Having reported that one of my struggling reader pupils had suddenly turned a corner and begun to take on alternative spellings, I thought it might be fun to report on my weekly lessons with him and plot his progress.
So, today my student arrived with his scooter but without his folder – third week in a row! (Obvious organisational difficulties here!)
Last week we practiced reading words and text with four alternative spellings for /ee/. This week we started the lesson with a bit of consolidation: I gave my pupil a list of two-syllable words with /ee/ spellings in them. The list came from the ‘Alba Series’ workbook. I asked him to chunk them and read them. Mostly, he had no problems at all. This was a great indicator that he had not forgotten the spellings taught and could read them within longer words.
I introduced the new learning: alternative spellings for /oe/. We started off by world-building, one alternative spelling at a time, leaving the split vowel spelling to last. The Alba workbook has a useful worksheet for the split vowel which requires the pupil to cut ‘split’ the letters oe into two separate letters and place them in the correct places to build a word. This we did and having already learned about the split spelling a-e, he knew exactly what to do and how to read the new words.
Next came a sorting and spelling activity. My pupil had to make four columns for the four alternatives and list some words with /oe/ spellings in the correct columns. He then read the words out loud to me.
To break things up a bit and because he loves the computer he played Wordshark ( games with /oe/ spellings). We concluded with reading the next book from the Alba Series ‘The Long Road Home’. I have now realised that is really important for my pupils to reread the texts I give them so that they develop fluency so homework was to finish reading the books twice and be ready for a quiz about it next week.
This was a typical Sounds-Write lesson using additional resources from the Alba Series. I am feeling very optimistic that my pupil will, at last, start catching up. He is in Year 6 so it is crucial to make up for lost time.
Hopefully he will come with his folder next lesson!?!