Homeschool Review: Sequential Spelling 1

Sequential Spelling 1 (workbook and teacher's guide)

We started using Sequential Spelling with First Son in third grade. Many Charlotte Mason homeschooling families don't explicitly teach spelling at all, instead relying on copywork, dictation, and narration exercises, along with an extensive reading list, to provide the knowledge of spelling. I think that might be sufficient for some children, but I was concerned about First Son who would tear up if I asked him to spell something he didn't think he knew how to spell. I wanted to give him lots of practice and, subsequently, confidence when spelling. (This desire is based at least in part on my own lack of confidence in spelling.)

Sequential Spelling provides, at the most basic level, lists of 25 related words to be spelling in a single session. Over the course of four days, the words are modified with prefixes and suffixes. For example, for day 65, the first five words are end, bend, lend, blend, depend. For day 66, the student would spell ends, bends, lends, blends, depends. For day 67, the words are ended, bent, lent, blended, depended. For day 68, the words are ending, bending, lending, blending, depending. (Words like could, should, wasn't, doesn't, and weren't will appear intermittently throughout the year, giving students lots of practice on some common irregularly spelled words.)

The method for presenting the spelling lists is an important part of the program. The teacher reads the word, uses it in a sentence, and reads it again. (I do have to come up with my own sentences, which is sometimes annoying and often entertaining for the children.) First the student spells the word as best as he or she can. Then the teacher spells the word for the student, showing clearly the base of the word family (for example, end) and the prefixes or suffixes using different colors. Then the student corrects his or her own work, immediately tracing the correct spelling while saying the letters, involving multiple senses.

There are regular evaluations, but I've never used them. Because I view every day as a test, I have a good idea how my children are faring.

There are 180 spelling lists provided in Sequential Spelling 1. We do spelling four days a week, so we would never get through 180 lists in one year. I also don't ask First Son to complete a Sequential Spelling list if he has a spelling list in Essentials that day. (Read about Essentials here.) I just picked up where we left off last year with First Son this year. First Daughter started Sequential Spelling 1 this year after she finished our reading book. Sequential Spelling 1 is recommended no earlier than second grade (and for all students new to the program, with recommendations to complete multiple lists in a day to move through the book faster rather than skipping the book), but she begged for spelling. (I warn her that complaining will lead me to drop it for the year.)

When First Son started the program, there was no student workbook, only a student response book. The student response book is basically a book of blank lines on which the students writes the spelling words on different pages so previous lists (with similar words) are not seen at the same time. Recently, the student workbook was released. I purchased one for First Daughter. In the new workbook, each odd numbered page provides lines for the day's spelling words. The other side of the page provides an exercise in which students can use the day's words. There are a variety of exercises: writing sentences, unscrambling words, completing sentences, word searches, even writing a rhyme or silly story. I think these exercises could be helpful, but might be unnecessary. First Daughter enjoys doing them, but I would probably skip them if she complained. In fact, one of the reasons I was initially attracted to this program was that there were no inane practice exercises or requirements that my child write the spelling words five times each. It is simple to skip the exercises, however, because they are not the heart of the program.

Using this program, I think students begin to get a sense for how spelling works in English without explicit instruction. It's almost like they discover it. If you like explicit instruction, though, it's easily added. Our Essentials curriculum introduces spelling rules and we see them played out with regular practice in our Sequential Spelling. I've seen First Son's face light up as he realizes how his spelling word follows the rules laid out in Essentials.

There is a DVD available that reads the words and then presents the correct spelling. I haven't used that myself, but a friend has found it very useful in her family.

Homeschool Review (Preview): Essentials: The Logic of English

Essentials: A Systematic Approach to Reading, Spelling, and Writing (The Logic of English) by Denise Eide

A few months ago, I read and reviewed Denise Eide's book, Uncovering the Logic of English. Immediately, I knew I wanted to implement her ideas in my reading instruction for First Son, but I was reluctant to figure out how to modify the information in the book for him. When I saw she had a curriculum, I wanted it! I received a discount on the materials in exchange for an honest review, so I'm going to do something I don't usually do here: I'm writing a homeschool review for a product we haven't actually used yet. I didn't want to wait until the end of next school year to post about it. Instead, I'm going to pre-review the curriculum now that I've read through the introduction and written lesson plans for the first five lessons.

The program systematically teaches how and why English words are spelled in a particular manner and how to build words into phrases and sentences, thereby providing students with the tools needed to decode, spell, and write.

This curriculum could easily be used in a homeschool, as a supplement for a struggling reader (perhaps with a tutor or parent at home) or in a very small classroom. Many of these activities will work best with only a few students, which is probably the best way to teach reading to any student.

You have to read the introduction to understand how the lessons should be implemented. Otherwise, you'll overwhelm your students. For example, Ms. Eide clearly states young emerging readers should use large motor skills, a whiteboard or a salt box to practice writing rather than writing by hand until they have developed physically enough to handle the fine motor skills.

The introduction provides sample schedules for older students not reading at grade level, older students struggling with spelling, emerging readers (6-7 years old), young emerging readers (5-6 years old), and ESL students. The recommended sample schedules are still pretty intense for all but the emerging readers. Ms. Eide's program is designed to bring students up to speed very quickly, with an upfront investment of time and resources: 75-130 minutes a day, to complete the forty lessons in the book in 8-16 weeks. Because First Son is not what I'd call a struggling reader, but more someone who needs supplemental instruction to cover what we neglected the first time around, we'll be following a more relaxed schedule. I intend to complete one lesson every week or every other week (depending on the content of the lesson) with about thirty minutes a day.

A large section in the Introduction explains all the skills students should have before beginning Lesson 1 in the book. Before you despair, all of these skills, and nearly everything you need to know to teach them, are presented in the Introduction. She encourages teachers to move quickly through these, especially for older students. Though all the phonograms A-Z should be introduced, students do not need to have memorized every sound for every phonogram before moving on to the Lessons. We'll be spending one week on phonemic awareness exercises, many of which I expect to be new to First Son, but only because we haven't spoken of them explicitly. Then, we'll spend two weeks introducing the phonograms and finishing up his cursive instruction on the lower case letters. (He's about two-thirds of the way through the alphabet now.) During this time, First Son will be reading other lessons out loud to me or independently in addition to our work with the Essentials curriculum. I'll include First Daughter (a kindergartner) in any of these lessons she likes as well. If she has trouble with any of the phonemic awareness exercises, I'll add them to her lesson time for extra practice.

In the phonemic awareness, phonogram exercises and throughout the book, Ms. Eide includes a recognition that students learn best in different ways. Many activities combine two or more of these modalities and all of the optional activities are labeled to show whether they are particularly good for kinesthetic learners, visual learners, auditory learners or creative learners.

Finally, we get to the lessons themselves! The book contains forty lessons. Every fifth lesson is an assessment and review (Lesson 5, Lesson 10, etc.). The other lessons are composed of three parts.

Part One includes: Phonograms, Exploring Sounds, and Spelling Rules. In Part Two students learn fifteen spelling words and how to analyze their spellings. Part Three integrates the spelling words into a Grammar Lesson, Dictation, Composition, and Vocabulary Development Activities. 

The lesson plans are very detailed with example scripts and expected responses from students. They are extensive, which is why hours are necessary to complete a single lesson and why they are spread out over many days for younger students. I haven't actually used these lessons, of course, but it seems like they will provide a structured and organized way to learn the logic of English. Notice there are no sections called "Reading." Students will be reading in every section, but the reading itself is broken down into decoding the phonograms and learning how the phonograms stand for sounds. The Spelling Rules meet two needs: helping students think about how a word will be spelled when they hear it and recognizing the spelling rules in the words they are reading so they can determine which of a phonogram's sounds are in a particular word.

The assessment and review lessons are not for grading. Ms. Eide explains, "Reading and spelling are subjects that should be taught to the point of mastery for all students." So if a student is struggling, we don't just assign a "C" and move on, we provide supplementary activities for the skill. If a student makes fewer than two mistakes in the assessment, the review portion is skipped, moving on to the next lesson. If more mistakes are made, the teacher is encouraged to select the appropriate activities from the review lesson for additional practice.

One disappointment I had was the relative scarcity of games in the Essentials Teacher's Manual. Every single lesson has multiple recommendations for games, but they are all in the Phonogram and Spelling Game Book. The book is a reasonable $15, but all of the games actually require one or more of the specialized sets of game cards. The complete set is $45. I decided not to purchase the set, thinking I would be able to create something similar myself at home, but without instructions or even a description of the games, I really have no idea what kind of activity to substitute. So if you want to use the games, buy the set.

You absolutely need the Teacher's Manual to implement this curriculum. It contains all the lessons and instructions. The workbook is useless without it. The Phonogram and Spelling Game Book and Teacher's Manual are non-consumable. I can't speak for the game book, but the Teacher's Manual is very well-made. It's a hardcover book that looks like it will hold up to years of use.

The phonogram flash cards are not an optional part of the program. They are used to present all the phonograms and for review on a regular basis. I thought I would save some money here by making my own which seemed simple because the phonograms are clearly identified along with all the information for each one in both The Logic of English and the Essentials Teacher's Manual. For the most part, I hand-wrote the cards. Then I cut them with a paper-cutter, laminated them, and cut them again. Take my advice: buy the cards. Even not counting my time, there's a good chance I spent more money on card stock, ink and laminating pouches. And my cards don't look nearly as nice as the ones pictured.

I also made spelling rule cards. As with the phonogram flash cards, I'd recommend purchasing them.

I selected the Cursive workbook to use with First Son. As far as I can tell, it's "cursive" because the examples are written in a cursive script. You could definitely write answers either in print or in cursive (probably in either workbook). The workbook is large with lots of activities, all of which are referenced in the Teacher's Manual. If you are really motivated, you could do the program without the workbook because there's enough information in the Teacher's Manual to figure out what your student needs to do, but the workbook itself is well-done. It's thick and might be hard to complete without removing the pages. They are well-perforated and look like they'll come out very quickly, too, so I will probably hole-punch them and put them in a binder.

The Spelling Journal is also referenced in every lesson. I think this would be a nice addition if you intend to use Essentials as your only spelling program, but I also think it would be fairly simple to create a spelling journal at home that would meet the same needs.

I intend to discuss the spelling portions of the text with First Son and to use the rules to supplement his spelling program which does not explicitly teach any spelling rules. For now, I plan to continue with the grammar, spelling and writing programs we were using (none of which takes much time), but I am going to re-evaluate that decision regularly during the school year. I think this program could be enough for writing (dictation, not copywork or handwriting), grammar and spelling; I'm just reluctant to give up on ones that I know are working well for us.

Especially for young students, you will want to have a whiteboard, salt box, magnetic letters or other kinds of materials to involve large motor skills rather than fine motor skills as students learn to write the letters.

The cost of this program is substantial, especially compared to some of the non-consumable how-to-read-everything-you-need-in-one-book programs that are available, but I think this program is much more comprehensive that the others. I was discussing it with another homeschooling mother who has a severely dyslexic son. It seemed to compare very favorably with the program she used with him at a much lower cost. I expect this program to fill in every gap in First Son's reading skills and am very excited to use it with him. While I intend to continue with First Daughter's current reading program, I am going to supplement it with Essentials to ensure she never has the gaps First Son encountered.

I've read on the forums for Essentials that a program for young emerging readers that would incorporate real books is currently being developed. I can imagine how that would be the ideal reading program for me (hard to say if it would be perfect for my kids!) and would be very tempted to invest in it for Second Daughter and Second Son.

I will be sure to report back on Essentials when we've used it for a year. In the meantime, you can learn more about the books and purchase all the materials at the Logic of English website.


I received a discount on the Essentials Teacher's Manual and two Cursive Workbooks in exchange for an honest review. I am not an affiliate and will receive nothing if you make a purchase of these or any other products linked in this post.

Homeschool Review: My Catholic Speller, Level A

My Catholic Speller, Level A, is a part of the program provided by Catholic Heritage Curricula. It is the recommended book for second grade.

I was interested in a spelling program for First Son because he would refuse to spell anything on his own. If I suggested he sound out a word or just do the best he could, he would literally collapse into tears. (Is that too embarrassing for me to admit on the blog about a first grade-aged boy?) I was frustrated at his lack of confidence more than his lack of spelling skills and I thought a simple spelling book would help address his needs.

I seriously considered All About Spelling and Sequential Spelling but they both looked rather teacher-intensive. I was looking for something we could add that wouldn't increase my burden very much since spelling seemed like an "extra" for second grade (nice but not necessary). I ended up selecting the CHC book because I thought the inclusion of religious themes might increase First Son's interest. He was anxious for a spelling book of his own and was excited to start it. For a few weeks at the beginning of the year, spelling was his favorite subject.

Each lesson presents 15 spelling words, mainly grouped around a spelling theme (like "ways to make long /a/"). There's relatively little instruction included in the lesson. Some lessons have a brief paragraph about the words. My son loved completing the two pages of exercises which usually included matching spelling words with pictures or writing the words that followed a particular rule. I liked how the exercises all required writing the word. I also liked how Catholic words were included here and there, like "penance" and "Mass." There are 34 lessons in the book which includes review lessons on a regular basis. An answer key is included the back, but usually it was easier to read the lesson and answer it myself than to flip to the end and check his work. (First Son did discover the answers at the back, but didn't ever try to copy them instead of answering on his own.)

The instructions at the beginning of the book gave a recommended weekly schedule. I opted for spelling four days a week. One the first day, we'd read through the words and complete the exercises in the book. On the second day, First Son would copy all the words for the week onto his handwriting paper. One the third day, we'd have a quiz for the words and then he'd write the ones he missed in a sentence. On the fourth day, we'd have another quiz and he'd write the ones he missed five times. Then I'd add any missed words to next week's lesson. Some weeks he did very well, but he often missed words and then would miss them again on the review weeks. The boy still cannot seem to spell "because."

Overall, I think this method of spelling instruction (lists and quizzes) did not work for First Son. He hated the quizzes because he knew he'd have to write the words if he missed them. He also didn't seem to learn the words very well. I found that the quiz and test two days a week meant I was spending more time than I had hoped on spelling anyway, which fewer results than with another program. We made it through 27 of the lessons before I decided to just set it aside for the year.

Next year, we'll be giving Sequential Spelling 1 a try. In general, I think I would prefer something that provided spelling rules, but now that I've read Uncovering the Logic of English, I'll be able to provide those myself as we go along in a conversational way. If I can, I'll follow Ms. Eide's advice and see if First Son can discover some of them himself as we go along.

I did not receive anything from CHC for this objective review. I am not an affiliate and will not receive anything if you follow the link to CHC and make an order. I am an affiliate with Amazon and do receive a small commission if you follow a link there and make a purchase.

Book Review: Uncovering the Logic of English

Uncovering the Logic of English: A Common-Sense Solution to America's Literacy Crisis by Denise Eide

A few weeks ago, Brandy mentioned this book on her blog after listening to Denise Eide's recorded speeches here. I had some gift certificate money and was intrigued, so I bought it.

Ms. Eide presents a bleak picture of literacy in America today, directly linking the instructional methods used in our public schools with the struggles people have in reading. NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) is the source for much of her data and a reliable one. You can find much of it online yourself.  The most startling is her statement that "fully 48% of adults are not proficient in reading." (She references Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It: A Scientific Revolution in Reading by Diane McGuinness for this statistic, which I haven't read.) A lack of literacy, of course, means things like lower earnings, lower quality of life, and increased risk of incarceration.

According to Ms. Eide, one of the reasons many people struggle with reading is the way they've been taught to read. Whole reading, "funny phonics" and incomplete phonics contribute to readers with incomplete educations. Some readers struggle even more when they discover "rules" they were taught only work some of the time in a language full of "exceptions."

Ms. Eide recommends a completely different way of teaching reading and spelling. Begin by teaching all of the sounds letters can make, including many that are often called "exceptions" in other phonics programs. For example, the letter S is often taught as /s/, which is indeed one of its sounds, but Ms. Eide points out that when plural words are included, S stands for the sound /z/ 70% of the time. Instead of telling students /z/ when they encounter it, let's teach them S can be /s/ or /z/ and then talk about instances when each is found. So simple! His then, is not a sight word, for example.

In this book, Ms. Eide presents 74 of the phonograms of the English language, more than many other phonics programs teach. She then discusses spelling rules for English words that help explain which phonogram to use for each sound. I won't go into great detail as you can listen to the recorded lectures above and check out the book yourself, but I was amazed to see clearly articulated rules for words and correct spellings I had never understood before. I have always been uncomfortable with my spelling, not because I was a bad speller, but because I was unsure of my spelling.

I was particularly intrigued with her book because of the pronunciation my son gives while he's reading aloud to me. He often mispronounces words, but I can tell he's pronouncing them as he was taught. Even when we finished his original reading lessons, I was a little dissatisfied which is why I sought something different for my daughter. (I found a more thorough approach, but I'm not sure it's perfect.)

Now I'm wondering how I can incorporate what I've learned from Ms. Eide in lessons for First Son and for First Daughter. An older child in middle school or high school could, I think, learn a great deal from going through this book. A younger one is going to need some assistance as this book isn't meant to be a series of lesson plans or even a complete description of her teaching strategies; it's quite simply a description of the phonograms and spelling rules that reveal how English does in fact make sense with lots of tables and charts that can be referenced when writing or reading (which I've already done).

I do think this book, at the very least, would be a helpful one for anyone who teaches reading, writing or spelling to one student or a classroom full of them.