Customer Reviews

Spell to Write and Read: A Step by Step Guide to Foundational Language Arts

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Wanda Sanseri has written Spell to Write and Read along with its companion book, The Wise Guide for Spelling as a homeschooler-friendly guide to using the highly effective Spalding method to teach early language arts.

Spell to Write and Read is a how-to book for the teacher with detailed lesson plans for each step along the way. It is not a day by day lesson plan book, but the Wise Guide for Spelling gives spelling words with sentences for the teacher to use if she wishes and detailed instructions on how to teach each word, including how to mark each word to show each of the five types of silent final E, reinforcement of important spelling rules, multi-letter phonogram, and "think to spell" ideas.

One feature I appreciate is the way I can adapt this program to suit my children's readiness for each step. Each year begins with a diagnostic test to determine where in the Wise Guide to Spelling to begin. Then you proceed at a pace of 10 to 40 words, depending on ability, with the program as written.

Wanda's program is very flexible and not every idea for enrichment activities is meant to be used each time you teach the particular spelling list, but since this is "spiral" learning the enrichment ideas are various methods to reinforce phonograms, spelling rules, "think to spell" concepts and grammatical rules over and over until they are truly ingrained in both teacher and student.

Just recently spelling "clicked" for my son after much struggle and he is overjoyed and confident that the words I dictate to him he can usually spell without much extra teaching on my part. Don't be lulled into thinking that every child will learn to spell well just from reading alone. Certain concepts need to be taught. Wanda gives the tools to teach like a master teacher

These two books (Wise Guide to Spelling and Spell to Write and Read) provide a wealth of ideas to introduce grammar principles along with each week's spelling words, preliminary activities to prepare for each week's words, charts which are built by the teacher and student together to illustrate spelling rules and the various sounds of each of the 70 phonograms taught.

Be sure to order to phonogram cards and spelling rule cards. These are necessary teaching aids. For support in using Wanda's materials you can subscribe to the yahoogroup TeachingReadingHome and/or find a teacher training seminar near you at her website, http://www.bhibooks.org.

If you are not in a race to have your child reading before he is writing and spelling short words as he learns to read them, then this program is well worth the dollars and time spent.

I have homeschooled my children for 8 years now and SWR is the best and most significant program I have ever used to teach my children to spell, read, and write. I would never go back to my old ways of teaching. In just one year with SWR all four of my boys jumped up by at least two grade levels (oldest two boys jumped up by four and five grade levels) as measured by the spelling diagnostic test. Their reading has greatly improved as well. My 6 year old son was able to read 4th grade level books with ease after one year with SWR. (...)Spell to Write and Read is not just a spelling program! It also produces great readers! My 7 and 8 year old boys are able to read 180 page chapter books with ease in only 4 days! Don't forget to purchase the Wise Guide, phonogram cards and tape, and spelling rule cards.

I found Spell to Write and Read when my son was 14 years old. Because of implementing other "phonics" programs, he was spelling words like 'have' - h a v. As you can well imagine, he was afraid to put pen to paper because of his inability to spell even at a third grade level.

With SWR, we learned the 70 basic phonogram sounds and the 28 spelling rules that changed his life. (One of the first things we learned was that English words don't end in 'v' and that is why 'have' must have an 'e'!) Four years later, my son is finishing high school with his eye on college. His reading comprehension has soared and his spelling has improved by leaps and bounds. He has already completed college courses like Firefighter I and II, and he is also a certified EMT. None of this would have been possible without SWR!

Thank you, Wanda, for opening the world up for this bright young man!

Last year both my son and daughter couldn't spell at all. I had them write every day, and every day, they had to read their writing to me because I could hardly read it. They were 3rd- and 4th-grade. They had been in public school, and then had been home-schooled for a few years. At home we had used a few different spelling curriculums, and nothing seemed to work. They could get the spelling words right for the test on Friday, but in their daily writing it was back to gobbledy-gook. In desperation, I had started them on a dyslexia program, too, but all the while I suspected that since BOTH of my kids couldn't spell, it was probably my fault for teaching them incorrectly, somehow. This summer I started them on the "Explode the Code" books... started on Book 1 which is kindergarten level.... they are now working on Book 4. Those books are helpful, and they use the same sort of detailed phonics and syllable separation that this SWR program uses, but this is even more detailed, and this uses dictation which is a more natural way to spell--pulls the spelling from the writer's mind instead of copying like most curriculums require. Since we started using this curriculum two months ago, spelling seems to have "clicked" for my kids, a big "Aha!' moment for them. It was like they had all the bits and pieces of knowledge in their heads, but this curriculum, well, it "spells" it out in detail. I mean, truth be told, their spelling is still far from perfect, but I can read it now! And it has only been two months... I have hope that in a few years they'll be able to spell as well as most people--or better.

This is the only book I bought; I did not buy the entire curriculum. On a page in the index, there is a list of all the rules and phonograms that are included in the flashcards, so I made flashcards from the list. I did not get the Wordly Wise book--I saw in this guide that the Wordly Wise book uses dictation and does not group words according to phonogram commonality or anything, just according to difficulty level. My sister had told me that in the "good old days" kids learned to spell by writing sentences that were dictated to them, and since this SWR program uses dictation, I decided to try to find some leveled writing that they could copy. I have been dictating to them from the Biblical book of Proverbs, in their New International Reader's Version, which is written at a 2nd-grade reading level. It is perfect for them, and they love discussing the insights that they have written on their page after I have dictated the words to them. At the same time, they are learning punctuation and spelling in context. So it is possible to use the SWR program if you only have this book, but I would think it would be easier if you have the Wordly Wise guide to show you how to do the red underlines. It took me a while to figure that out using just this guide. But I do prefer my Proverbs dictation over a random word list.

All-in-all, I am unspeakably grateful for this program that has paved the way to my kids' future success.

This book is a great way to teach your kids how to write and read. We have really liked it.