The Word Wasp: For Teachers and Parents

A superb book providing structure for parents to support their children.Using with my year 3 and year 4 daughters (7 and 8).Bought initially for one of them who was struggling with spelling but is so good I now do with both.(The book equally focuses on reading too).There's a clear succinct guide for the coach so you don't need to prepare before sessions.It starts at the very beginning (phonetics of letters) but moves quickly into providing spelling rules(when to put a t before ch, when a work would end in one L or two) in manageable chunks.As you progress words with old rules are thrown back into the mix so that they are not forgotten.You can have a useful session in as little as 15 minutes, I normally find 20-25 is optimal.This covers 2-4 pages depending on the exercise and the book is 300 pages longso even with 5 sessions a week there's a good few months of support.Every session teaches something so you can see the benefits daily. At the 100 page point - so not allthe way through - the daughter I bought it for has not only come along leaps and bounds but she'smore confident because she can see the complicated words she can spell now she knows the rules.It doesn't have to be for someone with major issues, I'd recommend it for anyone who's child is justfalling off the pace and wants to support them.NOTE: they use red and green to distinguish between vowel names and sounds so my prove difficultfor those coaches or students with colour blindness. (It could do with a professional edit for such things,to be consistent with -ise and -ize and to remove the little personal rants which detract from the early pagesof the book.)

This was recommended by my daughter's English teacher, who was so confident in it's ability that he offered to buy it from me if it didn't work for her!We have only just started it, but it is already showing signs of being very helpful to both my daughter and me!!My daughter has some areas of dyslexia, mainly her recall of spellings, but she is able to remember rules, for example the apostrophe for possession, 'Mum's'.The book goes back to the very basic phonic sounds. At the start the alphabet is listed, showing that we never actually use a consonant name when spelling just it's sound, which my daughter thought would be easy, but actually saying the alphabet phonetically is harder than you think, and she soon realised that maybe this book actually could help her.From what we have completed so far this is perfect for her, as it explains, for example, which words need a double S, F and L at the end of them, - haven't we all wondered that at some point?! Just so you know it's ones with a vowel before the final sound, so she can see it as a rule (obviously there are always the odd exceptions).My daughter has been eager to do the book on the most part, and this is also down her very encouraging teacher which I can't thank enough.I would definitely recommend this book, as although I am ok at English, any improvement for everyone can't be bad, can it?

Using this alongside Toe by Toe. It's time consuming and frustrating at times but oh so worth it. Very similar to TbT, but needs two ticks in a row instead of three. It covers a lot of grammar rules (that I have loooong since forgotten!).

In early March I began using this with my year 5 son and we have got as far as page 59. We are managing to fit in four 20 minute sessions a week. We negotiated a small reward every fifty pages with a larger reward on completion to help find the motivation to get started. After struggling with the tears and failure of the weekly spelling test and a five year gap between his spelling and reading age, I felt compelled to write this review when he told me this morning "I love this! This is working." He's on the autistic spectrum and the rules that he is learning from the system are really sticking. He does get tearful when he gets a dot (for an incorrect spelling), but he is coping better the more that we do. Obviously we still have a way to go, however, I'm confident now that with the help of this book poor spelling won't be one of all the difficulties that he encounters at secondary school.

I am using this for my home educated children alongside their additional title, Toe by Toe. Cannot recommend it more. Precise, easy to understand, and importantly, easy to teach!Whilst you can jump straight into this, I would definitely recommend doing their literacy primer, The Hornet, first, just to create a base to work from.

Second time for me to order this wonderful series of books to help children with reading spelling and literacy difficulties. I am so impressed with the systems that have evolved from the moment of ordering to the prompt delivery and then on to the most important aspect of all the use of the work in the classroom or for individual tuition. We have sets in Zimbabwe where the Special Needs network is small but efficient and I have enjoyed sharing with my immediate colleagues.

For a ten-year-old girl who is slightly behind in her reading, this is a real find. She has already improved, less than quarter way through the book. Any adult or older child can bring the subject through the exercises. The instructions are clear on how to use it. I recommend it for improving reading and spelling.

Used to help my dyslexic daughter. Her reading, and confidence has improved since starting this. Very happy.