Spelling was always a bit of a struggle for me. To this day, I have a small dictionary in my desk drawer, or I google the spelling of a word that I’m not sure of. Spelling Rules were not really taught, at least not at my school! In addition to words that are decodable, those nasty Red Words (sight words) can be tough too! If I could have only had […]
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02
Aug
2021
Spelling Hacks You Will Never Forget!
You get spelling rule # 4 today, BUT there are so many more! This one is easy and fun and who doesn’t like a bonus?? Anything that we can repeat, really seems to make things easier, right? Anna Gillingham calls adding a bonus letter to /f/, /l/, /s/ ( and sometimes /z/) the FLOSS Pattern. That stands for f..l..or s “floss”. Some people like to come up with their own […]
Read moreI wish I could have back all the time I’ve spent looking up whether or not I doubled the consonant in a word when I added a suffix! I know that sounds a bit ridiculous but think about all of the words you’ve spelled in your life and how many times you’ve needed to know this concept. For some reason I always thought that this was one of those things […]
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28
Sep
2020
Know the Rules so You Can Teach the Rules!
The only phonics rule that I ever remember learning was the one that went like this. When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking. HA! That rule only applies 15% of the time! Now what about the spelling rules I learned. Zero. UG!!! I want to make sure that you know the rules so you can teach the rules!!! I’ve learned so many things since I’ve been […]
Read moreI love getting the most out of what I teach students. I’m all about working smarter, not harder! When I learned a strategy on how to teach suffixes in a more strategic way, I actually got so excited! Does this make me a nerd? 🙂 Check out today’s video on how you can improve decoding, comprehension and spelling by teaching suffixes! Take a look! I can’t wait to hear how […]
Read moreFirst semester of this school year is nearly over and I’m guessing that you may have a student or two who could use some multi-syllable decoding strategies right about now….am I right? Well, all I can say is that you need to watch today’s video and the NEXT two weeks of videos if you want to see a simple way to teach multi-syllable decoding!!! This is SO COOL that all […]
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