Words Their Way?

[kah]

Does anyone use this? I could be wrong, but I thought I had heard of it on another board that happened to have a lot of homeschoolers- my kids were younger at the time, so I always just skimmed the HS threads, mostly out of curiosity.

 

Anyway, our public school district adopted it beginning last September, and both kids have been using it in PS. It seems to be working fine for them- and I do like that- from what I can see- it puts the focus on phonics and on patterns in spelling, rather than just memorizing progressively harder lists (which is what DD had last year.)

[momee]

I have a friend, ex ps teacher. She's homeschooling now and using that. I saw it at B and Noble and it looked pretty in depth and hard to teach.

 

The friend I have confirmed those impressions. I'd go for something more hs mom friendly personally.

[DeeDeeMarie0]

My four boys used this in ps, so I decided to continue at home. One of the teachers kindly took time to show me how to test them for placement in the word sorts, and it is a little bit complicated. I have to reveiw it each time I test them. We did this for several years, but then I felt like they weren't really progressing. In ps they did so many group activities with the words. They talked about the pattern, sorted it together, and then individually. They practiced by timing each other sorting. They alphabetized, wrote sentences with different features using the words. I think the group activities is what made it work so well. With four boys, I had a hard time being creative with the activities and they ended up sorting, writing the words, writing a few sentences with the words, and I think they became bored with this. It didn't seem to be working. I still have all the books and go back periodically and test them to see if they are improving. We are now using Sequential Spelling. They like it because it is quick, you write and self-correct words in a pattern, and then you are finished. It does seem to be working.