Spell to Write and Read

I feel like I should write down how I did spelling, as it is in the process of changing.

I started kindergarten with "Spell to Write and Read." I liked the phonograms and the spelling rules. I like how it didn't require much thought on my part. I researched it quite a bit before starting kindergarten and decided that it was the best program out there for Sparkle and me. It is a "teacher intensive" curriculum, but I figured that would mesh with Sparkle's need for company.

I changed a few things up. Instead of doing "fingergrams" I strung beads on a string to show the phonograms and the syllables. Instead of using a sewn log, I made my own log sheets and gave Sparkle on one piece of paper at a time. Instead of doing any of the spelling enrichments, I just gave Sparkle sentence dictation, making sure that all the words in the sentences were previously taught words. Instead of having Sparkle write all the info on the reference pages, I made them myself and just discussed them with her.

However, I feel that I was still being fairly consistent with the program. We started with list "A" and got all the way to list "I-1."

Our schedule was something like this:
Day 1: I taught reference page and did any other preliminaries with Sparkle.
Day 2: I taught 5 new words, then quiz those words plus 2-5 additional review words. Sparkle would practice any missed words three times.
Day 3: I dictated sentences using the 5 new words. If Sparkle missed any words, she practiced them three times.
Days 4 - 9: Repeat days 2 & 3 for the rest of the words in the list, resulting in about 10 new words per week.

To come up with the words for the sentence dictation, I created a list of all the previously taught words sorted by part of speech. That made it easy to put a tick mark by any words that needed practice. I could then make sentences by seeing which words had ticks and picking out nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. to go with them.

We also did a daily drill of phonogram flashcards. I skipped ahead a bit to teach all 70 phonograms before Christmas break. Then after not doing any phonograms for all of Christmas break, I found that Sparkle remembered almost all of them, so we dropped down to just a weekly phonogram drill.

The system worked fairly well for us. I think that Sparkle learned well. However, the process took a long time, and I think that Sparkle could learn more with less effort. So, I'm in the process of switching to a new spelling system that involves studied copywork and dictation. I'll keep the phonograms and rules from SWR, but drop the lists and teaching words via dictation.