HOW WE USE SPELLING POWER

I just recently purchased a used 3rd edition Spelling Power to use with Little Girl. I have seen so many people talking about how long the instructions for use are, and how complicated. I suppose they would be, if you bothered to use them. But, being a rebel, I never use anything like the directions tell you to. Instead, I have modified to fit what works for us. So here is how we are using it.

First of all, I gave her the placement tests. No big deal. I let her type the words out on the computer, and it didn't take long at all to figure out where to place her. Then I got two composition books for her to use for the regular tests, as I want her to actually write the words out. I think they "see" them better that way.

Spelling Power has lists of 20 words with a spelling rule above each list. The rules are pretty useless in my opinion, so we don't use them. We learned spelling rules with Spell to Write and Read, which had really good rules but was much too time consuming to continue. However, I am glad for the time we did use it. I learned a lot myself. I could have just used the Wise Guide from SWR the way I am using Spelling Power, but after research, I realized I like Spelling Power better. SWR only has 2000 words. It doesn't include variations of words because those are included in the exercises the student does (adding prefixes, suffixes, etc.) Nor does it review words throughout the lists, but each word only appears once. SP, on the other hand, has 5000 words. It does include the variations of the words and it also reviews them throughout the lists, thus accounting for the number of words included. This is what I wanted.

Ok, so on with how we actually use it. The first day, I call out one word at a time from our list. Little Girl writes the word in her notebook, then spells it aloud to me. If it is correct, we go to the next word. If it is wrong, I have her mark it out, give her the correct spelling, and discuss any rules, hints, or tricks for remembering how the word is spelled. We continue to the end of the list. The rules say to stop when they have missed 3 or 4 words, but the most she has ever missed is 3 anyway.

After we finish the test, I have her copy the missed words into her second composition book. I have her spell each one aloud to me, to make sure she doesn't copy them wrong. She then studies the words, one at a time, covers them, and rewrites each out beside the original. She hasn't missed any so far, but if she does, she will erase it and repeat.

The next day, we get a clean notebook page. We start with the words she missed the day before and go through the next list, using the same steps as before. So far, she hasn't missed any a second day.

As I said, review is built in, and every 5 lists, I believe, is a review test. We had our first today. I crossed out some of the easier words and replaced them with some she had missed from the recent lists. She got them all right the first time.

I like this book because it goes all the way through 12th grade and the kids don't have to study words they already know, but only the ones they need to work on. I had previously dropped spelling for a while, but I think I will continue this until she graduates, or finishes the book, whichever comes first. Good spelling is important.