Sing, Spell, Read and Write Levels 1 and 2 Curriculum Review

I have been a home-school teacher for 13 years and have taught a wide range of subjects and used many different curricula. When I find a curriculum or class that is truly wonderful, I like to pass that information on to others. The following is a review of Sing, Spell, Read, and Write Levels 1 and 2.

Strengths:
The Sing, Spell, Read, and Write sets come with CDs, workbooks, reading books, games, charts and more. This is a very fun curriculum that students really enjoy. Young children love to sing, so Sing, Spell, Read, and Write uses this love of singing to teach them phonics, spelling, reading, and writing. This is a wonderful concept, since words and sounds put to a tune are easily memorized. Students learn the sounds of the alphabet, short and long vowels, blends, digraphs, and more all while singing songs that are fun and catchy. My children looked forward to this class each day, which seemed like way too much fun to them to actually be school. They liked the songs so much that they sang them all of the time. The Sing, Spell, Read, and Write workbooks have visual charts in them that go along with the songs. As your child is singing the sounds of the alphabet, they are also looking at the letters and pictures of things that begin with those letters. For example, they would sing "A, a, apple, b,b, ball, c, c, cat, and d, d, doll".... while looking at an "A" with an apple, a "B" with a ball, a "C" with a cat, and a "D" with a doll. The combination of hearing the sounds while using the visuals really helps the students connect the sounds to the letters. Once the students learn the sounds of the letters, they are taught how to connect these sounds and letters with other letters to form small words. All of this is reinforced by workbook page activities they do on the sounds and words they are learning. As students start to learn words, they begin to use the reading books. The reading books are sensibly broken up by sounds and are filled with cute, little characters and fun stories. Students also play "Go Fish" and "Bingo" style games , adding even more fun to a very enjoyable curriculum.

Everything about the Sing, Spell, Read, and Write curriculum is broken up into small, easy to handle sections for young children. You can set the pace for how quickly to go through those sections depending on the needs of your student. If a student is having difficulty in a certain section, you can continue to work in that section until the child does well in it and is ready to move on. If a student is quickly grasping what is being taught, you can go at a faster pace. We went back and forth, depending on how much time my children needed to spend in a section. There were times we were zipping through two sections in one day and there were times we spent several days on one section.

Sing, Spell, Read, and Write starts out with basic sounds and letters, builds upon those to teach the student small words and continues to advance to the point of the student spelling, reading and writing multisyllabic words. Students also learn things like prepositions, cursive writing, vocabulary, creative writing, proofreading and more.

Weaknesses:
Some of the Sing, Spell, Read, and Write songs can be a little too fast paced for some students. When I found this to be the case, we would listen to the song to learn the tune and then turn it off and sing it on our own at a slower pace while using the visuals to learn the letters that went with the sounds.

Recommendations:
I used Sing, Spell, Read, and Write Levels 1 and 2 with my children. They had a lot of fun with this curriculum and I enjoyed teaching it. More importantly, they learned a lot and were able to read, spell, write and so much more by the end of it. I would recommend starting even earlier than first grade with the K or Pre-K level of Sing, Spell, Read, and Write because all young children love to sing and this curriculum won't even seem like school to most of them. They can have fun, sing new songs, and learn all at the same time.