Entries by ColoradoReading

Inflectional Endings Overview

Inflectional Endings An inflectional ending is a group of letters added to the end of a word to change its meaning. They have spelling and pronunciation rules that are very helpful for a developing reader to learn. To learn these rules, we teach students to pay attention to the last letters of the base word. […]

The -le Endings

Once students learn about multiple syllable words, how to break them down into individual syllables, and how open and closed syllables affect the word, they can then move on to learning about different endings that add an extra syllable. Before they jump into endings that change the tense of a word, they learn about a […]

The -ll/ff/ss ‘Floss’ Rule

To finish up the ‘blockers’ rules, we teach students about the double ff, ll, ss rule (sometimes referred to as the ‘Floss Rule’).  Rather than adding a different consonant to block the vowel, we double the end consonant, and, strangely, for only the letters ‘l’, ‘f’, and ‘s’.   Any word that has a short vowel […]

The -ck Expectancy

Now that students have a general understanding of blocking rules, we introduce them to a couple more variations of that concept by continuing with the -ck expectancy.  The -ck rule functions the exact same as blocker -dge and copycat -tch but is just a different sound after the vowel.  To ‘protect’ the vowel with a […]

The -tch ‘Copy Cat’ Rule

After the student has had some practice with the ‘-dge’ rule, we introduce a very similar rule. This is the ‘-tch’ rule, also called the “copycat rule.” Tutor: “The next blocker rule we are going to learn is very much like the ‘-dge’ rule you just learned. Today we are going to learn about spelling […]

The -dge ‘Blocker D’ Rule

As students develop their literacy skills, they will need to learn some expectancies to help them read and spell more challenging words. The first one we teach is the ‘dge’ rule, or Blocker D. The letter ‘j’ will never be the last letter in an English word. You don’t use a ‘brij’ to cross over […]

The Borrowers: Part Five – The Letter Q(u)

When you think of the letter ‘q’, what sound do you think of this letter making?  Are you able to think of a word that doesn’t have a ‘u’ directly following the ‘q’? Pretty difficult, huh? Most words that exist in English with a ‘q’ and no ‘u’ are derived from Semitic languages and are […]

The Borrowers: Part Four – The Letter X

Let’s be honest: thinking of a letter borrowing something is pretty absurd.  Especially when the thing it’s borrowing is another letter’s sound. This concept is even more strange for students who are just beginning to learn about the English language and how letters function on their own and within individual words.  Pair that with affixes, […]

The Borrowers: Part Three – The Letter G

After a student has learned Borrower C, we introduce Borrower G. The visual aid for this rule is also a train track. During the introduction, the tutor should point out the similarities and differences between the diagrams for ‘C’ and ‘G’. Tutor: Believe it or not, there is another borrower rule that is related to […]