Below is a review of some basic grammar & phonics concepts. We encourage your child to review these concepts and become familiar with any that they may not know. If at any time they feel they need more practice with any of these concepts please feel free to ask us for help and we will be more than willing to work with them.
Throughout the year your child's spelling words might center around a certain phonics or grammar rule. These rules may have to do with vowel patterns and sounds. Or they may deal with consonant blends and digraphs. These spelling patterns are not only important for our weekly spelling quizes, but they will help your child in reading and writing. Often a child will come to an unknown word in reading, knowing these spelling patterns can help your child decode those unknown words. They can also use their spelling words & patterns to help them correctly spell words in their writing.
Please review their spelling words and spelling patterns with your child often. Review old words & patterns is a great idea to help your child retain this important information.
General Information:
Vowels: in the English alphabet there are 5 vowels
/a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/
each vowel makes two sounds:
1. short sound
2. long sound
When a vowel makes a short vowel sound, its a quick sound as follows:
short /a/ has the sound you hear in the beginning of the word apple
short /e/ has the sound you hear in the beginning of the word elephant
short /i/ has the sound you hear in the beginning of the word itch
short /o/ has the sound you hear in the beginning of the word octopus
short /u/ has the sound you hear in the beginning of the word umbrella
When a vowel makes a long vowel sound, you hear the name of the vowel (we say the vowel says it's name):
long /a/ - you hear the letter name /a/ like in face or cake
long /e/ - you hear the letter name /e/ like in flee or sea
long /i/ - you hear the letter name /i/ like in like or bike
long /o/ - you hear the letter name /o/ like in toe or row
long /u/ - you hear the letter name /u/ like in tube or cube
Consonants: are any other letter in the English alphabet that IS NOT a vowel
Nouns: a noun can be a person, place or thing
Examples: teacher - a person
dog - an animal
coin - a thing
school - a place
friend - a person
pencil - a thing
kitchen - a place
Proper Noun: a proper noun is the specific name of a person, place or thing
**Proper Nouns ALWAYS get a capital letter
Examples: Miss Gallo - name of a teacher
New York - name of a state
Central Park - name of a place
Mrs. Bauer - name of a person
Macy's - name of a store
Plural Nouns: a plural noun is the same as a regular noun, but it is more than one
**To make a noun a plural noun you add /s/ to the end of the noun, however there are some exceptions to the rules some words change their spelling when in the plural form
Examples:
noun - dog
plural noun - dogs
noun - pencil
plural noun - pencils
noun - person
plural noun - people
noun - mouse
plural noun - mice
Pronouns: is a word that takes the place of a noun for subject, object
The following chart reviews some of the different pronouns used to take the place of nouns in our writing.
Example:
Sentence with nouns:
Yesterday Mike and Sally went to the book store together.
Same sentence but with pronouns:
Yesterday they went to the book story together.
**The pronoun they takes the place of the proper nouns Mike & Sally
Verb - a verb is an action work (if you can do it, it most likely a verb)
Examples: run
walking
thinking
building
sitting
**Be careful, SOMETIMES a word can be a noun or a verb, YOU HAVE TO read the sentence carefully to determine if that word is a noun or a verb
Example: In the following sentence the word /trip/ is a noun.
My class went on a trip to the Bronx Zoo. (trip is a noun because it is a thing)
In the following sentence the word /trip/ is a verb.
My mom said to me "Be careful, you are going to trip on your shoe lace!"
(trip is a verb because it is something that you can do)
Verb Tenses:
Past Tense - means it happened already
Present Tense - means it is happening now
Future Tense - means that it will happen
How To Show Future Tense:
When you want to show that something is going to happen you add /will/ in front of the verb.
Example:
present tense future tense
draw will draw
jump will jump
How To Show Past Tense:
When you want to show that something happened already you add /ed/ to the end of the verb (sometimes you might have to double the last consonant before you add the /ed/)
Examples:
present tense future tense
jump jumped
stop stopped
sneeze sneezed
***Irregular Verbs***
Like many thing in our language not all verbs follow the same rules. For some verbs you CAN NOT ADD THE /ED/
For irregular verbs you have to change the spelling of the word to show past tense.
Examples:
present tense future tense
go went
blow blew
buy bought
study studied
cry cried
Adjective: a word that describes a noun
adjectives can describe how something looks, feels, smells, its color, its size or shape ect.
Examples:
fluffy dog - fluffy is an adjective because it describes the dog
hot pancakes - hot is an adjective because it describes the pancakes
Prefix: a prefix is a group of letters added to the beginning of a word (it will change the meaning of that word)
Examples:
redo, rewrite, unhappy, inconvenient, & unwrap
write - to put things down on paper
rewrite - to write something over again
wrap - to cover something in paper
unwrap - to take the paper off
Suffix: a suffix is a group of letters added to the end of a word
Examples:
walked, quickly, fastest