robsiew Posted March 19, 2011 Share Posted March 19, 2011 Do you schedule more than one lesson a week? I notice in WTM she has first graders finishing A and going into B... 2nd graders finishing B and going into C... etc. She also suggests 1-3 pages a day... which would mean an entire lesson in one day if the child did 3 pages! Is this enough time with the words to really learn them? I've been having my 7 y/o do one lesson per week. He's done with A only because we skipped lessons because they were too easy. He's going into B now... but there are 34 lessons in B. That would be equal to a typical school year. The words are still easy for the most part so I suppose we could do more than one lesson a week. Do you pretest the kids to see if they know the words? And if they do then I suppose you could do that lesson in 1 day??? How do YOU schedule this? :confused: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annabel Lee Posted March 19, 2011 Share Posted March 19, 2011 Hi Robyn, My ds10 is finishing up D and will go right into E, and my youngest is on track to be ahead of that when he's in 4th. I use other things through 2nd grade, just to finish the phonics sequence we started. Level D has 4 pgs. per lesson, and we spend at least 3 days per lesson if we're doing the whole lesson. The TM has schedule options and instructions for what to do each day if you're doing a 5-day or 3-day schedule. I only have him do the whole lesson, with the additional WTM recommendations to copy down the phonics rule and list trouble words in his notebook, if he needs work on that spelling rule or the lesson consists mostly of words he doesn't know. I pretest him over the weekend for the next week's lesson, and if there's only a handful or less incorrect (incl. bonus words), I move on to the next lesson and do the same until I have 25 words or so. Then, it becomes studying the list I make rather than using the book. Because they're words he missed, we focus on the spelling rules within the words. More often though, he just does 1 lesson every 3 days, and that includes a test at the end. The review lessons in the book help ensure he's not forgetting the old lists. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeidiKC Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 I was a bit confused about this myself. My son is in 5th grade and we're doing SWO F. He is an excellent speller, and really the book is way too easy for him as far as the spelling part goes. But I do think he's getting something out of learning prefixes and suffixes and the practice pages that focus on meaning. We only do one lesson each week. Day 1: Read the page that uses the words in the "story". Copy spelling words. Day 2: Practice Pages (I think there are 2?) Day 3: Writing assignment, which includes editing and writing a few sentences using the words. Day 4: Test Each day takes him about 10 minutes, so we could easily do 2 lessons/week. But it is our first year homeschooling, I didn't want to overwhelm him, and I didn't know it would be so easy for him when I figured out my scheduling at the beginning of the year. If I were starting from the beginning, I'd make sure to choose the right book level for my child (not one that is too easy). I wouldn't pretest since I'd want him to do the pages that focus on the words' meanings. Then I would probably do each lesson in 3 days , meaning we'd finish over 1.5 books/year. If there were missed words, I'd probably wait until we had 10 of those and spend 3 days working on those. Since we'd be slated to finish over 1.5 books for the year, there'd be no problem if we had to slow down and work on misspelled words a week here and there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momto2blessings Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 My kids are pretty natural spellers. I don't make them read the front copy or the last page writing assignment anymore. They read the phonics rule and do 2 pages a day. I re-read the phonics rule with them on list day, and they rarely miss a word. They easily complete more than one book a year and it's pretty painless for us all! Blessings, Gina Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m0mmaBuck Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 We do one lesson/wk. Day One: Read story. Copy words. Day Two: Practice pages 1 & 2. Day Three: Copy rule. Do editing on page 3. Day Four: Practice spelling words using Scrabble tiles. Day Five: Test. Write any problem words on list in back of book. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robsiew Posted March 20, 2011 Author Share Posted March 20, 2011 Thank you Ladies! It is very nice to see how everyone schedules. My older three are all good spellers and my youngest seems to have a knack for writing so I'm expecting him to be a good speller too. It helps to see how people with strong spellers approach the curriculum. Thanks!:D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcconnellboys Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 In years where we did two books a week, we did one lesson on Monday through Wednesday and another on Thursday and Friday (Fridays being a lighter day for us on other work, anyway). Yes, I found that two to three days on a lesson was sufficient. I believe it was only in year one that we did this, and those words are simpler, anyway, so it wasn't so much of an issue after that. In the years where we did 1 1/2 books per year, we covered one lesson every 3 days, I believe. Doing it this way allows you to only do one book per year when you get to the more difficult, upper level texts, and to be finished with spelling by the end of sixth grade, so that you can be finished with a thorough vocab program by the end of ninth grade, and ready for SAT/ACT testing in the fall as a sophomore. If you're not looking to keep such a schedule, then you could certainly slow down the spelling work.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elise1mds Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 We only do spelling two, maybe three, times per week. I pre-test DS. If he misses fewer than three, he doesn't have to do the entire lesson. He does two pages if he misses two, one page if he misses one, and gets to skip the lesson if he can spell them all right before even seeing the lesson. I see no point in flogging a dead horse. We're halfway through C now and I already have D in the house. It won't be long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robsiew Posted March 20, 2011 Author Share Posted March 20, 2011 Sarah, Do you find good retention with this method? Just curious. Sounds like you have a natural speller! :001_smile: I think this may work with my 7 y/o who HATES to do ANYTHING he already knows (or for that matter, THINKS he already knows!:001_huh:) We only do spelling two, maybe three, times per week. I pre-test DS. If he misses fewer than three, he doesn't have to do the entire lesson. He does two pages if he misses two, one page if he misses one, and gets to skip the lesson if he can spell them all right before even seeing the lesson. I see no point in flogging a dead horse. We're halfway through C now and I already have D in the house. It won't be long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linders Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 The first 3-4 levels seemed pretty easy for my boys so we had a rule - oral pre-test at the beginning of the week, and if you got 100% we just moved on to the next list. (Sometimes they did one of the exercises for the skipped week if it was an especially useful one like antonyms, and they always did the proofreading exercise.) This has put my 2nd grader in Level D (he seems to be a natural speller) while my 4th grade is just finishing E now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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