With Spelling Plus, one perfect-bound, 168-page reproducible book can serve as your spelling book for kindergarten through sixth grade. The entire program focuses on 1000 most commonly used and misspelled words, teaching ten in kindergarten and 165 at each of the remaining six grade levels. Children are pretested to determine the appropriate beginning level. At the front of the book are background information concerning spelling, teaching tips, and techniques.
Words for each level are broken down into eleven lists. Many of the words are associated by phonetic characteristics, prefixes, etc. Homophones are included in each lesson. Notes to the Teacher provide valuable information pertinent to each list. A unique feature is the use of dictation for review and reinforcement.
Each student also personalizes his list by choosing five personal words each week. This is important when you realize that there are only about five words per week provided within the program itself. Extra word lists at the back of the book feature words related to geography, geometry, and math. I recommend that you also purchase the companion volume, Dictation Resource Book, and consider the useful, but less crucial Homophones Resource Book. The program is quite easy to use, especially with the assistance of the resource books.
Dictation Resource Book
The Dictation Resource Book consists of short sentences and paragraphs to be dictated to students after each spelling list in Spelling Plus. It will save you the time and energy of dreaming them up yourself. The book also features reference tools such as letter formats, extensive capitalization rules, postal abbreviations, common abbreviations, punctuation rules, prefixes and suffixes, charts and definitions of parts of speech, bibliographic form information, lists of Latin and Greek roots, and a word history dictionary containing all the words used in Spelling Plus.
Homphones Resource Book
Homophones Resource Book features all homophones already in Spelling Plus along with quite a few more. Tips for teaching each pair of homophones are included. The bulk of the book is reproducible activity sheets where students complete sentences by filling in the blanks with correct homophones. Lessons are coordinated with spelling lessons or suggested for particular grade levels, making it easy to determine which ones to use. It would be possible to skip this volume if your children are not having any particular difficulty with homophones.
