spelling power--the good, the bad, ?

[pjssully]

Hi--I am Looking for some reviews of spelling power. I have a 9 year old who has some writing difficulties and was going to use spelling power. I don't want to use something that has a lot of writing for her. I realize that the words are not group with "spelling rules" but does that still work for kids?

thanks

pam

[jabuford]

For the most part my children love this program and doing better than I expected. My children don't like missing any words and having to rewrite on the other line, but life goes on.

[Tree House Academy]

My oldest son tried this on his "tested level" and it was a miss...miserably. However, we went back to it after a stint with AAS (which didn't work for ME) and started at the very beginning - Level A. Now, it is working BEAUTIFULLY! He just had a lot of gaps to fill, I suppose (from ps).

 

He cries if he misses too many words. We stop once he has missed two (unless they are the first two).

[FloridaLisa]

Hi I realize that the words are not group with "spelling rules" but does that still work for kids?

I used Spelling Power for nearly two years before switching. It was great for my natural speller. It was okay for my average spellers (though we switched to Calvert CDs which are working just as well because I needed to free up my teaching time). It did not work for my two unnatural spellers. For all of them, I added spelling rules because ... well, it's pretty foundational to spelling unless you are extremely visual.

 

What I really liked was the 10-step method. But I switched my 9-yr-old to Sequential Spelling last year with great results. I can see a huge difference this year, both in his daily spelling work as well as within his writing. He still has a long way to go, but Sequential Spelling just makes more sense for him. By they way, I still add spelling rules along the way.

 

HTH,

Lisa

[cbollin]

My 9 y.o uses store bought spelling tiles while doing her Spelling Power lists (especially for that "3rd part of SP where they do activities). She still likes to write in a salt tray and all of the 10 steps in SP. And sometimes she works on dry erase board too. SP doesn't have to be a lot of pencil/paper writing each time

 

We stop "pre testing" the lists and just start with studying. I pre sort the groups so that similar spellings are together (such as when you study long vowel words we only study the same spelling at a time, as in all of the ee words, then ea.)

 

We repeat the group rules before each lesson and add in a few inductive style hints as we go along for times when a tricky word is tricky or when my oldest over thinks about how to spell something. And we don't work more than one level above grade because the lists are too long for my kids. Too much is well, too much sometimes.;)

 

SP does group with some rules within it. I just break it down even more. One part of SP is to do something fun with the word list. I used to let myself get bogged down in it. But we selected from 2-3 things on the list of options and just rotate.

 

 

Paula's Archives has some nice hints for Spelling Power.

 

-crystal

[KarenNC]

My daughter (age 8) is a natural speller, and SP works great for her. We have modified it so that she does the pretest orally (while bouncing on a bouncy ball, actually :)). Then she does pencil and paper work on any words she misses. This seems to work quite well for us, as her writing is also not a strength. I figure that it is actually a bit more of a workout for her as she has to get it right without seeing what it looks like.

[riada]

We use this with dd9 and dd5 and they both do good with it. Our five year old works at a very slow pace through it and our 9yr. old does great and loves it. She isn't a natural speller but tends to like the process of doing them until until she misses a set amount or the time is up. The process of working on them (10 steps) is very effective and quick and to the point. It's a no nonsense approach that has worked great for our family.

[Peela]

Love this program, works well for my kids, but it involves ME doing it WITH them and so falls off the schedule rather too easily. I just pulled it off the shelf again for my planning- I really MUST do some more spelling with them.

My kids are pretty natural spellers, but the program was written for the author's daughter who was an appalling speller.

[Lori D.]

Average speller is a perfectionist and freaked out/melted down every day having to have what he considered a "test" without ever seeing the words before. (Spelling Power has the parent give the child a list of 10-15 words a day to see what the child knows/doesn't know, and once a list of words is compiled, the child practices/learns those words). Also, at least in the lower levels, Spelling Power did not provide the help he needed for vowel patterns and phonetic spelling rules. We switched to making an individualized spelling program for this child using the ABCs and All Their Tricks, along with words from Natural Speller.

 

 

Struggling speller is a very visual-spatial learner (VSL), and absolutely did not *at all* click with spelling until he was 12yo. We took a year getting vowel sounds/patterns down with a very visual remedial program (The Stevenson Blue Spelling Manual), and then have used a combination of Megawords (teaches vowel patterns and rules of syllabication) and an individualized spelling program from the ABCs and All Their Tricks, words from Natural Speller, and practiced with a number of specific VSL methods, including oral practice back and forth with him; working with roots/endings, homophones, adding syllables, etc. on the whiteboard; and dictation of short sentences with spelling words in them

 

 

BEST of luck in finding what works for your family! Warmest regards, Lori D.

[cbollin]

Some great ideas for using SP with perfectionists can be found on the Paula archives about SP.

 

SP with perfectionists

 

hope it helps someone

 

-crystal

Edited December 7, 2008 by cbollin
fix that link

[jensway]

Spelling Power did not work for my son. He really struggles with spelling. We switched this year to AAS and I am seeing great results. My son learns better if there is a kinestic element involved with the curriculum. After years of him hating spelling, he is now enjoying it and is very proud of his progress.

[KAM]

I like the program, but my 2nd grader HATED it. Every time she misspelled something, she felt like she was being punished by having to go through all the steps (trace the letter, spell it to yourself, write it out etc.) If she got one wrong she'd just start crying, even though she hardly ever got one wrong. So we switched to Spelling Workout. I will try the program with my ds though when he gets old enough.

[KarenNC]

I like the program, but my 2nd grader HATED it. Every time she misspelled something, she felt like she was being punished by having to go through all the steps (trace the letter, spell it to yourself, write it out etc.) If she got one wrong she'd just start crying, even though she hardly ever got one wrong. So we switched to Spelling Workout. I will try the program with my ds though when he gets old enough.

 

I found that my daughter wasn't wild about it when I first tried in mid-2nd grade (though not as vehmently as yours). She wanted to finish Explode the Code, so we did. Things went much better when we started back with SP at the beginning of 3rd. This was even though she placed fairly high in the lists even as a 2nd grader (reading, vocab and spelling are her really strong points).