How the sounds of English are translated into our written language
Or in other words – Phonics!
Phonemic awareness –
hearing sounds, distinguishing b from p, etc.
Alphabetic principle -- that letters represent sounds -- learn the sounds of each letter
CVC words
: words with consonant, vowel consonant such as cat
Work on short vowel sounds, e and i cause the most confusion
Ccvc and cvcc : words such as jump and flip
Silent e rule introduces long vowels : vowels say their names in these words like, cake, cute
Digraphs to learn : th, sh, ch, wh, rarely ph (the h brothers) also at end of words such as ck, ng
Long vowels in words with special patterns such as: ild, old, all, alk, oll, ind
Two vowels go walking rule: two vowels often make a long vowel of the first one -- seat, coat, rain
The R sisters rule or r controlled vowels:
ar, er, ir, ur, or
Vowel dipthongs: these crazy ones just need to be memorized
Ay, oi, oy, ow, ou, ew, eu, ea, ie, igh, ue, eigh, aw, au
Soft g and soft c when followed by e, i, or y
Syllables
compound words,
common endings such as ful, ing, ed, ness
divide between double consonant (dinner ) and
divide between different consonants (winter)
divide when there is only one consonant in the middle: pilot vs. lemon
don’t divide up dipthongs such as ee, oa, ow, etc.
watch for syllables ending in le and y
Then we move away from phonics toward semantics or the meaning of chunks of words
Examples are a study of prefixes and suffixes such as: ness, less, ous, or, ity, ture, ment, tion etc.