Spelling Plus Pretests

The first thing to do if you're starting with Spelling Plus anytime after first grade is to pretest students. Use the resources here to start doing that right away. Collect words your students miss to make a first list of just 5-6 words, which you'll use to learn how to do the daily practice activity and to teach kids what to do. Keep collecting misspelled words, perhaps entering them, correctly spelled, in the child's personal dictionary, until he misses more than a few words. Then stop the pretest and begin about there with the regular lists. Few of the kids I worked with every started above Level D. That's OK. Words earlier on the list are more common and more important.

Don't worry that your kids might already "know" some of the words on the list. The idea is to learn them to mastery, which requires a lot of practice beyond just "knowing" them.

Test master (already numbered 1-165, use at all levels)

Level A is just 10 simple words: am, an, at, I, if, in, it, on, not, got. (1000 wasn't evenly divisible by 6).

Right-click (control-click on a Mac) to download the audio recordings to your iTunes.

Level B Test and Test Sentences | Audio Recording of Level B Test

Level C Test and Test Sentences | Audio Recording of Level C Test

Level D Test and Test Sentences | Audio Recording of Level D Test

Level E Test and Test Sentences | Audio Recording of Level E Test

Level F Test and Test Sentences | Audio Recording of Level F Test

Level G Test and Test Sentences | Audio Recording of Level G Test

If your students start with this program in Grade 1, aim to master Level B by the end of first grade, Level C by the end of second grade, etc. This only applies if you're using this program throughout. If your kids are older by the time they start, pretest and collect the (hopefully few) words they miss until they start missing a lot. Stop pretesting when it's clearly difficult for the child and begin using the materials at that level.