you use the student record books?
The book comes with a dvd to help you understand the program. I adapted the method based on what My Father’s World recommended our first year of homeschool. How I do it is I test my children until they miss 5 words even if it goes over the 5 minutes SP recommends. Then my child practices the missed words and write a sentence with each word. The following day I retest the missed words and continue on with the rest of the list or start a new list if the last list was finished. When Monday rolls around, I retest all the missed words from the prior week and then continue on with the list until the child misses 5 words.
Hope this makes sense. There isn’t a ton of writing, just spelling words and writing sentences for missed words. A bit more if you have them do other reinforcement activities.
Out of curiousity has anyone gone from using All About Spelling (AAS) to using Spelling Power with better end results?
Does SP give any rules or why’s on the word families that it is using or is it all just lists of simular words?
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