Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Words Their Way?

Anyone have experience with this spelling program? I love the concept of teaching spelling by patterns/roots. But. Last year I observed my first grader completely spacing out when it was time for this work. This year it's homework and nothing but meltdowns. I finally did the spelling inventory with DD myself and found a list of what skills are covered in which sorts. It took nearly two months to get differentiated lists (they did sight words and common, easy lists to "learn the routine"), and yet I see DD is in the early derivational relations phase but is with three other kids in the highest group working on within word patterns. Now, there are a lot of words between the assigned list and the ones DD apparently tested into, words she probably could use practice with. And just last week we had a fun discussion about the pattern of plurals for words ending in Y (add an S vs change to -ies). But maybe she should just do really challenging words? She adores word root study and grammar, pretty much anything from Michael Clay Thompson she can tell you all about. I've already talked to the teacher about differentiating practice when DD could spell the words correctly the first day of the week... Basically we have to do some related work, because our (gifted standards focused!) charter is work-based. Anyone been through this program before? Any advice about challenging spelling pattern lists vs dutifully working through words?

Here's the inventory (she missed four words at the end, but scored a 79/87 and her errors put her in the derivational relations phase):
Spelling inventory

Here's the word sort lists. She's placed at within word #37...
Word sort lists

I just talked to my dad, who teaches 2nd. He has a colleague who uses WTW and says we should probably explore the higher lists going by her test. I'll just test DD on the assigned list on Mondays and then spend the rest of the week on the higher lists. My papa says any "skipped" words won't really be because she'll get them in her reading, etc. I'm still interested in hearing if others have dealt with this, but I'm feeling better about this plan. I'm sick to death of dealing with this and trying to find a plan that will work! DD spent a full day this weekend reading and asking to be quizzed on grammar and word roots and poetry, so I'd rather we didn't spend an hour every darn day dragging through busy work.

We have WTW at our school and I very quickly discovered when DS was in grade one that he could skip all of the weekly homework, save a dry run of the test, and still ace the tests. Prior to making that discovery, we endured misery and meltdowns over the endless, repetitive homework. Every single day there was a task to torment us all. It was quite a relief to ditch the busy work. We're applying the same opting out strategy for DD6, now in grade one.

Do you have to show that you've done the weekly work or is it untracked? We fessed up to skipping steps with DS and the teacher accepted it because he consistently got 100% on the tests. With DD we're just not doing it and no one has checked in (she aces the tests, too).

The program, itself, I think is a good one and I'm sure the repetition is useful for many children. DS enjoyed the grouping phase, but he treated it as a memory game and tried to recreate the original order of the words within their category. I didn't see that as 'spelling', so we pushed to move him up to more challenging words and that was an improvement, but still only required a dry run of the test.

Yes, we have to turn in completed work; it's a homeschool charter so attendance is work-based. Not completing work counts as a strike against participation in the program. The teacher has agreed that alternative work is fine, like studying word roots, writing a story using some of the words, list synonyms/antonyms etc. But even this week where we're trying out the more advanced list, it's taking an hour to do the practice. It's just rote stuff and DD is stopping repeatedly to note words she's found inside the words, not just roots but like pensive in expensive, dish, one, and nest in dishonest (hey at least they're longer, more interesting words!) and generally space out/daydream. And it really does take forever to copy them out repeatedly, at least for her. This is insanity. If only we could just let her ace the tests! I guess I'm going to have to set a time limit and hope the teacher doesn't notice if words are missing, as we're doing an alternative list. I do like the program overall. I'd like DD to continue with the advanced sorts. But because we have to do the work it might be easier to just do totally different assignments so it's not obvious she's doing "less work" (I just find it hard to believe everyone's spending an hour plus on this nightly.) I guess I'd better ask parents how long it's taking their kids, too. And today was copying out four times, which has always taken forever. Perhaps with the more interesting words the shorter practice tasks will zip by.

We used this program in our public elementary. Our experience, like anything else, varied depending on how it was implemented. Our daughter found it to be onerous busywork, but she was clearly getting work that was too easy; the teacher had a set number of groups planned and she was well above the top grouping.

Our son had a great experience for third grade (in fourth he had the same issue described above, so basically a wash). In third, he was in a group of three that ended up doing lots of Latin and Greek root work. The spelling was never difficult (at least for DS and one girl- they were both natural spellers and big readers) so the teacher really worked to alter their weekly work. I'm not sure if this is part of the program or if she was improvising. They basically did advanced vocabulary, and much of their work involved writing sentences, showing meaning and usage of the words, etc.

From your description, it sounds like I would see if you can get her moved to more challenging lists, and see if you can alter or substitute some of the activities. (Isn't that the whole point of the program, to offer differentiated work?) I am not nearly as familiar with the program as you seem to be, so I don't know if changing it up would still fit your school's requirements. I also wouldn't worry about "skipping" lists or missing out on material. Obviously you know your child's needs, but in our experience, our natural spellers (two kids) never had much use for or benefit from straight spelling work- it was pretty much a waste of time, busywork.

Thanks for your input! DD seemed to do better with the higher lists (yes I've become a bit of an expert after reading about it so much online these past few weeks!). She actually missed a couple of the words after practicing a couple days, which I saw as a good sign that she's finally being challenged. I think I will try working in some more meaningful work based on the roots and using in sentences, etc. For now we're going to keep testing the words the teacher assigns and doing the higher lists for practice, and testing Fridays. In a couple weeks if its going well I'll ask the teacher if we can just do the advanced lists. I'll even print them all up for her so all she's have to do is hand the right list to DD on Monday. I know she teaches the groups quickly about the patterns but it's fairly obvious at the higher level (just roots) and I can go over it with DD that night. I'm feeling much better about this!

All 3 of my kids have used this program at school and I think its great. We also have experience with differentiation of this program being done very well (this is definitely teacher dependent, but can be augmented at home quite easily). One thing to remember is that their list placement is not just based on spelling tests, but their ability to spell those words/patterns in their writing samples/essays/prompts.

This is a new program for our school this year, and only the third graders are using it. It is useless for my son, but I think that is more because of the implementation of the program, than the content. His class in the only one in the grade that actually groups the children by ability, and even then they only have two groups. He is in the high group, but even then the words are too easy. I have stopped making him do the sorting activities and only have him do the work that he has to write down and turn in. He still makes 100's on the tests.

Last year they had a more traditional spelling program, and the kids either got the regular list or the "challenge list" if they could spell at least 8 out of 10 words from the regular list at the beginning of the week. The challenge words were still too easy, but there would occasionally be one that he couldn't spell, or didn't know the meaning of. The biggest difference was that the activities they did to learn the words were far more interesting and promoted development of writing skills.