SPELL TO WRITE AND READ
I started Spell to Write and Read (SWR) with a child in 5th grade, a child in 1st grade and a 4 year old child. The 4 year old was basically a blank slate…in fact, this year (Kindergarten for him) is the first year he is actively applying SWR daily, as last year he was mainly just learning the phonograms and playing SWR games with us. My oldest did Spelling Power and Getty Dubay handwriting…he is a great speller, but it was not due to Spelling Power (SP). He is a natural. He likes SWR much better than SP, and I feel he is progressing better/faster than he was in SP because SP had less of a rhyme and reason to the way the words were organized.
SP was easy enough when we were doing basic words but now that we are up to high school level words, SP relied more on memorization than method, and SWR has made learning those difficult words much easier for him.
My 2nd grader did a year of Veritas Press phonics when he was in Kindergarten, which was not a good fit for him; last year he started 1st grade with SWR, NOT reading at all and writing most letters/numbers backwards…he would sound out words and not remember them moments later, and he would read many 3 letter words backwards (saw and was were interchangeable, for example). I thought he was dyslexic, but when I had him tested I was told that he was not.
One year with SWR and the companion writing program, Cursive First, and he is now reading at grade level, never writes letters backwards (though still some numbers), and has much more beautiful handwriting than his 6th grade brother who only started CF last year, way too late (his handwriting is poor unless he REALLY concentrates on it).
My Kindergartner is the first to truly start with SWR as a “clean slate” and he isn’t really old enough for me to give a report of his long term success…but he is coming along with his CF handwriting (and enjoys writing on the clock face stamp!), he is reading at a 1st grade level, he knows all the single letter phonograms and many of the double letter ones, and at this time he can spell all the words in the first 3 lists. SWR has been a wonderful program for my strong speller, my child needing remediation, and my beginner. And even my 2 year old likes to repeat the phonograms when he hears us.
I tell everyone that it takes quite a bit of work to learn how to use SWR, but that once you understand it you should be able to implement it if you are diligent. I feel strongly about the results being well worth the effort, especially if you have a struggling reader or speller, as I did. SWR has an online support group on yahoo. It is an active group with lots of help available for those desiring to learn how to implement this program.
