Spelling Rules You've Never Heard Before

"i before e, except after c..." Most of us remember that old spelling rule. I have found it quite valuable numerous times in my life.

English can be a confusing language when it comes to spelling. In my career as an elementary school teacher, I have often found myself shrugging my shoulders when trying to attach any rhyme or reason to the way we spell many of the words in our language.

It wasn't until several years ago when our district adopted the VoWac program to help our primary students (grades K-3) with their word attack skills that I found some spelling rules which make some sense of our ever-confusing language.

VoWac stands for Vowel-Oriented Word Attack Course. It is a phonics program which has been in existence for 27 years. The teachers in our school have found it very helpful in teaching our young learners decoding skills.

Following are some of the spelling rules I teach my first graders to help them become successful readers and writers:

1. The sound of /k/ can be spelled c, k or ck. C is used when followed by the vowels a, o or u. K is used when followed by the vowels e, i, or y. The ck is used after one short vowel in a one syllable word such as sick, cluck or dock.

2. The letters s, l, f, and z are doubled at the end of a one syllable word. To remember which letters are doubled in this situation, I teach my students the sentence Sam likes fried zebra.

3. The letters tch say ch as in the word pitch. You use tch after one short vowel in a one syllable word. If there is another consonant after the vowel and before the ch sound, you do not add a t to the ch sound. Examples of this rule are patch and branch. In the word patch there are no other letters between the a and the ch sound so the t is added. In branch, there is an n between the vowel and the ch so the final sound in the word is spelled with only the ch.

4. You may have learned this rule years ago: when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking. VoWac takes it a little further and calls two vowels together regular and irregular vowel teams. The regular vowel team of ai can be used at the beginning or middle of a word or syllable as in aim or bail. When you hear this same long a sound at the end of a word it is spelled using the ay vowel team. The vowel team ea can be used anywhere in a syllable as in the words beat and pea.

5. Oa and oe are also vowel teams with similar rules. Oa sounds like a long o and is used at the beginning or middle of a word or syllable as in oat or float. Oe is used at the end of a syllable in words like toe. The vowel team ee can be used anywhere in a word. We see this vowel team in words such as green and tree.

6. The irregular vowel team of oi is used at the beginning or in the middle of a word as in toil and oil. The team of oy is used at the end of a word or syllable as in boy or en/joy.

Here are a couple of other rules I picked up through the years:

Desert (one s) is a place which doesn't receive much rainfall while dessert (double s) is something you eat - think "strawberry shortcake".

Stationery is paper to write on while stationary means to stay in one place.

The principal of your school could be your pal because he's a person, but principles are ideas/beliefs.

Source:

VoWac Publishing Company, Faulkton, SD

www.vowac.com