R&S Spelling - words too easy?

[daughterofsarah77]

First, I love Rod and Staff spelling...I love that it is rules based, and I believe that the work dd does is challening enough for her.

However, in 3 years, she has missed only 2 spelling words total on tests, and often complains that the words are not challenging for her.  She really does not study her words, beyond doing the assigned work. 

I would like to challenge her, since she is good with spelling, and desires to compete in spelling bees. Any ideas? Has anyone added challenge words to the curriculum to step things up?

 

Thanks!

 

Dawn

[Ellie]

She's only done the 2nd and 3rd grade books, yes? Those are easy. :-)

 

Things change with the 4th grade book. There are more exercises, and it is the exercises that make the series good, not necessarily the difficulty of the word lists.

 

You could have her do the books because of the skills learned, then have her study the words from the National Spelling Bee.

[DesertBlossom]

I hate to hijack this thread, but is there a placement test for these? I'm trying to figure out what to do with my rising 2nd grade DD next year. 

[redsquirrel]

Just start her at grade level. The series starts with second grade.

[hollyhock]

She's only done the 2nd and 3rd grade books, yes? Those are easy. :-)

 

Things change with the 4th grade book. There are more exercises, and it is the exercises that make the series good, not necessarily the difficulty of the word lists.

 

Agreeing with Ellie. My natural speller found the first few books very easy but when he got to 4th/5th grade, it wasn't too easy anymore.

[boscopup]

I agree with Ellie - have her practice for the spelling bee separately. R&S isn't intended to prepare you for a spelling bee.

 

And yes, each year ramps up. I did use it a year ahead for a while, though now we're right on track at grade level (mostly for not doing it consistently), so that's an option. Just realize that the exercises get harder in the upper years.

[Mrs Twain]

I agree that the exercises in R&S get harder in upper grades, and those exercises are a great strength of the program. However, I also agree that the word lists are not challenging for some students.

 

To add in more challenging words, I use the lists from Spelling Power, modifying the program so that we can do it is as an add-on to R&S. In particular I use the practice sheets from Spelling Power and not the other parts such as writing out the rules or playing games.

[Saddlemomma]

We had been using How To Teach Spelling, which we really loved.  However, hearing great things about R&S,  I wanted to try their English 6, so I bundled it with R&S Spelling 6 for my 5th grade DD to try.  Well, we tried it.  I liked the R&S English, but by the 5th week of R&S Spelling 6 we were done.  I didn't like it for one simple reason.  It didn't concentrate on one spelling rule, but mixed them up.  Another problem was that after HTTS, the words seemed extremely easy for DD.  She wasn't challenged at all. 

 

HTTS is a K-12 spelling program.  The difficulty in spelling rules are listed by grade.  Then you are given a large list of words for each spelling rule.  You can choose which words you would like to challenge your student with.  I would always try to pick a few grade-level words and then use the upper grade-level words for the rest.  Consequently, with HTTS we learned one specific spelling rule at a time.  All the copywork, dictation, and workbook exercises concentrated on that spelling rule with some review work built in.  It also has an extremely comprehensive section on syllabication. My DD thrived  with that curricula.  So, after ditching R&S, we went back to HTTS.

 

I guess we were too used to the methodology of HTTS and couldn't deal with a different program.   

 

DD has done so well with HTTS that we will not be doing a separate spelling program next year.  However, I do have the next HTTS workbook in case we need to go back to a spelling program.