haha - I said I was done, but clearly I was only kidding...
I just had to add in re-reading your post: ds10 is and was an amazing speller. I'm not sure that spelling instruction is the issue. If you asked him to spell weigh or neighbor, he'd get it right easily. However, if you asked him to pull out the vowel part and then match it with the vowel sound in break, it was really hard for him. It just isn't something they really do, if you KWIM. I understand that they're trying all these new reading skills: chunking up the words, finding a word you know within the word, etc, etc... and this goes along with that. However, for kids who are already good spellers and readers, it's just a weird way of looking at it.
Theresa
