Spelling for the natural speller

[Janeway]

Son has only missed 9 words total on pretests in the first 12 weeks of Spelling Workout. I really do like SWO, but it is actually becoming overkill. Should I just keep it up and figure it is about to morph in to being a vocabulary program anyway? Or should I switch when we finish this book and if so, what to?

[Gil]

If you have a natural speller, what are you hoping to get out of doing a spelling program with this child? First figure that out, then search for a spelling program that will target and meet that need. But if you're going to stick with doing a spelling program, then I find it cheaper and easier to jump up several levels, than to step through a program level by level. I'm not familiar with Spelling Workout, but I would jump towards the end of the series and see if Son can keep up at that level.

I got each of my kids there own copy of this Word Reference set early in Elementary school and they are required to use them regularly each week.

I have a natural speller. He became a great speller within months of gaining the ability to read fluently. We made the spelling rules notebook from WRTR when he was in 2nd grade and studied commonly misspelled words and that was pretty much that. He's a solid speller and so I don't do spelling with him. Occasionally my natural speller asks me to quiz him on tough words as a game and I will, but I do not make the effort to drill him on spelling patterns or anything like that.

Both of my kids do a lot of vocabulary work, but I only my struggling speller "studies" spelling, because he needs the extra support in that area.

 

[Ellie]

One of the reasons I like about R&S's Spelling by Sound and Structure that the children learn more than just how to correctly spell words. They learn dictionary skills, etymologies, alphabetization, syllabication, and more. So maybe you could do those kinds of things with your dd. They are helpful skills, different from vocabulary, things that even children who are natural spellers need to know.

[umsami]

I've had two natural spellers and two who've struggled.  For the natural speller, we usually stop formal spelling around 5th/6th and move to a Latin/Greek roots based vocabulary program.  It seems to work well.  I still correct spelling in papers and such, and if I see a word that he or she keeps misspelling, then I'll have them write it 3-5 times and we'll add it to a list that they can refer to.  

[Mergath]

Dd is a natural speller. We do a spelling test of one of the weeks in the Evan Moor Building Spelling Skills each Monday. If she gets them all correct, which is usually the case, that's it for spelling for the week. If she only gets one or two wrong, I have her copy them down a couple times and then we add those to the test the following Monday and re-test. If she gets a bunch wrong in one week (which has only happened once, I think) I have her do that week's worksheets and then re-test that list again the following week. It lets us see if she has any weaknesses in a specific area, since each week is structured around a certain kind of word.