Which Spelling Wisdom book to Use

The best way to determine where your students place in Spelling Wisdom is to download a sample (I’d suggest book 1 and 2).  Looking at the first couple of lessons on each sample, you’ll need to decide if your student is familiar with most of the words within the lesson.  If there are 3-4 words they are unfamiliar with, you have most likely found where they should be placed.

I would encourage you to not hit the ground running with dictation.  When a student is just starting out with dictation, it is suggested that they transcribe several lessons.  This means rather than looking at a word and transferring the word to paper, they look at the passage and commit 2-3 words to memory and then transfer those 2-3 words to paper.  Gradually they are able to build the ability to remember complete phrases and sentences.

Tamara, when you say

“decide if your student is familiar with most of the words within the lesson”

do you mean can they read them? Or spell them?

I have two boys (5th grade and 11th grade) doing spelling wisdom for the first time. Well, the 5th grader did a bit of book one. The 11th grader is dyslexic so I’m thinking second half of book one for 5th grader and beginning of book two for 11th grader. I own both so I can have them look through but I just wanted to clarify your statement.

Thanks, Kristen

Got it! Thank you!