Read and Spell Every Word

Each lesson has been carefully designed to be easy for most students. You might be tempted to skip words because your student appears to be handling everything effortlessly. Remember, though, that students need to practice reading out loud what they see, and practice spelling on paper what they hear. It is important that they get all the “run time” that the lessons afford. Roman numerals IV and V include words that rhyme, like mill and fill; in and bin; and Jim and rim. Words rhyme when they have the same vowel sounds and ending consonant sounds.

Introduce the Concept of Syllables

Tell your student that all words consist of one or more syllables. A syllable is the next bigger sound than a basic speech sound. A syllable may consist of one vowel or a vowel team known as a digraph, or it may consist of a vowel paired with a consonant either before or after it. A speaker’s chin almost always drops when he says a syllable.

• WRITE on notebook paper this twelve-syllable word: antidisestablishmentarianism.
• ASK your student if he would like to read this word.
• READ through the word, placing a slash mark after each syllable as it is read aloud.

an / ti / dis / e / stab / lish / men / tar / i / an / is / m

We teach syllable patterns so that students can read and spell even twelve-syllable words by the end of the program.
Lessons 1 through 27 have only one-syllable words, all of them featuring a short vowel. For a vowel in a one-syllable word to take the short sound, the syllable must end with at least one consonant [bat, razz]. A syllable that ends with a consonant is said to be a closed syllable, as the vowel is closed off by the consonant. Challenge words are provided at the end of most lessons, starting with Lesson 1, to give students a chance to practice multi-syllable words. From Lesson 28 onward, your student will start encountering two-syllable words.

To Explain or Not to Explain a Pattern

Every student is different. For some, too much information about patterns might result in sensory overload. Just relax and concentrate on the actual exercises—reading, spelling, and learning the meaning of the words. Automatic response to the patterns is the priority for your student, not having him expound or quote rules. One convention your student does need to know is that names (proper nouns) begin with a capital letter. (We did not make a point of this in the Pre-Unit but do so now.) Some of the word lists contain names. In Lesson 2 we see Jim and Jill. Such capitalization is important.