Institute for Excellence in Writing . Andrew Pudewa. Both names are well-known and well-respected. Anyone who knows me knows that Mr. Pudewa ranks up there in my top 3 as far as conference speakers go. His approach to teaching is very common sense. I trust him. I believe him. I was thrilled to receive his Phonetic Zoo spelling curriculum, but a little nervous, too. I will admit up front that I've never used a spelling curriculum with Ben (4th grade) before. I usually pull vocabulary words out of our unit studies and sometimes use those as spelling words, using the Charlotte Mason method for spelling, which is a visual method. I think this method has worked well for Ben, so I haven't really sought out another way to teach spelling. I wasn't sure how I would feel about using a spelling curriculum. I was nervous for no reason. Phonetic Zoo is a great, common sense method to teaching spelling. Once again, Mr. Pudewa has not disappo...