Spelling Power  4.5/5 (4)

<b>Comment: </b>I found this book second hand and it has been great! It is easy to use and makes sense. Why practice words you already know? My son loves taking his pre-test so he can decrease some of his "spelling words" for the week. Works great for us.

<b>Comment: </b>While this curriculum is a little pricey up front, it is economical in the long run as it can be used for as many students as necessary (with only a spelling notebook purchased for each student) and can be used from 2nd or 3rd grade all the way through high school! It gives a solid understanding of words as each group of words focuses on one spelling sound or rule. Additionally, it takes only 10 or so minutes a day to administer. There is a slight learning curve for the instructor and student when learning how to administer and take the daily tests. Once that is understood, it is very easy to keep up with on a daily basis.

<b>Comment: </b>We tried a few different spelling curricula before we stopped on Spelling Power. My daughter is 9/4th grade. We did the pre-tests and found the group of words that she tested into and found they seemed just right for her, not too easy but not too hard either.

We don't follow Spelling Power exactly as intended with the rest of the week but we do the pre-test and 10-step sheet every Monday, she does fun spelling activities we came up with through the rest of the week of only the words she got wrong (if any), then Friday's she takes another test of those same words to see if she can spell them right. If any are still wrong it just moves to the next week's set of words she will study with the activities again.
It's the only thing that has worked so far for her, even after trying the much more popular and more expensive curricula. I also really love the spelling rules for most of the lists and that there are review lists built in too so we can be sure the words from previous lists are sticking.

<b>Comment: </b>I was excited about this book at first, and really wanted it to work. I liked the concept of only practicing the words that a student missed, and I loved the plethora of ideas that were given for practicing in unconventional ways. My student, however, found it frustrating. Because they didn't get to see the list of words to begin with, if they didn't know the spelling of a word, they automatically got it wrong (which for a perfectionist child is difficult!), instead of having a chance to see it correctly and practice it before a test. I also found it highly unusable for my other student, who is mildly dyslexic, for the words are grouped by sound (and not even reliably -- sometimes I had to exclude words from the lists) not spelling patterns. Thus, for anyone who's having a hard time remembering 'rules' and patterns, this is a hard way to go.