ucfgizmo
Mar 12 2006, 05:15 PM
I'm still working out next year's material. The Well-Trained Mind, which I tend to agree with, recommends Spelling Workout. What can you tell me about it?

How are the lessons arranged?

What types of activities do they have them do?

About how long does your child spend on this (a day or week)?

What parts do you like and not like?

What can you tell me about Level A vs. Level B? Well Trained Mind suggests doing both in 1st grade, but I don't have a lot of money to spend on this. So far for spelling we have just been working on words that my daughter has trouble with in her writings, doing word family (-an, -ay, -ight) activities from ABC Teach, and Dolch Lists (sight words). Do you think a more formal program like Spelling Workout is better?

Thanks for your thoughts.


Melanie
Mar 12 2006, 05:48 PM
We are using Spelling Workout. There are 36 lessons in each book, and each lesson is four pages long. One page is a little article about some generic topic using some of the lesson's spelling words. Three pages are full of little exercises. Book C, lesson one has exercises titled: Syllables, Puzzle, Rhyming Words, Proofreading, and Writing a Descriptive Paragraph.

My son would knock out a whole book in a week if I let him. My daughter does one page a day, and also writes her words once a day. We test on Fridays.
The jury is still out on whether or not this program is beneficial - Ds is a natural speller and doesn't need the extra practice to begin with, and Dd still misspells an alarming number of words, even though she makes an 100% on nearly every spelling test.

My kids hate the writing assignments. I don't blame them - the topics are lame. They do enough writing in other areas that I feel comfortable skipping most of them. I don't remember the difference between levels A and B. I do remember thinking that Ds could have skipped A and that I was glad I didn't have Dd skip A. That isn't much help to you, though!


quiltinmommy
Mar 12 2006, 07:17 PM
Excellent review Melanie,
We're using level B. They are arranged by spelling rules as well. I like it for my youngest as she is still learning the rules of spelling. She likes the activities. She also writes her words three times each , every day as she needs the repetition.


Again
Mar 12 2006, 08:04 PM
We are currently doing B........the girls are doing great with it. They do 1 lesson per week...... although they could easily do more. I don't make them write out the words beyond what is in the workbook......but I do write the words up on the dry erase board and they look at them everyday. We like it and will continue with it..........I've already purchased C and D.


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