Spelling You See, surely you have heard of them! They are in the Math U See family which I personally love. My family has used products from this publisher for over 8 years with much success.
Today I am going to talk to you about our newest review item sent to us, Spelling You See Ancient Achievements (Level F).
Spelling You See is a program that Dr. Karen Holinga put together after having 30 years of experience working with children. She is a qualified reading specialist that has helped hundreds of children become successful spellers!
Benefits:
No weekly spelling lists!
No timely preparation for me!
We work at our own pace!
No tests (which my children hate)!
What is Spelling You See's Philosophy and Approach?
They understand that spelling is a difficult thing to understand and teach. They believe that spelling is developed in stages:
Stage 1 Preliterate: This stage is before a child can read or write and there is just an introduction to understanding language.
Stage 2 Phonetic: This is a very auditory stage where the child develops the skills to hear each spoken sound.
Stage 3 Skill Development: This is the most difficult stage and the one that is the longest to achieve success too. This is the stage that our Level F is within. This stage is a very important stage and sometimes may seem like you are teaching the same things over and over but the skills that are important many times need repetition.
Stage 4 Word Extension: This stage focuses on syllables, prefixes and suffixes.
Stage 5 Derivational Constancy: This stage works on origins and words that normally have a pattern although the spelling doesn't really fit.
How we got started with Ancient Achievements:
When the package arrived Lexi and I dug into the box to see what the physical items looked like. We had talked about the review items before we got them and took a placement test to make sure we were starting at the proper point.
Her favorite part of opening the box was the erasable crayons; it really is the simple things sometimes!
The next week we got started.
The lay out of the program is very similar to Math U See by having 5 parts in each lesson ( A-E ) so she already knew how the lay out worked.
Each day we are to read the passage out loud.
Next she was to take her favorite, erasable crayons and start looking for various letter patterns or chunks and mark them.
Then I have her do copywork the first 3 lessons and I dictate the last lessons to her. We have been taking a sheet of computer paper that is blank and laying it over the passage so that she isn't tempted to look at it during dictation and so that is not a distraction.
Each lesson has also had a "Spotlight" which has brought attention to new words or important words to the passage each week. So this week she is learning about Great Pyramid and the spotlight talks about compound words and gives limestone as an example, then talks about it!
The topics we have covered so far have been:
Cave of Lascaux
Goseck Circle
Cuneiform
Chinese Silk
Mummies
Great Pyramid
The skills taught so far have been vowel chunks, consonant chunks and it has added them both together in lessons.
The Instructor's Handbook is a great resource to have in teaching. It gives you lots of tips and overview of the program, then instructions for each lesson. There is also a FAQ section in the book and the answer key. Another awesomely neat aspect they added to the handbook is a glossary!
Last Thoughts:
Over all this has been a wonderful addition to my daughters school work. This is teaching spelling, listening skills, writing and giving her history lessons! I love that so many components are added to ONE curriculum.
It doesn't take long to complete a lesson either; we normally spend about 15 minutes on each lesson. Some days she actually doesn't even want my instruction but I normally give her directions anyway and make sure she understands what is expected for the day's lesson.
Alexis is 11 and really likes this book. She said it is neat to learn about ancient history. Her favorite lesson so far has been about the Chinese Silk Worms.
We also completed a Spelling You See review last year for Level B with my smallest son if you would like to take a look at that here.
You can find Spelling You See all over the net:
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