Unit Overview: 

This unit is devoted to introducing spelling alternatives for vowel sounds. Vowel sounds and their spellings are the most challenging part of the English writing system. There are only two vowel sounds that are almost always spelled just one way (/a/ and /ar/). The other sixteen vowel sounds have at least one significant spelling alternative. Several of them have many spelling alternatives.

The sounds and spellings taught in this unit are:

• /u/ spelled ‘u’ (but), ‘o’ (son), ‘ou’ (touch), ‘o_e’ (come)

• /ə/ (also called the schwa sound) spelled ‘a’ (about), ‘e’ (debate)

In addition to the above sounds and spellings, two sound combinations and their spellings are also taught in this unit. They are:

• /ə/ + /l/ spelled ‘al’ (animal), ‘il’ (pencil), ‘el’ (travel), ‘le’ (apple)

• /sh/ + /ə/ + /n/ spelled ‘tion’ (action)

The basic unit of instruction in this program is the phoneme. Students are taught to segment a spoken word into single phonemes and spell the word one phoneme at a time. Likewise, when reading, students learn to identify graphemes (or spellings) that stand for single phonemes and then blend them to make words. This is the best way to read and write most English words, because our writing system is based on making symbols for phonemes.

However, there are some instances in which it makes sense to look at a unit larger than a single phoneme. Two of these multisound chunks are introduced in this unit. Both contain the /ə/ sound. The students will learn a set of spelling alternatives for /ə/ + /l/ as in table, shovel, devil, and animal. These /ə/ + /l/ words offer a good example of how /ə/ complicates English spelling. The four words above all end with the same sound combination, /ə/ + /l/, and yet they each contain a different spelling. Students will also learn the ‘tion’ spelling for the sound combination /sh/ + /ə/ + /n/, as in action.

You will introduce the above sounds and spellings using Spelling Trees as you have in earlier Grade 2 units. For the various spellings of /u/, you will simply add branches to the /u/ Spelling Tree introduced in Unit 3 with a review of short vowel sounds.

For the schwa sounds and spellings, you may choose to have three separate new Spelling Trees: one in which the trunk is labeled /ə/ with two branches for ‘a’ and ‘e;’ a second tree in which the trunk is labeled /ə/ + /l/ with four branches for ‘al,’ ‘el,’ ‘il,’ and ‘le;’ and a third tree in which the trunk is labeled /sh/ + /ə/ + /n/ with one branch for ‘tion.’ If space does not permit you to have three separate trees, however, you may choose to make one large tree in which the trunk is labeled /ə/ with seven branches representing the various spellings associated with the schwa sound.

Please refer to the section More About Schwa (/ə/) in the Appendix for a more in-depth explanation of /ə/ and its relationship to /u/.

Unit Calendar:

Unit 5 is 30 instructional days with 5 pausing points. It is recommended that it be taught from February 26th to April 15th.