Fixing Common Spelling Mistakes

I'm making a list of words for my seven year old twins I find in their school work and journals of common words they misspell. Then they practice these words by mixing up magnetic letters and putting the words back together. Their lists are put on the refrigerator to see everyday. I also have them write the words correctly.

I think this is a good way to learn to spell words before a wrong spelling is practiced too many times. My son wants to know when he can get a word off the list. I should make a plan for that I guess. I'm thinking of making a monthly list, taking a test, and starting a new list every month. If a word is missed, it gets added to the next month's list.

Here are the words we added today.

These are the spellings I found.



These are the correct spellings.

Here are their lists for the refrigerator.



Fixing Common Spelling Mistakes

Blend Sounds Using Body-Coda Instead of Onset-Rime

Many people teach beginning readers word families.This is also called onset-rime. The onsets are the beginning consonant sounds, and the rimes are the ends of words. The theory is that children will be able to read words with the same spellings or rhyme at the end.

The problem some readers face with onset-rime blending is the distortion that occurs with stop sound consonants. Vowel sounds are all continuous sounds. This means that when you stretch or hold the sound it stays the same. Stop sounds do not stay the same. There is an extra vowel sound at the end.

Here's a video of me demonstrating continuous sounds and stop sounds.


If a child reads through to the vowel, there will not be a distorted extra sound in a word when reading or listening to someone else separate a word at the onset. Body-coda blending eliminates distortion in a word, because the pause always happens after a continuous vowel sound.
Here's a great article written by Bruce Murray author of The Reading Genie that describes the benefits of teaching a child to use body-coda when blending.

The colored letters are stop sounds.
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Here's a video explaining how stop sounds can make reading difficult.

Blend Sounds Using Body-Coda Instead of Onset-Rime

Teach a Child to Read and Spell Using Magnetic Letters and Writing a Grocery List

Do you dread taking your children to the grocery store? I've found that my children behave better when they are my helpers. One way to get your children helping is to have them make a grocery list.

You can use a set of magnetic letters to help a child sound out and spell items on a grocery list.

You will be able to teach phonics rules, rule breakers, letter sounds, and special letter combinations. Here's a resource to help you separate sounds in words to help you teach a child to separate sounds needed to spell words. Here's a helpful list of sounds in words and their spellings.

After spelling a word, see if your child can mix up the letters and put the word back together. Encourage your child to make the sounds of letters and letter combinations as he or she puts them in place. Your child can use the magnetic letters to copy the word onto his or her grocery list.

Make your child in charge of finding and checking off items on his or her list. If you have more than one child, you could split up different sections of the grocery store.

This post from Ready Set Read gave me inspiration for today's post.

Teach a Child to Read and Spell Using Magnetic Letters and Writing a Grocery List

Reading Longer Words?

Does your child guess at longer words? Today I'll show you how to help your child read longer words.

Watch this short video.


It is helpful to break a word into smaller parts. Phonics rules can be used and seen. The rules won't always work, but the word attempt will be close. A child who is good at guessing words will be able to try and read the word again changing the necessary sounds slightly to come up with the right word.

You can write a word with spaces between the word parts on paper, on a magna doodle, or on a white board.

You can use magnetic letters to show spaces between word parts.

You can finger frame to read one word part at a time.

Click this link to find some helpful phonics rules.
Click this link to find out what to expect from a beginning reader.

I usually kept an erasable whiteboard, magna doodle, notebook, or magnetic letters handy when my children were reading a book to me. I think learning to break words apart at sound or syllable level, using phonics rules, and knowing to slightly change vowel sounds or leave some letters silent is the best thing I taught my kids.

Another important thing I taught my children is to stop when what they read didn't sound right or make sense.
I'd let them finish a sentence and hope they would catch it themselves. If they didn't stop, I'd ask if it sounded right. Sometimes I'd repeat what they read and ask which part didn't sound right. We might look at the word and take that word apart. Check out this link for more infomation about how this is done.

Here's a video showing how to take the word promise apart while reading Just a Daydream.


Phonics Pathways has 26 pages to practice reading words taken apart at the syllable level.

Lessons from this book have helped a fourth grader I'm currently tutoring.



Reading Longer Words?

Use Magnetic Letters to Teach Decoding Words Before Reading a Book

You can select a few words from a book your child is about to read and practice sounding out these words before reading the book. This strategy can be used with children who tend to guess at words using meaning and picture clues. My daughter was this type of reader. She did great with beginning readers, but she fell behind her twin brother as books included more words and less picture clues.

Magnetic letters or writing words with a space between sounds can be used to help your child make and blend the sounds in a word.  Your child will be ready to read the words in a book instead of just guess at a word. Readers need to combine many skills and thought processes to be effective readers. A reader who is guessing at words shows he or she is thinking about the story and wants the story to make sense. This is a good thing, but these readers need to be taught to connect letters to sounds when reading. Some readers are great at sounding out words, but they don't think about what they are reading.

Here is a picture of a book with words to sound out from a phonics reading series from Starfall.

Here's a video of some words I chose to sound out before reading Peg the Hen.

Here's a video of my son reading Peg the Hen. Find a free animated version of this story here.





Monkey See, Monkey Do is a Hello Reader from Scholastic. I highly recommend Hello Readers from Scholastic for beginning readers. The following video from shows a few words I would choose to have a child practice sounding out before reading Monkey See, Monkey Do. If a child looks at you to check if he or she read a word correctly, direct the child to the word to see if it was read correctly. This will teach a child to look at letters and letter combinations when reading. If a word didn't make sense, have a child combine looking at the letters and thinking about the story or picture.

Here's a video of sounding out a few words from Monkey See, Monkey Do.

Give this a try with a few words from a book your child is about to read. A little practice will go a long way. Make sure to talk about the story and pictures. What is happening? What might happen next? Find ways to connect your child to stories.
How would your child feel? What would your child do?  Did the story remind your child of something he or she has seen or done? Ask questions and encourage talking before, during, and after a book.

Use Magnetic Letters to Teach Decoding Words Before Reading a Book

Teach Blends with Magnetic Letters

Blends are tricky for some beginning readers. You can teach blending the letter sounds quickly together with magnetic letters.

When practicing blends I suggest teaching a few at a time with similar sounds.

L Family - cl, sl, fl, pl, bl, gl
R Family - br, cr, dr, fr, pr, tr, gr
Starting with S - sl, st, sp, sn, sc, sw, sk, sm
Starting with T - tr, tw
Starting with C - cl, cr
Starting with F - fl, fr
Starting with B - bl, br
Starting with P - pl, pr
Starting with G - gl, gr
Three Letter Blends - scr, spr, str, spl

Here's a video showing how I teach blends with a beginning reader.




Practicing blends can be fun. It will help your beginning reader a ton. Try a few a day. Let your child think of some words with different blends. Practice making words with short vowels, long vowels, and vowel sound phonograms (ee, ay, ai, ow, ou, oy, oi, aw, au, ew, ui, oo, ea, ar, er, ir, ur, or, oa, ey, ei, ie, igh, eigh, oe, ough, and eu)

Teach Blends with Magnetic Letters