I love this series. I used it when I was in school and can remember making fun of some of the words with friends, but I still remember most of them. Now, I use them with my students. I didn't find it hard at all to find answer key, but it is because we order from the publisher. It also has no other supplemental materials, but if you're creative they really aren't needed. We work with the same words for two weeks. The first week, the students work the pages in the book and at the week's end we have a plain old regular spelling test (call out the words and the student writes the correct spelling). The next week we do flashcards with picture recognition, crosswords puzzles using the definitions as clues, and one word association (pick one (sometimes two) word(s) from the def. that sums up the meaning of the word). Then at the week's end we have a definition test where the def. are listed with a blank for the student to write the correct word (no word bank and must be spelled correctly). At the end of the unit we use the test from the test book (also from the publisher). This works really well with my students. Also this year on the sadlier website they have audio pronunciations of the words (plus other stuff). I highly recommend this book. We use it at our school from 2nd through 8th grade. I'm also excited to be using the new Grammar Workshop this year. Hope this helps someone!

From what we have seen, this is a straightforward vocab rote approach. This approach has both positive and negative aspects and works with some children and not with others. MY BEEF with this book is that it does not have an answer key and finding one has been more than difficult (still haven't at this point).

I have used these books for about ohh... 4 years now, and since I have started using them my standerdized test scores have droped from just above avrage to well below avrage... I do not believe anyone should use them!