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The more students know the more complicated spelling becomes. They begin to need to take into consideration not only sound and symbol correspondence, but the word’s morphology and part of speech. One potentially confusing concept is words that end in -ous or -us. Both endings are pronounced /ǝs/. So how do we know when to…
One of the very first suffixes that I teach students is the suffix -s. This suffix makes a word plural. Teaching -s and -es builds on students’ natural speech patterns and makes a perfect introduction to the concept of base words and suffixes. Teaching the concept of plural nouns also creates a bridge to teaching…
It is important to teach the voiced sound of S fairly early in the instructional sequence. Students will need the voiced S to add the suffix -s to base words or to read vowel consonant E words with S. Because voiced S is such a prevalent part of our speech, this is a concept that…
There are several reasons why recognizing patterns in words is difficult for our students with dyslexia. Dyslexia often causes difficulty linking the phonemic analysis with the orthographic patterns. This means that a student not only has difficulty correctly hearing, analyzing, and identifying the separate sounds in a word, but in putting the sequence of letters…
The suffixing rules represent a challenging but important set of spelling generalizations. They allowed students to write a wide variety of sentences using the full range of verb tenses. Learning these suffixing rules, like the Y Rule, puts students on the path to avoiding many spelling pitfalls and being able to successfully navigate the writing…
A particularly challenging, but important, set of spelling generalizations are the suffixing rules. They are important for students to be able to write using more natural-sounding language. For example, He did hop sounds far more awkward and stilted than He hopped. Learning the suffixing rules, like the drop e rule, expands possibilities for our students…
GE or DGE? Your student knows more than they think! Whether to use -ge or -dge at the end of a word is the fourth of the short vowel spelling generalizations. Teaching the GE/DGE Spelling Generalization This spelling generalization states: Some words that follow this generalization include: Bridge fudge ledge badge lodge Bulge hinge large …
The spelling generalizations for vowels really are cumulative. Although it may take a lot of practice for your students to internalize them, an understanding of the principles at work is very important. As your students continue to learn less frequent vowel teams, they will need to draw on their knowledge about other vowel teams and…
When you’re thinking about spelling a word with OI or OY, location is everything. In some ways, the /oy/ sound is one of the more straightforward vowel teams and spelling generalizations that your students learn during their Orton-Gillingham lessons. The /oy/ sound really only has 2 spellings: oi and oy and the letters oi and…