We've used Sequential Spelling in the past and it has worked well!  There are no spelling rules, unless you just happen to know them and want to tell the kids what they are.  It's built on spelling word patterns.  For instance, you start with "in", then add ing to make "inning" (and you can if you want introduce the rule about doubling the final consonant, or not), and "be" and hard-g, and end up with "beginning".  I don't remember the exact sequence of this, but you can see it on the website http://www.avko.org/ .  They now have dvds with the lessons on them, but I got the books-only before the dvds came out.

I currently school Other People's Kids (10 years, 37 kids so far), and we used SS a couple of years ago with a very dyslexic teenager (and other "typical" kids).  When we started with her, she was scoring below the 10th percentile in spelling on annual achievement tests.  After a couple of years of this program, the girl scored Average for her grade level in spelling!  The "typical" kids also scored well, but their scores didn't have as dramatic a change as hers did.

We're going back to SS this coming year.

We have tried five spelling programs. All About Spelling is by far my favorite.

First, we tried ACSI Spelling. Ds would do the activities each week but then miss at least half the words on the test each week. I could see after six weeks that we were wasting time with that curriculum.

Next we tried Spelling Power and used it for probably a couple of years. Ds did well on the tests, so I thought he was learning, but SP didn't carry over into his daily writing. His spelling was atrocious. Spelling Power has word lists grouped by sound, and a list can have words with various phonograms for the same sound. However, it doesn’t tell when to use which sound, which I’m sure is why it wasn’t effective.

Then ds#1 & #2 tried Spelling Workout. The results were the same as with SP – did well on tests but didn’t carry over into real life.

We tried Spell to Write and Read/Wise Guide for Spelling after that. It worked wonders, because it taught all the phonograms plus rules for when to use them. One year of that, and ds#1 was finished with a spelling curriculum. He didn’t need one anymore, because his spelling improved so much. The spelling skills of ds#2, who was in 4th grade at the time, also improved immensely with SWR/WG.

I found out about All About Spelling in late spring of 2008. I hadn't been using SWR/WG with dc#3 much, because it's just not very easy to implement. When I looked over AAS, I knew I'd love it. It is very similar to SWR/WG in what it teaches, but it's so much easier to use. It’s quite expensive when you consider that you’ll need six levels, but I think AAS is worth every penny. Dd started in Level 1 in September 2008, and she's now in Level 4. Ds#3 is in Level 2.  I don't ever plan to get rid of AAS. I hope to tutor public school students in reading and spelling sometime in the future, and AAS will be invaluable for that.

Even though I went all the way through SWR/WG, I’ve learned new things with AAS, and I’m sure I’ll learn more as we go along.

SWR/WG is so difficult to learn to use that there is a special website that is for teaching how to use it. There are also seminars given around the country to teach how to use it. There is no need for that with AAS, which takes only a few minutes to learn to use. After initially cutting out the cards and filing them, there’s almost no daily prep work. While dd & ds are alphabetizing the letter tiles, I pull out the items I need for that day. Parents who want to eliminate the alphabetizing step each day buy magnetic white boards and magnets for the letter tiles. I like my kids to have the practice with alphabetizing. I figure it’ll help them a lot when they use a dictionary. Some days we don’t use the tiles and just do review work on the white board.

Many AAS users are former SWR/WG users.