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After Apples and Pears?


travelgirlut
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My daughter (10) tested into book C of Apples and Pears, and doing one level per day will have us finishing both book C and D before the end of the year.  Does that mean we're done with spelling after that?  What are people planning to do afterwards, if anything?  I looked into emailing the company to ask, but they only have a phone number (in England) on their website, no email.  Just trying to plan ahead while I still have school money to spend!  

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I'm planning to do CM style prepared dictation. And hopefully to keep an eye on misspellings in DS's work, so we can do a custom spelling list if needed. Whether or not that will work, I don't know. We just started A&P yesterday! But I will say if he can pass the test at the end of book D I will be a happy mama. Maybe he'll never be a great speller, but at least he'll spell well enough to use a spell checker if needed.

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So I finally found an email address, and asked them this question.  Here was Hilary Burkard's (the author of the program) answer:

 

"I think a 'complete' English spelling programme would be enormous—there are so many words! We wrote Apples & Pears because we could not find a suitable programme for the children we tutored.   It was impossible to include everything so we had to decide what was most useful and what was easiest to learn.  Unfortunately, I don't know of a more advanced programme that I would recommend.

By the time your daughter has finished Book D she should have a solid foundation of regular spelling patterns, a range of common irregular words and the most predictable rules. To continue improving her spelling try to apply the techniques used in A&P to any new words she needs to learn. Pick out the morphemes in longer words and note which rules it follows or is an exception to.  Practise irregular words frequently until they are firm and then revisit them at intervals to make sure they are not forgotten.  I would encourage her to use a dictionary to check any word she is unsure of when she is writing."

 

 

I hope this helps others who are wondering the same thing!!

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I would suggest you look at Megawords which teaches syllabication. It's designed to start around grade 4. There's a detailed explanation in this thread.

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/523544-is-anyone-here-using-megawords-for-spelling/?hl=%2Bmegawords&do=findComment&comment=5894110

 

(I don't know the fancy way to quote another thread)

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I planned to use Spelling Power,but decided I wanted non-teacher led after 4 years of such intense spelling work. I went with Rod and Staff 6, instead. To my great happiness, my former abysmal speller is getting As on every pre-test!

 

Anyway, I think Spelling Power would have been a good next step, if I could have taken it.

 

Oh, and my oldest was finishing 6th grade when he finished it, so we dropped spelling and picked up vocab.

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