Would you rather teach spelling with just one course rather than buy a new course each year? Steps to Superb Spelling: A Comprehensive Workbook for Christian Students gives you that option.
It has a teacher’s manual and a student book, both with a metal-coil binding so the books lie flat. You can begin some sections with a second grader, introduce others in middle school, and save the most challenging for high school. On the other hand, if you’ve got a junior high student who struggles with spelling, you might use most of the book in one school year.
Clearly, this isn’t your typical spelling workbook. It teaches spelling skills, rules, and generalities rather than lists of particular words. But it’s not an information book. Generally, the instruction is brief and is accompanied by exercises and games.
The Student Book
The student book is arranged in sections that can be used in whatever order you wish: Alphabetizing, Plurals, Suffixes, Consonants, Vowels, and Helpful Hints.
Alphabetizing might seem an odd topic to begin with, and it’s also unusual that it has an entire section. However, alphabetizing remains a useful skill, and it forces students to look carefully at words, especially when they practice alphabetizing by the second or third letter.
The Alphabetizing section includes a lesson on homophones (e.g., passed and past), and subsequent lessons on homophones are inserted frequently throughout the book. Several pairs or triplets of homophones that frequently cause misspellings are taught and then practiced with a crossword puzzle and games.
The other sections highlight aspects of spelling that are likely to be problematic. For instance, the Suffixes section includes lessons on syllables, since the spelling of suffixes is sometimes dependent on the number of syllables in a word. There’s even a lesson on the schwa sound, those muffled vowel sounds that are so difficult to identify. Spelling tips and tricks are included to help students think through possibilities.
Exercises vary from lesson to lesson. Some are familiar, such as adding suffixes to words. Others are unusual, such as using a chart to analyze words with two or more syllables according to a rule taught in this book and the charts students complete in the Vowels section to familiarize them with possibilities for spelling long vowel sounds. Some advanced exercises on vowel digraphs are most appropriate for older students, so a fourth or fifth grader generally shouldn’t work straight through all the lessons
The Teacher’s Manual and Games
The teacher’s manual has a two-page introduction, a 38-page answer key, and pages for games. The majority of the pages are for games!
Occasional teaching notes are included within the answer key along with reminders about playing the games, so it’s important to check the answer key even before a student starts a lesson. Also, a lesson on pronunciation—since mispronounced words are often misspelled—has a pretest in the answer key to be dictated at the beginning of the lesson. (This is also noted in the student book, but it doesn’t tell where to find the pretest.) So parents need to guide students with teaching notes and game reminders, and they also must check answers, dictate the aforementioned pretest, and maybe serve as a second player for games.
The course has six games for helping students develop automaticity: three for alphabetizing, three for homophones (with 205 homophone cards), two for easy and advanced suffixes, general spelling (a dice game), and bingo for practicing words with either one or two consonants (like super and supper). Cards, bingo boards, and instructions for the games are in the teacher’s manual. Cards for games should be copied onto cardstock (printed only on one side). Homophone game cards are numbered so that students use only those for lessons they have covered.
At the beginning of the games section of the teacher’s manual, it lists other items you will need: a dictionary, sheet protectors, a dry-erase marker, 17 blank dice (or cubes), red and black fine-tip markers, a timer, a shaker cup for the dice, bingo chips or counters, and cardstock. Since the cards are one-sided, copying and cutting them is relatively easy. It requires some prep work, but once that’s done, the course is easy to use. Most students can work independently through the lessons. Some games can even be played solitarily, while others require two to four players.
Christian Content
Written for Christian students, Steps to Superb Spelling uses occasional biblical and Christian references, and the suffix review on pages 63 to 72 has students fill in the blanks of scripture verses.
Summary
Steps to Superb Spelling is a viable alternative to traditional spelling programs. If students can learn how to analyze words and predict likely spellings, they won’t be limited to learning only the prescribed lists each year.
