I read this website a little while ago that suggested the best practice for teaching spelling was to not teach the kids the right way to spell, but to have them guess.
I think this approach works with reluctant writers who are just learning but is really not right for everyone.
I agree that it's probably not right for everyone, but I've found that it works well with DS(now)6. A couple of factors in its favor: it encourages thinking about encoding rules more, as well as the effort to recall spellings for words that have been read before. This is a completely wild guess, but I think that using this technique with DS6 has greatly increased his likelihood of memorizing correct spellings just from his reading, in passing.
Right now, we're coverying 40-50 words per night, which I believe takes roughly 10-20 minutes depending on the list toughness. At the end of a grade, we take two weeks off, then start again. DS6 finds spelling boring, so I try to concentrate it into intense little doses to get past it as fast as possible. I'm looking forward to the day when I can eventually tell him that we're done with spelling lessons.
We bought a "Words on the Vine" book, which looks great from the standpoing of teaching spellings of bases, prefixes and suffixes all at once, with some fairly interesting words and puzzle-based content. We're going to crack it open this weekend. (For some reason I can't fathom, WOTV doesn't seem to have been turned into a series.) I also have a high opinion of some Scott Foresman spelling/vocab materials I've run across, which tries to keep things interesting too, though being a lot more based on rote learning than something like "Words on the Vine".
We're eagerly awaiting the enrichment for this year, which I believe will include some vocab work. I believe his second grade teacher will be initially in charge of getting it together. I was worried, but after meeting her I think she will probably turn out to be fantastic.
