I also used Words Thier Way. I liked this but as the previous poster stated it was a lot of time consuming work and it was very hard to reach all groups in a timely manner. I had a parent volunteer come in on Mondays to take a group and introduce words and give them the practice lesson I planned and made (usually a word sort or game from the accompanying Cd). I took the other two groups and introduced thier words and gave them a word sort to do. There are generic center activities they can do during literacy time as well.

To place them into groups I used the diagnostic test from the manual and retested them halfway thru the year and then the groups changed a little. I did let the kids do the buddy tests. At first this takes forever,but train them and they will learn.

This was a lot of work to do spelling this way, just make sure you're up for giving yourself more work...it is worth it for the kids. I saw some amazing progress in their everyday spelling/writing due to WTW.