Five Minute Phonics - How to spell the 1/2 the English Dictionary

Improve your student’s spelling and reading fluency with this fast, easy, and fun new curriculum. This program has THREE major components which all add immeasurably to a child’s literacy in spelling and decoding.

This curriculum has now been updated with a script to make it easy to print a week's lesson and go with very little planning.

A: BASIC SPELLING
Most children at the age of emerging literacy (i.e. second graders) struggle to spell basic words. Each year there are the same extremely predictable errors:

1. Missing vowels
SHN for SHIN
2. Missing consonant sounds left out
SLUP for SLUMP
3. Final Y errors
FLI for FLY or HAPPE for HAPPY
4. Knowing when to use a short or long vowel.
BIK or BICK for BIKE or FLAM for FLAME
5. Incorrectly spelling the -TION sound
ACSHUN for ACTION
6. Counting syllables and being sure EACH has a vowel ACTVD for ACTIVATED
7. Not knowing when to double a consonant
HOPING for HOPPING (on a foot)
8. Incorrect IR phonemes
GRIL or BRID for GIRL or BIRD
9. Incorrect other R controlled vowels
SHARCK for SHARK
10. Short vowel +/k/ missing a CK
SNAKE or SNAK for SNACK
11. No change of Y to I adding a suffix (except –ING) COPYS or COPYER for COPIES or COPIER
12. Not dropping the E when adding –I N G.
HIDEING for HIDING
13. Learning the OI/OY phoneme.
14. Using ES after words ending is S, X, Z, CH, or SH.

B: ADVANCED SPELLING - Challenge Words
For “hotshot” students challenge words are built into this daily program to keep fast learners (who’ve mastered most of the above skills) from being bored silly. Average students enjoy and enthusiastically learn to attack and properly spell the intentionally decodable words such as FUNDAMENTAL or CONSTITUTION to a very high degree of phonetic accuracy (perfect or nearly so). Note: Many words for were taken from the “high utility” word list. These are good vocabulary words for any student to be exposed to. Parents really appreciate this enrichment for their gifted child. However, nearly ALL your class will benefit and ultimately learn to spell these sorts of words by the year’s end.

C: COMMONLY CONFUSED WORDS.
The always problematic homophones for THERE, THEIR, or THERE (also ARE v. OUR) and (THEN v. THAN) are taught with a simple daily dictated sentence and a few powerful mnemonic devices to lock things tightly into student’s minds.

Thus more predictable mistakes such as “ARE bike is newer THEN THERE bike. Will be correctly written as OUR bike is newer THAN THEIR bike.

All this in 15 minutes daily - with 31 weeks of lessons.

This program IMPRESSES parents and rightly so. See student work in thumbnails at right and at the end of the preview.

=============================================
See the preview to see the word lists, the simple instructions, and four pages of actual student work from my class last year!
=============================================

Note: The term "Five Minute Phonics" is a figure of speech implying a very brief daily lesson.

You dictate, students write the words while you circulate and quickly check their. Then words are spelled out on the board or screen.

When students being to SEE these patterns it gives readers yet another tool for knowing when a vowel is short or long. (e.g. Readers learn what double consonants are and that they come before a SHORT vowel. If they see a single consonant it is likely the vowel is long. They see a CK and know that vowel must be short.) All these skills help add to a child's decoding fluency.

NOTE: This program is NOT intended to replace traditional LIST-BASED based memorization type spelling programs. Students must be thoroughly exposed the other half of the dictionary, the part that has multiple phonemes for the same sounds such as long vowels or the /r/ sound (e.g. AI, AY AE, EE, IE, IGH, I etc. and so on) This program is not a comprehensive list of all spelling rules nor is it meant to be. It exists to solve some of the most common avoidable problems in routine daily spelling. It also shows that spelling can make sense, at least half the time.

This system does NOT encourage “approximated spelling". Rules are taught and are expected to be followed because all the words presented follow one rule or another. Phonetic approximations are only acceptable in multisyllabic words with schwa type sounds and then only in the MIDDLE of the word.

While written for primary this curriculum could be used by the intermediate grades for the purpose of ironing out these commonly confused words: (THERE, THEIR, & THEY'RE - ARE & OUR and THEN & THAN).

For those skeptical because about half the words in English don’t follow phonetic rules – we agree. But the reply to that is: Which would you rather do? Memorize the ENTIRE dictionary or just HALF?

See PREVIEW for samples of actual student work from truly average students (If I put the best student's work here you probably wouldn't believe it.) . The work from this year's class after THREE months of practice.

This curriculum is very popular. - Over 70 copies sold! -

==============================================
Copyright 2008 by Scott A. Beatty This product is copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Use is limited to personal use by the teacher and his/her class. It may not be reprinted on paper or reposted on the web for free or for profit without prior written consent of the author.
===============================================
Search Engine Catch phrases: (These are here for the use of site search engines and are not intended to be read) primary phonics program, simple phonic program, spelling curriculum, 2nd grade spelling, 2nd grade spelling problems, elementary phonics, simple spelling program, spelling multisyllabic words, commonly confused words, improve primary spelling, every syllable gets a vowel, using vowels in syllables, breaking words into syllables, syllables and vowels, syllables & vowels, simple spelling rules, primary spelling rules, basic spelling,, improving primary spelling, teaching TION, teaching long vowels, THERE, THEIR, THEY'RE, THEIR, THERE, THEY'RE, ARE v. OUR, OUR v. ARE, THEN v. THAN, THAN v. THEN.