R & S

[Ohio12]

Can anyone tell me about R & S spelling. What is it like?

[Ali in OR]

We are just finishing the 3rd grade book. We started it in the spring, switching over from SWO. I really like R&S and just ordered the 4th &5th grade books for my 8 yo (5th for next year) and the 2nd grade book for my younger dd for next year.

Speaking about the 3rd grade book:
Each lesson is a 2-page spread. There are 13 new words and 3 review words. The new words usually follow a particular theme. We just finished the last new lesson, 33, with words like stood, could, tooth, true, etc. So it is exploring different spellings of the vowel sounds in stood and tooth. DD does the first page of a lesson on Monday, the second page on Tuesday, and I test her on the words on Thursday.

This is a low-key spelling program, great for natural spellers and people who don't want to major in spelling. SWO was starting to frustrate me because the games and activities were often time consuming, possibly difficult if the child is working above grade level (like unscrambling letters to form a spelling word) and did not necessarily achieve the purpose of helping dd learn to spell the words. I much prefer R&S. It is also much cheaper. Her 5th grade book plus the teacher book is about $14.45 which is one SWO semester with no teacher book. I only use the teacher book for the tests (it has a sentence to read for word usage), but it does come in handy for that.

I do plan to work a grade ahead. We started in the 3rd grade book at the end of 2nd grade and we'll get the 4th grade book done by the end of this (3rd grade) year. Some chapters I just pre-test her and move on if she knows the words. I will start my other dd on the 2nd grade book for first grade, and looking at the words I think she'll be fine.