Discover the essential steps for effective spelling instruction in reading intervention programs. Learn about systematic, multisensory, and research-based approaches to teaching spelling. Explore targeted instruction and explicit techniques for improving phonological awareness and vocabulary skills.

Alright friends, many of you have been asking us this question and we’re excited to share exactly how we teach spelling to our struggling readers and writers!

Here’s the truth - spelling is tricky!

And it’s usually one of the last abilities to fully progress for our struggling students. We tell students and parents that we expect growth to evolve in phases. We typically start at the sound level (making sure that students can associate sounds to letters), then we move up to the syllable level, then to the word level, phrase level, sentence level, and then finally the passage level.

Today we wanted to share a quick intervention tip on using a Phonological Awareness strategy - specifically Phoneme Segmenting (or segmenting words into sounds) and how phoneme segmenting supports spelling.

So often, I meet or talk to an interventionist who is leaving out one of the most critical parts of their lesson. Usually, it is because it only takes a few minutes, is similar to other pieces of the lesson, and just gets overlooked. This is doing such a disservice to our students, because without this crucial aspect, their reading intervention is not building a strong enough foundation. This critical piece is the Auditory Drill.

Here we are with our last syllable type! If you’ve been with us since the beginning of this series you’re all caught up on the crazy reading and spelling rules you may have never heard of - we certainly hadn’t. If you missed learning about all the spelling rules with the other syllable types - go back and check them out!

Thanks for sticking with us and our series of The Reading & Spelling Rules Nobody Ever Taught You. The fifth syllable type teach our students is Vowel Teams.  This is when two vowels stick together to make one sound.  Think of the vowel sounds in words like rain, play, green, key, goat, boil, etc. Vowel teams can be kind of tricky so click through to read more and grab our Anchor Chart Worksheets!

Welcome to week 4 in our series of The Reading & Spelling Rules That Nobody Taught You. In this post, we are going to talk about the fourth syllable type we teach to our students, Open Syllables.

The Open Syllable is the opposite of a Closed Syllable. In an open syllable, you have a vowel left alone at the end of the syllable. Our students like to remember that when nothing is behind the vowel, it can go for a looooong run and say its loooooong sound.

So we’ve been talking all about the reading and spelling rules that were brand new to us when we began to learn about Structured Literacy and the “science” behind the English language. Today, we are going to talk a little about the “Bossy-R” or the R-controlled syllable type. This one is a challenge!!!

The second syllable type we teach students is our VCE (Vowel Consonant E) Syllable Type. Perhaps, if I told you it was also called the Magic E Syllable, it would sound familiar? Click through to read about VCE syllables and all of the rules we teach within this syllable type!

Closed Syllables are the first of the syllable types that we teach to our students. Within this syllable type we cover the -ck, FLOSS, -tch, and -dge phonograms as well as the 1-1-1 doubling rule. Do you know all of these rules? Click through to find out!

We are so excited to share this resource with you today! Scoop Spelling changed my life! This strategy brought such relief to my students who struggled to spell multi-syllable words correctly and instantly boosted their confidence! This strategy is so simple to use!

First, make sure that your students are solid on syllabication; what syllables are and how to count them. This knowledge is the key to Scoop Spelling. If a student knows or can hear how a word breaks apart into syllables, then they can Scoop Spell!

As a parent, it can be incredibly frustrating to watch your child struggle through the weekly spelling word lists. Depending on what type of list is coming home this can be pure torture.

Hopefully your child is receiving a patterned list that follows one concrete pattern like "Magic E" in which you might get a list including words such as take, home, sale, date, note, etc. or words that follow more complex patterns like night, sight, sleigh, neighbor in which "igh" says I and "eigh" says A.

So we know that teaching students spelling rules in a systematic and cumulative (organized and building on itself) approach is the best way to make meaningful spelling gains. However, even with the best instruction we often see skills fall apart when they need to be applied at a higher level.