How long for Sequential Spelling to sink in?

[Ann in IA]

After a few other spelling programs did nothing for my son I started him on Sequential Spelling this fall after many recommendations from here.
We started out great with the first 6 or so lessons. I was so excited and so was he.
But when we started in with "out" words or "ould" words it started to fall apart. We are only on lesson 19 and have been doing a lesson 3x per week. But he never gets more than 10 right. :( I write the word on the wipe board so he can see the correct spelling right after each word. He corrects his mistakes right away for each word and I even have him spell it out loud since he's auditory.

Even the words that are repeated for 4 or more lessons, he just doesn't remember them-like "could" or "would."

He's going to be 10 in a few weeks so I know he has lots of time but he can rarely even spell common words correctly like "the" is sometimes spelled right and sometimes "thu" or "puppy" is sometimes "pupy" or "pupe" but never the correct way. Now he spells "good" as "goud" because it was in the "could" list and he has them confused now.

He's done copywork since 2nd grade (4th now) and can copy correctly-he doesn't transpose letters or anything like that. He can fill in the word for sentences that are incomplete if a word list is given-otherwise would spell them wrong.
We've tried Rod and Staff spelling for a year and Spelling workout for a year. He retained nothing from these and rarely got more than half of the spelling words right.

Should I stick with Sequential Spelling and really wait a few months to see how it goes? Do others have similar results with the repeated words not being retained?

Thanks!
Ann
PS He's at "4th grade level" with reading and math so I know he can process things. He just can't spell to save his life! I feel so bad I can't help him!

[fsunolefan]

I remember reading in the introduction that the focus should be on getting the word family part of the word correct, not the entire word. If he's applying the word families to other words, then he is getting it. If he's not retaining the word families then I would slow down and perhaps even cut the lessons in half. The jump to 20 words was a little sudden for my daughter. If she doesn't seem to be getting a word family, I have repeated the lesson with her (usually later that same day). It helps her build confidence and strengthen a shaky understanding. I usually have her write the words on our white board with the two colors of markers after she has written out her answer. It's a sneaky way to get her write the word twice. She also happens to think writing on the white board is fun.

I hope this helps. I just switched to Building Spelling Skills for my younger child since Sequential Spelling 1 is a bit too advanced for a first grader. Spelling Workout just reduced her to tears or was too easy. I definitely feel your spelling frustration.

[claire up north]

My 10yo is just like this!! Or I should say was just like this--I am happy to report some improvement. I am including a link to an old post I wrote when I was talking about tackling our spelling issues around here. You might find this helpful, too.

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4474#post4474

I did want to tell you a few other tweaks I have implemented.

1. After we do SS each day, I give two "bonuses." The first bonus is a word that is a review word. The second bonus is a short sentence which must be punctuated correctly in addition to having all the words spelled correctly. A typical sentence would be: I wanted a new red hat. If we were working on could/should/would it might be: Would you like a red hat or a green sock?

2. During SS, I give hints about how to tackle a word. For example, if the word is "winning," I will say "First spell win. Then change it to winning." This helps a lot.

3. In my original post, I talked about making them look up words. I just wanted to say that I am not nearly as mean about it as I sound. I DO require them to look up any of those frequently used words that they really should know how to spell, even if they aren't phonetic. Examples: want, water, then, there, down, of... Prior to making them look it up, they would just ask. I don't think they attended to it enough to make a mental picture. Now they spell that stuff right.

4. I didn't see a lot of improvement with SS right away, either. Hang in there. There is another Claire on these boards who also uses SS, and she once told me not to expect improvement until about lesson 75. She was right!

5. You might want to seriously consider going from a 3x/week schedule to a 5x/week schedule.

I hope something here helps. I can tell you that SS has done wonders for us. Good luck!

[Ann in IA]

Thanks for the words of wisdom!
I was wondering about the "think of how to spell win then spell winning" I've done that a few times and wondered if that would help. I think I'll start doing that more often.

The endings of words like "er" or "ing" etc is something he's been doing with his vocabulary so I thought that would be easy for him....no. It's like the subjects were introduced to 2 different people. It's like he has each subject in it's own box in his head :glare: and can't transfer the skills from one subject to the next.

I did think I should bump up to 5x a week since it is his weak area. I think we'll start that right away.
Thanks!

[AngieW in Texas]

I have seen a lot of people post that SS didn't start to improve spelling until around lesson 60.

If spelling is a weak area, I recommend doing it at least 4x/week during the schoolyear and 2x/week during the summer.

[MerryAtHope]

Your son's spelling errors are somewhat phonetic, so that's a good thing at least. I took a copywork & dictation class from bravewriter.com that really opened my eyes to what my 11 yo son was doing in regards to spelling. One of our assignments was to have our kids say what they were thinking during copywork. Ideally you want them thinking sounds & syllable chunks. As my son did the assignment, he said letter names for awhile, briefly said sounds, said a few words, then went back to letter names. Basically he was approaching spelling the same way one would approach memorizing a phone number. Can you imagine trying to memorize 5,000 or 10,000 phone numbers?!

One interesting thing was that he had the word "from" twice. Once during the time he said sounds, once during the time he said letter names. During the sounds portion (this came first), he spelled it correctly with no hesitation on his first try. During the letter names portion, he started, stopped himself, erased, started again--THREE TIMES, before finally getting it right on the 4th try. He kept writing f-o-r.

I didn't interrupt, just listened & observed. At the end, I asked him how he finally got it right (he was surprised to learn about his two different experiences!), and he said he just remembered how many times he had gotten it wrong & finally could do it. When he was focusing on names only, he couldn't even access the auditory processing part that would clue him in on how to do it.

We've since worked a lot on saying sounds while he writes, and that has helped a ton. We're also using All About Spelling now, which reinforces that concept.

We had confusions with Sequential Spelling too. My son started spelling ask, aic. C at the end because sometimes it's /s/ and sometimes /k/, so why not both together? And he threw the i in because sometimes words just have extra vowels. I don't know why but he really just wasn't making connections with SS. We did about 45 lessons, so maybe he would have eventually if we had done it longer like Angie said, I don't know. Anyway, just our experience with it. Hope you find what will help your son!

Merry :-)

[EKS]

For my son it took a long time. Most people say once you go halfway through the first book you should see improvement. For my son, at halfway through the first book he was just starting to be able to get through the lists without having a meltdown (a huge improvement). We are now in the 4th book and I have seen steady progress with his spelling over time. His spelling is still his weakest academic area (he has dyslexia) and he is probably still 1-2 years behind. I see the spell checker as a very useful tool for him.

I like SS because I don't think anything else is going to do a better job (maybe equivalent job but not better) with teaching my son spelling. Certainly not in the time it takes (10 minutes per day).