sequential spelling

[lgliser]

I was trying to figure out if this curriculum might be good for my 9 year olds.  I was hoping to find some sample pages of the teacher's manuals.  I watched the dvd samples, but if I used the dvd, would that be it or is there more instruction in the manual?  I see on the dvd that words build... like in, pin, spin, thin, thinning.... so are students learning just by hearing, writing, correcting, and repeating for a few days?

 

I'm just trying to get a grasp for what this looks like day to day.  Also, since my trio is going into 4th grade, I'd be interested in possibly accelerating this.... what would that look like?

[mamamoose]

There is nothing in the manual but lists of words. You do one spelling test each day and yes it's "sequential" so it builds upon itself. We all hated it.

[Julie Smith]

There is really nothing more to it. Just lists of words. The first book builds up to 25 words a day, after that it is 25 words a day. The various samples cover it nicely. You don't need to type to use the DVD, you have the option of typing the words or you can write them on paper. It expects you to check the word yourself. 

 

Eldest is on Sequential Spelling 3. He did 1 with me, and half of 2 then switched to the DVD. Youngest is on book 1.

 

The only way to accelerate is to do more then one list/day every school day. 

 

 

[lgliser]

Huh.  So Mamamoose hates it... lol

 

And Julie, you apparently like it?  You feel like your kids are really learning?  

 

I don't understand how you can tell if they're learning.  I guess just based on how many corrections they make each time?

 

So you could do the program with EITHER the dvd or the manual, it seems?  

 

How many lessons are there in each level?

 

Thanks!

Edited August 12, 2016 by lgliser

[HomeAgain]

There is nothing in the manual but lists of words. You do one spelling test each day and yes it's "sequential" so it builds upon itself. We all hated it.

 

This was our experience.

 

Also, little to no retainment.  It was easy to figure out the pattern when going through lists of similar words, but harder when the word was taken out of context.  The following year we switched to Wordly Wise (the app, where everything had to be spelled correctly), and Word Roots.  Focusing on the meaning of the words and breaking it down by prefix/root/suffix helped a thousand times more than Sequential Spelling.

[Sammish]

We're a little into the second book, and it's working very well for my DS9. You can tell they're learning and remembering because every so often (30 days? I don't have the book in front of me) there's a spelling "test," which is just 20 or so words that they've done over the course of the program. They're words that I'm sure my kid couldn't have spelled before, but he's now able to (without review) so I know it's sticking for him. My son is a natural speller, fwiw, and does really well with patterns. I like SS because it's a very easy, low-key way to do spelling. (We actually do it almost entirely orally, and I only make him slow down and write out the really long words.)

 

If you want to try it out, the free sample on the AVKO website  is just the beginning 16 pages of the first book, which includes the methodology, and first 8 days of lists. When I was looking at it I just printed that out and started doing it, and by the end I knew it would work for us. 

[hedwigtheowl]

I can give you some advice based on my experience of parochial school third grade which my daughter did last year.

 

I thought the spelling was quite advanced. Words like people, particular, challenge, average.

 

They brought a list of 20 compulsory words and five harder (optional) words home on Fridays. Homework was to copy in cursive and write ten sentences using ten of the words. Or sometime to write a story using all words which was hilarious. We had a sensible lamb eating a bologna sandwich (4 words down).

 

Test was on Friday. My daughter did well but I practiced with her every night.

 

So you could do a DIY list on what you want them to learn.

 

For 4th grade I am using Spell-U-See which is based on a story from history or geography so they learn some general knowledge every week. It relies on copying (quite heavily IMO so we may skip some of that) and dictation. So the dictation is another skill. 

 

If I was designing my own curriculum I would use words which were relevant to other things we were learning.

Edited August 12, 2016 by hedwigtheowl

[Jackie]

We used some of Sequential Spelling and liked it. (We stopped because DD is a pretty good speller and didn't seem to need it anymore.) I think each level has 180 lessons, so one per day of a school year would be the traditional setup with it.

 

There are three ways to advance. The first is to do more than one list in a day. The second is to not do all the lists, maybe every other list or three out of five, and just slow down if there's a pattern your child isn't grasping. The third is to use the version written for teens and adults, which works the exact same way but boils the seven volumes down to two volumes by having far less repetition. We did two of these - three lessons a day from the adult version; we did not skip lists because this program moved so much faster.

[Jackie]

Oh, and I knew she was learning because the number of misspelled words in her independent writing drastically decreased. And she was asking me "how do I spell...?" far less often.

[Julie Smith]

It is 180 lists. 25 words in each list.

 

 

I can give you some advice based on my experience of parochial school third grade which my daughter did last year.

 

I thought the spelling was quite advanced. Words like people, particular, challenge, average.

 

They brought a list of 20 compulsory words and five harder (optional) words home on Fridays. Homework was to copy in cursive and write ten sentences using ten of the words. Or sometime to write a story using all words which was hilarious. We had a sensible lamb eating a bologna sandwich (4 words down).

 

Test was on Friday. My daughter did well but I practiced with her every night.

 

So you could do a DIY list on what you want them to learn.

 

For 4th grade I am using Spell-U-See which is based on a story from history or geography so they learn some general knowledge every week. It relies on copying (quite heavily IMO so we may skip some of that) and dictation. So the dictation is another skill. 

 

If I was designing my own curriculum I would use words which were relevant to other things we were learning.

Are you sure it was sequential spelling? Because that sounds nothing like sequential spelling.

[MerryAtHope]

I was trying to figure out if this curriculum might be good for my 9 year olds.  I was hoping to find some sample pages of the teacher's manuals.  I watched the dvd samples, but if I used the dvd, would that be it or is there more instruction in the manual?  I see on the dvd that words build... like in, pin, spin, thin, thinning.... so are students learning just by hearing, writing, correcting, and repeating for a few days?

 

I'm just trying to get a grasp for what this looks like day to day.  Also, since my trio is going into 4th grade, I'd be interested in possibly accelerating this.... what would that look like?

 

It didn't work well here. I suspect that students who like to learn from discovery-oriented methods would like it better (kids who notice patterns and like coming up with discoveries). As an example--my son did not notice the pattern that when you add a suffix like -ing, the consonant after a short vowel gets doubled (ie, thin-thinning). To him, it was just random. Same thing when it introduced words with the ai vowel pattern--he started randomly decorating words with vowels after that. He found the lack of up front, explicit instruction (ie, teaching a rule, showing the student, then letting them try it) particularly frustrating. And if I would try to help by pointing something out for him, he would be upset that the program itself didn't think to teach him that. So, think about your child's learning style and whether this might appeal or might frustrate. 

 

HTH some!

[....]

My oldest two (who are very right-brained/whole-to-parts thinkers) use Sequential Spelling.  I just buy the Teacher's Manual - nothing else.  All I do is read the list of words and they write them on a dry erase board.  They have made a ton of progress with this program.  Other programs literally made them cry (well, when they were little - Lol).

 

My middle two girls (who are much more left-brained) don't use Sequential Spelling.  My 6th grader tried it and absolutely hated it - and couldn't figure out what the point was - and got nothing out of it!  

 

Just saying...I feel like Sequential Spelling is for a certain kind of thinker.