Customizing the Sequential Spelling Program

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Customizing the Sequential Spelling (SS) Program
Speed up SS | Add/Sub Words | Create Your Own Program | Teach the Rules | Track Progress

Sequential Spelling (SS) is an incredibly inexpensive, comprehensive, effective, and versatile spelling program. You can very easily tailor it to better suit your situation.

Before we elaborate on how you can customize the Sequential Spelling (SS) program to meet your specialized needs, we should first review how Sequential Spelling (SS) is to be used. Please see the full Sequential Spelling 1 sample (PDF) for the complete instructions and script of what the instructor does and says. A few reminders:

Each "lesson" of Sequential Spelling is really a test.
For the best results, Sequential Spelling tests should be given every day of the calendar year if possible, or at least every school day.
The student does NOT study or even see the words before taking the test.
The student is not to see the previous days' words while taking the tests, especially the day just before the current day. The Student Response Book is convenient for this reason.
Each Sequential Spelling test should take no more than 15 minutes. Aim for 10.
Generally, we recommend that everyone starts at level 1.
The teacher shows the corrected spelling if a word is misspelled, but the student corrects his own mistake on his paper.
Give the word and use it in a sentence if possible. Use Word Families in Sentence Context for ready-made sentences.
When showing the word, use different colors to delineate the patterns. Show the word family's pattern first (the ending of the word, generally) and then show the onsets and endings. For spins, the word family is -in. Show in, and then add sp to the beginning (in a different color than in). Then add s at the end (in a different color than in, but could be the same color as sp). in --> spin --> spins

Now we can move on to the customizing of the program to better suit your needs and those of your student(s). The first and largest category of customizing Sequential Spelling is speeding it up. One of the most common reasons for this is that if your student is an above average or gifted speller, Sequential Spelling can seem annoyingly repetitive and boring. Don't worry, though; Sequential Spelling is extremely adaptable.

However, certain students need Sequential Spelling to be slowed down due to severe learning disabilities, pervasive developmental disorders, neurological disorders, etc. We will discuss how to provide additional practice with the word families to ensure mastery, even for those students who have severe language deficits or difficulties.

Speeding Up Sequential Spelling:

There are many different ways this can be accomplished. You may need only one of these techniques, or you may wish to use a couple.

Administer more than one lesson a day.
This is absolutely fine to do, as long as there are 2-4 hours separating the lessons. We do not want to have the same problem as traditional programs where the student simply memorizes the words and then regurgitates them back.
Omit individual words in the lessons.
Sequential Spelling has many words per lesson (25). This may well be too many for students with short attention spans or there may be more examples of words in a certain word family than are necessary for your student to master it. Further, many words are more for vocabulary building and reinforcing the patterns in the more common words than for mastery of their own spellings. The words that are bolded are those that are the most important to learn. You may choose to compile a list of the omitted words and do other lessons with them, such as handwriting, dictation, or vocabulary exercises and not lengthen the spelling lesson. These can be independent exercises as opposed to teacher-run lessons as well. See On Sequential Spelling Word Lists.
Condense the 4-day "chunks" of word family lessons into fewer lessons.
How Sequential Spelling is set up, there is often a "chunk" of four days that covers a few word families. The first day covers the base words (code, e.g.). The subsequent three days generally cover the other forms or derivatives of that word (coded, codes, coding). If your students have mastered structural endings (-s, -ed, -ing, etc.) and do not need as much repetition, choose only one or two of the structural endings for the lesson. For the -all family, you could condense the four lessons into one: taller, stalls, installing, called, recalls, etc.
Use a kitchen (egg) timer to time your lessons and keep on track.
Keep the lessons as short as possible so your student does not get overwhelmed, frustrated, or bored. We also do not want the student to over think the spelling; spelling should be automatic. After getting into the rhythm of Sequential Spelling, you will be surprised how quickly the lessons will go. Set the timer for 15 minutes when you first start out and stop the lesson after the 15 minutes have elapsed. To help reduce dawdling, you may choose to give an incentive such as doing as many pushups as there are words left in the lesson when time has run out. As you and your student become more familiar with the process and get faster, you can gradually reduce the timer to 10 minutes.
Consider using Sequential Spelling 5, 6, or 7 for your advanced speller.
If your student has mastered the most regular word families, but he still struggles with those foreign imports (lasagna, potpourri, hors d'oeuvres, etc.), those tricky silent letters (psychic, debris, yacht, etc.), and other advanced words (queue, eulogize, acquisition, etc.), Sequential Spelling 5, 6, or 7 is for him. These levels cover those patterns that are rarely systematically taught in traditional curricula (eu = /yoo/, ch = /k/ in Greek words, etc.), foreign words that have become well known and often used in their original language, and words that do not follow the phonics of common one-syllable base words.
Consider using Sequential Spelling for Adults.
Sequential Spelling for Adults is a two-volume Sequential Spelling program that builds to harder words faster than the seven-level program and uses fewer examples of words in each word family taught.
Contact AVKO for a free, customized curriculum consultation for further suggestions.

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Slowing Down Sequential Spelling:

Omit individual words in the lessons.
Sequential Spelling has many words per lesson (25). This may well be too many for students with short attention spans or there may be more examples of words in a certain word family than are necessary for your student to master it. Further, many words are more for vocabulary building and reinforcing the patterns in the more common words than for mastery of their own spellings. The words that are bolded are those that are the most important to learn. You may choose to compile a list of the omitted words and do other lessons with them, such as handwriting, dictation, or vocabulary exercises and not lengthen the spelling lesson. See On Sequential Spelling Word Lists.
Do the same spelling lesson 2-4 times daily
Some children need more repetition than others. Repeating the same lesson 2-4 times throughout the day, as long as there are at least two hours separating each lesson, can be very beneficial for certain students.
Provide additional example words for each word family taught.
If you are an AVKO member already: Utilize The Patterns of English Spelling (available for free as an e-book with membership) to find all of the other words in the word families being taught, and all of the word families that are similar to provide additional exposure to that word family. Remember, you can choose to focus on just the word families and their spelling, on just the vocabulary, or both.
If you are not yet an AVKO member: Utilize the Supplemental Word Lists & Readings for Sequential Spelling as a one-stop shop for the pages from The Patterns of English Spelling that correspond to the word family patterns taught in each level of Sequential Spelling. No more sorting through the hundreds of pages the reference book.
Use the Engaging Language Kit that corresponds to the current level of Sequential Spelling.
The seven Engaging Language Kit correspond to the seven levels of Sequential Spelling. Word games, creative writing prompts, dictation exercises, vocabulary building, and reading exercises make up the over 170 activities in each Engaging Language Kit. These fun activities provide additional, non-threatening practice with the same word families taught in each level of Sequential Spelling. Additionally, these activities cater to the more hands-on students and also provide exercises to really apply what they have learned abstractly.
Contact AVKO for a free, customized curriculum consultation for further suggestions.

Add or Substitute Words from a Word Family:

If you find that your student needs more practice with a word family than there are examples in the Sequential Spelling lesson(s) on that word family, or that you would like to substitute in other words for those in the lesson, you can do this easily with The Patterns of English Spelling. Simply turn to the page(s) of that word family in the book and select the words you would like to use from those listed. This is available for free with membership (as an e-book). The e-book version of The Patterns of English Spelling is searchable.

Creating Your Own Sequential Spelling Tests:

If you really want the fastest and most effective spelling program, create your own based on the word families your student does not know using the AVKO approach. For instructions on how to go about making your own Sequential Spelling tests, see our article on it. The basic process involves:

Determine which word families your student has not mastered.
You can use Individualized Spelling for a collection of pre-tests to determine which families are not known. You could also do your own spot checking of word families using The Patterns of English Spelling's listing of word families and all of the words that belong to them.
Assemble the Sequential Spelling lists.
Turn to the word family's page(s) in The Patterns of English Spelling and then select the words that you want to test. For help in determining the order of presentation of the word families you will teach, you may wish to consult the scope and sequence of word families throughout the Sequential Spelling books.
Administer the Spelling tests using the AVKO method.
See the reminders above and/or read the complete instructions of Sequential Spelling.

Note: A complete set of Sequential Spelling costs $134.95 and includes all seven levels with seven Student Response Books. With as little as The Patterns of English Spelling, you could create your own spelling program. As this is available for free with membership (as an e-book), you would pay only the cost of membership: $25.00!

With the recommended book of diagnostic and prescriptive pre-tests of word families (Individualized Spelling), it would still only cost you $47.46 plus shipping and handling! Add as many Student Response Books as needed for your customized program for only $9.95 each (less member discount, if applicable).

Teach the Spelling Rules:

Though we find that most students find learning spelling rules to be cumbersome, confusing, and unhelpful in many circumstances, some users of Sequential Spelling would like to teach the rules in a more formal manner than the embedded and application manner found in the levels of Sequential Spelling. See the following AVKO materials for help with teaching the rules:

The Patterns of English Spelling
The Mechanics of English Spelling
An inexpensive pamphlet that delineates the mechanics of English spelling into rules for monosyllabic and polysyllabic words, vowels, onsets, and rimes.
The I Before E Set
This book is a set of three different books: Apostrophes Made Easy, The I Before E Rule, and The It-ss and Tooze.
The Tricky Words
This book teaches the most common homophones, their differences, and when to use them with simple exercises.
220 Names/Faces, 220 Dolch Words are too many for Students with Memories like Mine
This pamphlet covers the Dolch (sight) words that need to be memorized. AVKO has broken the 220 words words into 170 that can be taught via word families, leaving only 50 that have to be memorized.

Track Progress in Sequential Spelling

View the article Tracking Progress in Sequential Spelling for more information on how you can go about tracking progress in as well as a simple template you can use to record the data. This is great for fastidious parents as well as school teachers and school administrators.

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