Unit Overview: 

Vowel Spellings

In this unit, you will continue to teach the advanced code, but you will now turn from spelling alternatives for consonant sounds to spelling alternatives for vowel sounds.

Vowel spellings are the trickiest part of the English spelling code. Most vowel sounds can be spelled several different ways. This means that vowel sounds are hard to spell. For example, to spell the sound /ae/, a student has to not only be able to hear the /ae/ sound but also select the correct spelling from several alternatives.

It is no wonder that many students struggle to decode vowel spellings when reading—and struggle even more mightily to spell vowel sounds when writing. The difficulty is embedded in the English writing system. However, the orderly and systematic way in which the vowel spellings are introduced in this unit and in later grades will help students cope with the complexity of English vowel spellings and lead to significantly stronger reading and spelling skills.

Spelling Alternatives

In this unit the focus is on two of the so-called “long” vowel sounds, /ae/ and /oe/. Students will review the basic code spelling for each sound and then learn common spelling alternatives:

• /ae/ spelled ‘a_e’ (review), ‘ai’, ‘ay’ (new)

• /oe/ spelled ‘o_e’ (review), ‘oa’ (new)

Only the most common alternatives are taught in Grade 1. Other spelling alternatives will be taught in Grade 2.

In the past, you may have taught students the well-known jingle, “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.” You may be tempted to use that jingle here to explain why way and wait are pronounced with /ae/ and why boat is pronounced with /oe/. However, it is preferred that you avoid this saying. This rule is actually very unreliable. It is wrong almost as often as it is right. In addition, the rule treats vowels as letters, like ‘a’ and ‘o’, when, in fact, in CKLA™, vowels are sounds. Finally, the walking-talking rule teaches students that they only need to pay attention to the first letter in a digraph spelling. That can cause students to misread words such as now, head, and cookie. For digraphs, one has to keep in mind that both letters work together to stand for the vowel sound.

Syllable Breaks

In this unit, as in the last unit, the use of the syllable divider to separate two-syllable words into smaller, more manageable chunks is discontinued. Please refer to the appendix in Materials for further discussion of syllabification in English if students need ongoing scaffolding.

Unit Calendar:

We are not teaching this entire unit. This unit covers content that will be covered in 2nd grade. Unit 7 is 13 Instructional days, and it is recommended it be taught from May 29th to June 17th.