Using Spelling Power??

[dcjlkplus3]

For those of you that use Spelling Power.
What does your daily lesson look like?
What does your week look like?
We are about ready to change into their regular test-study-test method and I am looking for ideas. (we have been doing the study-test-study method recommended for younger kids, where they pretty much study the same list/group for a week - more traditional/school style)

Do you test, 10-step study sheet and then an activity?
Do you use the activity cards?
Would activity pages be better (the cards are just paper sized and jest store them in a notebook)?

[clementine]

We basically only use Spelling Power for the lists. First, I give each child the Placement Test to determine which level they should start with.

Then each day I give them about 15 (or so) words to spell - they only practice the ones they miss by writing them 3-5 times each.

The next day I give them the words they got wrong the previous day plus NEW words continuing down the lists until they've gotten 15 (or so)words.

I've got good spellers, so this has worked great for us.

HTH :)

[KarenNC]

Placement test first to determine beginning level

Then, daily, test words orally (usually while daughter bounces on a bouncy ball), the challenge to me being that she asks that I make a funny story out of the sentences I use to give the words:). We go through the list until she has either missed 5 words or we get to the end, which is usually around the allotted time, but I don't time it. She studies the missed words using the process on notebook paper rather than the preprinted forms and writes a sentence with them (her self-imposed goal is to get as many of the words into one sentence as she can;)). The next day we test beginning with the words she missed and go down the list until she misses 5 words or we get to the end of the list.

I don't typically use many of the activities as some of them are in her grammar book already and we are also doing Vocabulary Vine for Latin/Greek roots. The thing I will have her do most often is change singular to plural or present tense to past or -ing form for practice (can you tell that the -y endings and when to double final consonant or not are her sticking points?;)).

You might find some ideas here http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/SPmenu.htm

We started with SP when my daughter was about the age of your oldest, mid 2nd grade (7 1/2) and this has worked well for her. It was a bit of a process to figure out that this was the most useful method for us.

[Karen in CO]

and I love it so far. We haven't done spelling before this because my dd is a great natural speller, but she wanted to be able to spell even better so we tried several things before we hit this.

First we did the placement test to make sure we started at the right level.

Now daily, I test her for 6 minutes (I added in a minute to help cover the time it takes to settle down and test). We start with any missed words from the previous day. We test the way the book says and after she writes a word, she spells it for me and if it is wrong, she writes the corrected word on the line next to it. Then if she misses any words, she writes those words and spells then out loud. Then she "plays with words" for 12 minutes. The 5 minutes of activities just wasn't enough time for her. So far she has preferred to come up with her own activities - she is currently creating a miniature book that is about one inch tall and has 15 pages. Some days she spells out words with Bananagrams tiles, writes words in artistic fonts, makes word puzzles, or plays Boggle.