I'm curious

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Home : 2007 : August : 12

I'm curious
By gaustin4180

to see what other people have to say about this. I know the topic has been brought up on here before (more than once) and I always like to read what fellow teachers say about Sitton Spelling.

I don't really care
for it at all. About five years ago (maybe four I can't remember) our district adopted her program and had a nice conference with her. From day one no one was really happy with it, at least in grades 4,5,6. The words are too easy for the student. For example in the last lesson of 5th grade the FIVE "new" words for the students who will be in 6th grade next year are: stone, hit, wife, island,

we'll. In my opinion the students should already know how to spell each one of these words by May of 5th grade.

The program is nice in a way where it uses the same words over and over again each week in a cloze test format. The tests do take a while to give however. I have also found that the students who are poor spellers cannot keep up with me as I read through the test and they need to fill in the words so they ask me to repeat the ones they missed. When I repeat the word, it's just that, the word not the sentence so they don't get the meaning. If the word they missed was their and they ask me to repeat and they hear the word and they write there it's wrong.

I also don't like how the words are not grouped according to spelling rules. I remember being in 5th grade, which wasn't that long ago, and having 15 words all ending in -ion. The focus for that week was -ion words.

The program does have some nice lessons that go with it and some good ideas but I am not impressed by it. I have not noticed an improvement in my students spelling; if anything I've noticed that it has got worse. I will be doing something different this year. I'll still be using some of the lessons but I'll be giving different types of tests and I will be grading spelling more from their writings in class and homework than from the tests.

Sorry this is so long!